From the time we came into existence, God has assigned a guardian angel to each one of us. Our guardian angel’s primary purpose is to get us to Heaven. He is supposed to protect and shepherd us. Finally, he intercedes to God on our behalf. Your guardian angel is your greatest ally for your spiritual life, and you should grow in your devotion if you want to grow in holiness. The other day, I came across a passage that still has me thinking about our relationship with our guardian angel. I would be careful about claiming a guardian angel is designed with a personality, but I was intrigued by what the author had to say.

We’ve all heard that we become the average of the five people we spend the most time with. Your guardian angel was specifically designed with a personality that was meant to rub off on you. You’re supposed to have a certain amount of psychological compatibility with your guardian angel — his personality was meant to influence you, the decisions that you make, the way that you speak, the way that you think. And God designed this from the beginning (Cameron Riecker “The Devil Revealed to Padre Pio the Secret to Beating Lust”).

How is it that your angel’s “personality” is supposed to do something that changes how you act and brings you closer to God? It seems like it is a lot to say that an angel has a personality, but I do think our angels interact in a way that helps us grow in holiness. An angel is created with intellect and will, and his purpose is to aid you in your spiritual journey.

It is perhaps hard to speak of a “personality” regarding angels. However, we can say confidently that each angel is different from the others. When St. Thomas Aquinas reflects on the angels, he shares that as spiritual substances not individualized by physical bodies, each angel is completely unique (cf. Summa Theologica, I, q. 50, a. 5). Perhaps along these lines, we could think of our angels having a personality.

Our angel looks for the way to help us in our spiritual journey, illuminating our minds towards the good and helping us resist what draws us away from God.. Personally, I think this is very hard to imagine. But I will do my best to explain it and would love to get other people’s perspectives.

Our guardian angels do not need to learn about our human nature the same way we do. But each angel accompanies us through the circumstances of our lives and suggests a course of action that leads us towards Heaven and holiness.

What does it mean to be guided by an intelligence immensely higher than our own? This is one of the great gifts that God gives us and I think few of us really take advantage of it. Perhaps, we are used to praying a simple prayer to our guardian angel before traveling or when we are going to bed. However, this seems like too powerful of an ally to relegate to peripheral areas of our lives. We should get in the habit of consulting our guardian angels frequently.

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Especially when we are experiencing temptation, we should turn to our guardian angel to petition grace and strength. A guardian angel doesn’t intervene only in crisis moments, like Desmond Doss at Hacksaw Ridge. Our guardian angel is right beside us when we are thinking about cheating on a test, saying an unkind word, or cutting someone off in traffic. By responding to his guidance, we draw closer to God and cooperate more fully in the work of our salvation.

Perhaps our guardian angel wants more than occasional prayer before bed or when we find ourselves in danger. Maybe he is waiting for us to invite him into the everyday decisions we have to take, because this is where holiness is won or lost.

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Regarding anger, we have two fundamental misunderstandings.

We either think that we are supposed to burn with righteous anger or that meekness means we never even feel angry.

Both visions are mistaken.

We have been lied to regarding anger. We are told that venting is the best way of releasing anger. This is how we “get it off our chest.” Research on anger suggests otherwise.

Looking at the psychological studies, we can conclude that venting does not get rid of anger. Instead, it feeds it.

When we imagine the hurt we have suffered, we are training ourselves to be perpetually hurt and confused. This seems to be the prevailing narrative in our society today and part of the reason people are so generally hurt and confused. Replaying the anger is not always releasing the anger.

How often have you run into someone who rants about the same thing over and over? We probably all fall into this from time to time. We become experts in how other people have hurt us. We hold onto the hurt instead of letting it go and growing greater than the injury.

How do we get rid of the anger and the hurt? We need to bring the anger and hurt out of the darkness into God’s light. He alone knows everything that is going on in our hearts and can help us get to a place of healing. The secret lies in confession.

Brandon Robinson wrote:

There is a difference between confession and combustion. Confession brings darkness into the light. Combustion keeps feeding the fire.

Christianity does not ask us to never be angry, but rather to avoid sin. Anger is tricky and can lead us into sin, so we have to be careful not to give ourselves over to anger.

Righteous anger is rare. People love to cite the example of Jesus clearing out the money changers from the Temple (cf. Jn. 2:14-16). He probably did this with the right amount of passion. His anger was rightly ordered towards the good, while our anger is usually mixed with our wounded ego and desire for revenge.

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I know that I am not Jesus, and if I were to take a whip of cords and start swinging it around, I don’t think that I would be full of righteous anger.

Sometimes, we think that we need to be able to get angry so we can react forcefully when an emergency arises. But I think this may not be as wise as we might think.

One of the favorite lessons I learned from Brant Hansen’s book, Unoffendable, is that you probably want to be level-headed when there is a crisis.

Being so meek that we never experience emotions is inhuman. We are going to feel things: it is part of the human experience. But this does not give us the right to turn over our decisions to our emotional responses. Our reason should always be driving our responses.

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Standing before the mirror and rehearsing your angry discourse is probably not healthy. What you rehearse, you reinforce. There is no reason to make yourself angrier about a specific situation. You are much better off training your heart to forgive in these situations.

Forgiveness is the Christian answer to anger. This does not mean that we are going to ignore the injury or pretend that we were not hurt. Rather, we learn to release our desire for revenge by focusing on the fact that we are first forgiven.

The more we realize that we are forgiven by Christ, the more we can forgive others. One of the privileges I experience in pastoral ministry is getting a glimpse of what is going on inside others. I am continually amazed at how understandable people’s actions are when we get to perceive their motivations and pressures more clearly. Understanding does not necessarily justify the behavior, but it makes forgiveness easier.

Anger is an emotion, not an act of the will. We don’t sin by feeling anger, but rather when we give it free rein and allow it to form our response. We are all going to have moments when we feel sad, confused, and even angry. What we do with these emotions, especially when we forgive, is what makes us better followers of Christ. Following Jesus means responding to anger as he would. We don’t deny the hurt. Rather, we carry it into the light and choose to forgive.

People can often be confused about how to prepare for spiritual direction because they are not sure what it is. Frequently, people confuse spiritual direction with counseling or therapy. The spiritual director is not a handkerchief to catch your tears. He or she is an outstretched hand, sometimes helping you up and sometimes shining light on the road God has called you to follow.

Spiritual Direction vs. Counseling

Spiritual Direction does not take the place of good psychological counseling. It can, however, help in a lot of the same cases. Something important to recognize is that Spiritual Direction and Counseling have different purposes. Counseling and therapy focus on mental and emotional health. Spiritual Direction addresses your relationship with God and your discernment of his action in your life. Feelings and emotions may come to the surface in both cases, but they are not the same thing. You may find substantial overlap as far as the topics you discuss in each context, but the lens and purpose are different.

Spiritual direction is not primarily about getting answers from someone else. Rather, it is about learning to recognize God’s voice and respond to his grace.

Getting Ready for the First Session

You are about to embark on a journey that will hopefully help you gain clarity of what God is asking of you in this stage of your life.

The experience may be bewildering, and it can be helpful to plot out a “map” that you can share with your spiritual director as you begin to discern the ways God is working in your life.

You don’t need the perfect spiritual autobiography or even to understand perfectly how spiritual direction works. But before sitting down with your spiritual director, reflect on your goals and aspirations for this formative relationship.

Set Expectations

It is good to take some time to reflect on your initial expectations. These may change over time, but they are helpful for you and your spiritual director. What are you looking for? Why have you sought spiritual direction? What do you know about spiritual direction or the person you are meeting?

Begin your meeting by speaking about these things. Then, move on to give context about who you are and what your life has been like.

Set the Context

You do not have to share every detail of your past life. Look at what is essential and try to draw a map of who you are and what events have shaped you into the person you are now. Describe your home life growing up. Is your family united? Was there economic hardship? Were there separations or tragedies that have left a mark in your soul? This helps the spiritual director form an initial understanding of what is going on in your soul and, more importantly, how you see God.

Look at the major life decisions you have made. How have you made these decisions? How have they turned out? By looking at the life you have now, do these decisions make sense? Were they driven by choice or by circumstance? Where do you see God’s action present in your story? Share any experiences you may have had with vocational discernment. It is very helpful to know if you have experimented with religious life. Have you ever thought about becoming a priest or a religious? Have you taken any steps in that direction? Are there any relationships in your past or present that are important to describe? All of this helps to know you as a person.

Your Spiritual Life

What is your prayer life like right now? Perhaps your prayer life is limited to Sunday Mass. Maybe you do not go to Mass but spend time in Eucharistic Adoration every week. This is a good thing to share. Do you have any experience of mental prayer? What does it mean for you to pray? Perhaps you feel that worship music helps you experience God. How do you experience God in silence, in nature, in reading Sacred Scripture, in the liturgy, or in contemplating his goodness?

What kind of formation have you received in the spiritual life? You might share your formation through spiritual reading and retreats. What has helped you grow in your faith? Describe the experiences that you find most meaningful, both negative and positive.

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What moves you spiritually? Perhaps you like the idea of being a spiritual person. Or you feel that the best people are spiritual. Do you feel moved by the great mysteries of our faith? Does the Incarnation move you? Perhaps the sight of Jesus on the Cross makes you feel like something has to change in your life. Does reading the lives of the saints make you want to change radically to correspond to the great graces that God has given you in your life? Share what resonates most with you.

Your own prayer needs to be where you are encountering God, and you bring those experiences to your spiritual direction. Your lights and shadows from prayer are what you bring to your spiritual direction for help in discernment.

Spiritual direction cannot substitute for your own spiritual life, but it can be a powerful catalyst for going deeper in your relationship with God. Sometimes, we can be tempted to avoid spiritual direction until we have everything perfectly mapped out. I would suggest you do your best and then go for it. Sometimes, it is only by beginning the journey that we can discover everything we need to record on the map.

Trust in God can bring profound peace, but anxiety is not always simply a failure to trust God. Even saints have struggled with fear, scrupulosity, or other forms of emotional and psychological distress. These experiences should lead us to prayer, yes, but also to seek support in family, friends, pastors, and qualified mental health professionals.

Paul’s Trials

In the second reading, Paul seems to be going through it. I love St. Paul. He is such a passionate figure from the New Testament. He was a man who was always all-in. When he thought the Christians were a menace to the Jewish religion, he got letters from the authorities so that he could go out and arrest them. After his conversion, he was more than willing to suffer for the Gospel. His willingness did not make it any easier, however. Describing his interior state of affairs, Paul expresses himself in his letter to the Romans in a way that I think resonates with all of us.

I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart (Rm. 9:2)

It sounds like something many of us could say any day of the week. We all have things that make us sad, and that makes sense. During this earthly life, we constantly face challenges that push us to our limits. Paul feels anguish because many of his people reject Christ. The beautiful thing is that if we look at the Gospel, we can find many moments when Jesus shows us how to deal with wild challenges. The philosopher Karl Jaspers came up with a term to describe such experiences. He called it a Grenzsituation, a limit situation, moments when we discover that we are not in control. It is never comfortable, but it is always a growth opportunity.

Faith does not always remove anxiety, and there can be people of deep faith who suffer from anxiety or other forms of mental illness and psychological suffering. So telling anxious people that they simply need more faith seems counterproductive. First, we should accompany them with compassion, then encourage them to deepen their relationship with Christ.

Apostles Facing Fear

The apostles were facing a limit situation in today’s Gospel (Mt. 14:22-33). They are out on the water, and for some reason, Jesus seems to be a bad passenger. One priest friend of mine complains about traveling by plane with me. He thinks that only when he travels with me does he ever run into the delays and discomfort of air travel. I think they are more ubiquitous, but that’s not the point. It seems like when Jesus is in the boat, their faith is always going to be challenged. In this passage, they have strong winds and powerful waves. Even worse, they see a mysterious figure walking on the waves and are afraid that it’s a ghost.

A limit situation is one that we can’t change, solve, or safely avoid. It forces us to choose truth and self-awareness. Death, suffering, guilt, and struggle are all examples of limit situations. As the apostles are losing their minds, Jesus speaks to them calmly:

Take heart, it is I; have no fear (Mt. 14:27).

This seems a lot easier said than done. When we are afraid, we don’t feel like “Don’t be afraid” is very good advice. But Jesus does give us a key about how to get through moments of fear and anxiety. We need to look for Jesus in these crisis moments.

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Good Therapy

This should not take away from the very good help that therapists can give, helping to understand what strategies we can use to deal with irrational fear and anxiety.

The other day, I heard what sounds like a helpful remedy for many people experiencing anxiety. “Do it for fun.” In other words, don’t convince yourself that one interview, one exam, or one conversation determines your entire future. Take it easy. Shifting our perspective helps reduce anxiety and gives greater freedom.

I think this can be very freeing for many people. The point of the Gospel is not that the storm immediately disappears. It is that Jesus appears in the storm. His first gift is not calm seas, but his presence.

His presence changes everything, but at the same time, we need to be careful not to reduce real mental health problems to spiritual roadblocks. We need to take all of our problems to Jesus. What can you do this week to trust more in Jesus and walk out to him on the water?

You may have to pray like Peter, “Lord, save me” (Mt. 14:30). And even better, he may pluck you out of the water, and you can respond with the disciples in the boat: “Truly you are the Son of God” (Mt. 14:33).

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Mental disorders and anxiety will never be eliminated purely through spirituality, but a healthy spirituality among the population could well reduce the number of people struggling with these challenges. While spiritual reading cannot cure clinical anxiety disorders, it can help address many of the habits, fears, and spiritual misconceptions that often intensify our experience of anxiety and worry.

The book begins by establishing Jesus as the face of mercy. So many of our spiritual problems boil down to a misunderstanding of who God is and who God is for me. These guided reflections help the reader to grow in understanding of God and love for Him. When so many people think of God as an examining judge, it is refreshing to hear about Him as a Shepherd who looks to guide His beloved souls back to His flock. He is a healer of hearts and a friend of sinners.

After coming to understand Jesus as the face of mercy, we are invited to leave the world’s false “safe spaces” in favor of the refuge found only in Christ. So much of what we read and hear on the news tries to make us feel anxious and worried. Much of today’s media environment rewards content that provokes strong emotional reactions. As a result, we are constantly exposed to stories that can leave us feeling anxious, fearful, or overwhelmed. They are selling our attention to attract commercials, so their strategy is understandable, if perhaps also a little diabolical.

Christ wants true freedom for us, and He wants to be our refuge. He does not want to see us leave Him in pursuit of pleasure and comfort in places that will only leave us more vulnerable and afraid.

The book ends with a florilegium, a collection of sayings from the saints that can encourage us on the journey to holiness.

Each chapter begins with a verse from Scripture that helps to frame its content. It is a simple book, designed to foster devotion in our hearts. In a world where we feel more exposed to violence, division, and hatred, it is comforting to be reminded of the eternal truths that have lasted through centuries.

Throughout the book, he brings his own experience to bear, giving witness to the transformative power of Christ.

I encountered the person of Jesus Christ. And though it’s difficult to put into words, the experience was like stepping into color for the first time. Everything around me seemed to pulse with meaning and beauty, as if the world had suddenly come alive (Matt Fradd, Jesus Our Refuge, p. 5).

He shares personal stories about getting distracted that will resonate with all of us. The need to constantly multitask divides our attention and leaves us feeling more anxious and worried, never allowing us to fully rest. Rather than resting, we just get distracted. (cf. p. 59)

It is not merely a series of pious reflections. His chapter on repentance helps the reader want to turn away from sin. As good as it is to focus on holiness, we must first take out the trash. We need to get rid of the garbage in our souls if we are going to advance along the path of holiness that Christ had prepared for us.

Fradd combines contemporary examples with timeless spiritual wisdom. For Christians seeking peace in an anxious age, Jesus Our Refuge offers more than encouragement. It offers an invitation to encounter Christ, the one refuge that never fails.

It’s a great question, and one we should be able to answer. If I had to recommend one realistic starting point for most young adults, it would be this: commit to thirty minutes of daily prayer, participate faithfully in Sunday Mass, and go to confession regularly.

The goal is not to do everything at once. The goal is consistency. A simple prayer routine practiced faithfully over months and years will bear far more fruit than an ambitious plan abandoned after a few weeks.

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Daily Mass

Daily Mass seems to be one of the most effective ways to grow deeper in our faith. It guarantees contact with Sacred Scripture, and if we are in a state of grace, we can receive Communion. Hopefully, the words the priest shares in the homily edify, encourage, and nourish us spiritually. Arriving a few minutes early and staying a few minutes afterward helps us to receive more spiritual fruit from the experience. I like it because even when we are distracted, we are sure to be growing.

Rosary

This is an example of vocal prayer – praying with our lips with pre-fabricated prayers – that has a deep tradition within Christianity. The Rosary invites us to meditate on the mysteries of Christ’s life, so it serves as a constant anchoring of our spiritual lives in the Word of God. It invites Mary to accompany us on the path of holiness. St. Bernard of Clairvaux coined the phrase, de Maria numquam satis (you can never get enough of Mary), and I am inclined to agree.

Lectio Divina

Taking Sacred Scripture in hand each day and praying with it opens a powerful path to transformation. By reading, meditating on, and applying God’s word to our lives, we gradually learn to think with God’s mind and conform our lives to his will. Down through the centuries, this has been a preferred mode of prayer for the saints.

Adoration

“Eucharistic adoration” refers to spending time in front of the consecrated host. Jesus is truly there, either in the tabernacle or solemnly exposed in the monstrance. Spending time in front of the Eucharistic Lord always bears fruit, even when we do not immediately perceive it. Pope John Paul II would speak frequently of his experience of the Eucharist. He tried to communicate some of his own devotion to the faithful in his Encyclical Letter, Ecclesia de Eucharistia.

It is pleasant to spend time with him, to lie close to his breast like the Beloved Disciple (cf. Jn 13:25) and to feel the infinite love present in his heart. If in our time Christians must be distinguished above all by the “art of prayer”,⁴⁸ how can we not feel a renewed need to spend time in spiritual converse, in silent adoration, in heartfelt love before Christ present in the Most Holy Sacrament? (Pope Saint John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 25).

Our time in front of the Blessed Sacrament can be flexible. We might apply some of the other spiritual practices, such as lectio divina or praying the rosary. We may also simply rest in silence before the Lord, pouring out our hearts before him and leaving silent spaces for him to speak to us.

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Examination of Conscience

Before we go to confession, we try to examine our consciences to see how we have failed to correspond to God’s love. We repent of the evil we have committed, and we go before God’s representative to ask for pardon and peace. The practice of examination of conscience can be fruitful in other moments as well. I like to examine my conscience every day. It helps me to see what is going on in my life, hopefully before I go too far off the rails.

Getting Started

All of these practices have borne fruit in the lives of countless saints and ordinary Christians. Of them, daily Mass has had the greatest impact on my own spiritual life. If I wanted to start tomorrow, I would look for how many daily Masses I can fit into my weekly schedule, then assign the other spiritual practices to the remaining days.

There are obviously many more things we could do to jumpstart our spiritual lives. Some people would suggest that we need to spend much more than 30 minutes a day. I suggest starting with 30 minutes, and then talking to a mentor in the spiritual life before increasing the daily commitment. I have seen too many people try to take on longer commitments, only to fail and end up doing nothing to take care of their spiritual lives. 30 minutes might not seem like much, but over the course of a year it adds up to over 180 hours. If that is 180 hours more than last year, you can be sure it is going to affect your spiritual life.

The important thing is to start and persevere. God does not ask us to become saints overnight. He simply asks us to meet him each day. Thirty minutes may not seem like much, but over time those small daily encounters can transform an entire life.

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Just as God brought hope to a foreign widow through Elijah during a time of famine, he raised up St. Ephrem centuries later to nourish souls during a different kind of drought – the confusion caused by heresy and division.

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We celebrate today the “harp of the Holy Spirit,” St. Ephrem the Syrian. He brought hope to the people of Nisibis, and later Edessa in modern-day Turkey. Dealing with the heresies of his day, principally Gnosticism, he responded by writing hymns set to popular music. One example is found in a hymn he composed to honor a holy bishop:

O you who are made priest after your master, the illustrious after the excellent, the chaste after the grave, the watchful after the abstinent, your master from you has not departed; in the living we see the deceased: for lo! In you is his likeness painted; and impressed upon you are his footprints, and all of him shines from all of you. R., Blessed be He Who in His stead has given us you! (St. Ephrem the Syrian, Nisibene Hymns, Hymn 18)

Even during spiritual drought, we are called to bring living water to others. We do this through our witness, our words, and our willingness to point others toward Christ. We can learn from St. Ephrem to go deep in the Word of God. Upon arriving at the monastery near Edessa, he embraced a life of asceticism and ceaseless study of the Word of God. Pope Benedict XVI observed that beneath Ephrem’s distinctly Syriac expression of Christianity lay the universal virtues that characterize every disciple of Christ.

The common and fundamental Christian identity appears in the specificity of his own cultural expression: faith, hope - the hope which makes it possible to live poor and chaste in this world, placing every expectation in the Lord - and lastly, charity, to the point of giving his life through nursing those sick with the plague (Pope Benedict XVI, 28 November 2007).

He chose to remain a deacon, signifying his desire to be a servant of others, also through his participation in the liturgy. As we prepare for the Feast of the Sacred Heart and the consecration of our country to that Heart, St. Ephrem reminds us that even in times of spiritual dryness, those who draw deeply from God’s love become springs of hope for others.

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I heard that description recently, and it struck me because it describes humdrum prayer so accurately. Prayer can feel quiet, repetitive, and even boring. When we sit down to pray without a clear sense of purpose, we can walk away discouraged and wonder if it is even worth trying again.

Overcoming Boredom in Prayer

When we enter prayer without a clear plan or idea of what we are doing, we are often left with a sense of boredom that discourages us from ever trying to pray again. If you have ever experienced boredom and disinterest during prayer time, the Gospel of the Transfiguration (cf. Mt. 17:1-9) can come as a real shock.

The Transfiguration shows us what prayer really is: not boredom, but encounter. Jesus took three of his closest disciples up Mount Tabor, and they had such a profound experience of prayer that they never wanted to go back down the mountain. The problem is that we often lack desire, which is essential to authentic prayer.

Desire is the Beginning of Prayer

The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of man’s desire for God.

Man is in search of God. In the act of creation, God calls every being from nothingness into existence… Even after losing through sin his likeness to God, man remains an image of his Creator, and retains the desire for the one who calls him into existence (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2566).

We desire God when we begin prayer. Where we often trick ourselves is that we think that prayer is our initiative. However, prayer always begins with God, and one could say that in us it begins with a certain nostalgia. We desire to return to the one who created us and sustains us in existence.

The reality of heaven is overwhelming. St. Thomas Aquinas had a mystical experience towards the end of his life, getting a glimpse of the joys of heaven. After that, he never wrote again. The man who contributed more to Western culture than perhaps any other of the last two millennia said that he saw all of his work as “straw” compared to the glories of heaven. This is what happens when prayer becomes real. It changes how we see everything. When the disciples saw Jesus transfigured on Mount Tabor with Elijah and Moses, they experienced a preview of heavenly glory.

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The Problem is that our Love is Weak

One difficulty in our prayer is that we do not have sufficient longing for heaven. When Pope Benedict XVI reflected on the virtue of hope in Spe Salvi, he noted that many people do not desire heaven because they are too satisfied with the things of this present world.

Perhaps many people reject the faith today simply because they do not find the prospect of eternal life attractive. What they desire is not eternal life at all, but this present life, for which faith in eternal life seems something of an impediment (Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 10).

The apostles were caught up in prayer on Mount Tabor. It was impossible to consider anything from this life as compared to the bliss of accompanying Christ in his glory. We need to think more about heaven if we are going to begin to desire it appropriately. We need to desire to pray, and we need to desire the happiness of eternal life with Jesus, which we commonly call heaven.

Look to the Things of Heaven

True prayer is a nostalgia for God and the good things that he gives us as blessings. We often experience, however, a different nostalgia, a nostalgia for the things of this world. One of the favorite phrases of Scott Hahn, renowned Biblical scholar, is that it took forty years to take Israel out of Egypt, but it would take centuries to take Egypt out of the hearts of Israel. Often in the desert, they would complain to Moses that their lives had been better while enslaved in Egypt.

Similarly, we can trick ourselves into thinking that our lives were more exciting or satisfying before encountering Christ. However, our lives will only be full and satisfying when we put Christ at the center.

Arthur Brooks writes that addictive behavior is often linked to boredom. Many of our vices sprout up when we feel bored, overwhelmed, or restless. In those moments, prayer feels difficult compared to the immediate pull of distraction.

We need to ask the Lord to reveal himself to us in prayer: not necessarily with dazzling light, but with the quiet certainty of his presence. Once we truly encounter him, prayer stops being boring. It becomes the place we most want to be. Even when prayer feels dry, Christ is present. The Transfiguration reminds us not of what prayer always feels like, but of who is always there.

The disciples never forgot what they saw on Mount Tabor. That experience sustained them through suffering, persecution, and even martyrdom. The same Lord waits for us in prayer. Prayer may begin like eating Cheerios without headphones. But if we persevere, it can become a foretaste of heaven.

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Do you ever feel like Bruce Banner, better known to us as the Incredible Hulk? Think about the last time you felt mad. Most of us don’t need gamma radiation to turn into the Hulk. A traffic jam will do. Is it bad to be angry? Is there a way to be angry in a right way? As much as it happens, it is surprising how tough it is for us to deal with anger as Christians. We feel bad, and then we feel bad about feeling bad.

There are lots of reasons to feel upset. And yet, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus invites us to not even be angry with others.

Whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment (Mt. 5:21).

Now, we have to distinguish between our spontaneous emotional reaction and sustained, chosen resentment. The first can happen in an instant. The second is something we choose to nurse. Jesus is telling us not to be angry, which feels really hard, if not impossible. There is a great book from a Florida radio host, Brant Hansen, called Unoffendable. He talks about how as Christians, we can speak a lot about righteous anger as a way of justifying how offended we get. He proposes something different. Just stop being offended.

Your life will become less stressful when you give up your right to anger and offense… Forgive in the big things and the small things. Don’t take offense (Brant Hansen, Unoffendable, p. 19. 20).

We live in a culture that often rewards outrage. Oh, they spilled a cup of coffee on you at the cafe? Well, you will never believe what happened to me. Hazardous waste backed up in the sewer and spilled out all over my bathroom floor. We feel the need to “one-up” the other person’s story because we want to be the most offended. Feeling offended is not necessarily a sin. But living offended is exhausting. And we are far freer when we are not offended by everything.

If we are going to give up being offended all the time, we need to learn some techniques to let go of our anger. We can pray and reflect to reject the rise of anger in our hearts.

In the first reading, we hear today from the Book of Sirach.

Before man are life and death, good and evil, whichever he chooses will be given him (Sir. 15:17).

Think about this the next time you get mad. We have all been driving and somebody cuts us off. We can get tremendously angry and launch a litany of epithets, or we can maneuver defensively and pray for the person who perpetrated the misdeed. Which reaction feels like life and good, and which feels like death and evil? Anger is often less about what happens to us and more about what we choose in response.

When we feel anger rise up within our hearts, we can call out to God with other verses as well. Psalm 4:2 proclaims “Answer me when I call, my saving God. When troubles hem me in, set me free; take pity on me, hear my prayer” (Psalm 4:2). This seems like a better reaction than throwing your roommate’s hairdryer in the trash because it was left on your side of the room.

We also need to fight against our tendency to catastrophize. Whatever situation we are experiencing, we tend to make it as big and terrible as possible. I failed a midterm in my sophomore year of college. That’s it. I am not getting into medical school. Yes, one midterm matters. But it is not the apocalypse. Catastrophizing turns irritation into rage and inconvenience into injustice.

When we learn to pray and reflect, we learn to counteract the offenses that lead us to be angry. We end up having more peace in our hearts, and this leads to greater joy. In the whole Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is giving the keys to Christian happiness. I think that learning to not take offense so often and avoid being angry is one of the surest ways to happiness.

Perhaps the best text on dealing with anger comes in the Letter of St. James. We could take it as a crash course in practicing charity in word and deed.

Everyone should be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath (Jm. 1:19).

We tend to be slow to hear and quick to speak, and this is how we get ourselves into trouble. If we learn to listen and have compassion for others, we will notice how our hearts experience more peace and we get to feel more joy. Real strength is not explosive power, but rather disciplined love. Ask the Lord today to transform your anger into patience, your outrage into mercy, and your reactions into love.

Harvard Business School professor Arthur Brooks styles himself a happiness expert. He writes a weekly article in the Atlantic, always about happiness, and has published numerous books on the topic. Perhaps one the most helpful images he uses is talking about three macronutrients for happiness, similar to the proteins, carbs, and fats in a balanced diet. What are the macronutrients of happiness? He identifies them as enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. Let’s look at the Beatitudes (Mt. 5:1-12) through this lens, beginning with enjoyment.

What do the Beatitudes have to do with enjoyment? Jesus declares the poor in spirit blessed. The word for blessed, “makarios”, could also be rendered “happy.” What about being poor in spirit makes you enjoy life more? I think about some experiences of vacation, especially when I was in Rome. Sometimes, we had the simplest things, but we had a tremendous amount of fun. When we are unconcerned with acquiring the latest and newest gadget, we are able to enjoy life as it is. This poverty of spirit allows us to enjoy God’s creation, without search for super stimuli to engage our nervous system.

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What do the Beatitudes have to do with satisfaction? Jesus blesses the meek. These are the men and women who are unconcerned with their own rank and status in the world. The meek are not weak or passive. They are simply free from the exhausting need to prove themselves. So much discontent in life comes from seeking to appear as more than what we are. When we are content with ourselves, a deep joy is able to well up within us. This is how being meek contributes to our sense of satisfaction with our lives.

What do the Beatitudes have to do with meaning? Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. When we make it our mission to establish peace and righteousness, our lives begin to have a deeper meaning. We are not merely surviving or trying to make it to the next week. Rather, we begin to thrive because what we are doing helps us to derive a sense of purpose and meaning in our lives.

Finally, one of the keys that Arthur Brooks mentions is that it is not just about creating the conditions for happiness. We also have to manage our unhappiness. The tail end of the Beatitudes seems suited to this end. Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. It is so easy for us to be carried away by negative feelings when things do not go our way. Jesus invites us to look at it in differently. He invites us to lift our heads and look to the heights.

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We can increase our happiness by living according to the advice of the Beatitudes that Jesus shares in the Sermon on the Mount. We learn from him, too, how to manage our unhappiness. We can look to Jesus and see how he lived this out in his own life. Rather than being centered on himself and feeling sorry for himself in times of suffering, he referred everything to his mission of glorifying the Father and saving mankind. We see this when he faces Pilate, when he suffers on the Cross, and in forgiving his enemies.

The Beatitudes do not promise an easy life, but they do promise a happy one. Not the happiness of comfort or success, but the happiness that comes from living in truth with God. St. Philip Neri’s joy did not come from possessions or praise, but from a heart expanded by love. When we allow the Beatitudes to shape our lives, our hearts are enlarged as well – as we discover that to be Christian is not a burden, but our greatest joy.

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Nature of Hope

Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1817).

Desire the Kingdom of Heaven. Trust Christ’s promises. Rely not on your own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit. Desire. Trust. Rely. Freedom begins when you begin to hope in God.

Too often, we don’t know enough to desire Heaven. At most, we think that Hell would be a bad place to go. But hope shows us the deeper purpose and brings back joy to us through living out freedom in a real and existential way. When we learn to live in hope, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ (cf. Rm. 8:38).

We have to learn to have the right desires if we want to grow in hope. Desire is different from attachment. Desire frees us, while attachments weigh us down.

Therefore, set your desire on my words; long for them, and you will be instructed (Wis. 6:11).

Is there an attachment in your life that doesn’t allow you to be free? Maybe it’s a person, grades, an internship you want to get. That attachment will tie you down and rob you of any sense of freedom. That’s when despair creeps in. They seem to think that there is some situation in this life that is weighing on them and they will never be able to escape from it. To overcome despair, we need a deeper hope.

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Hope makes us free in Christ. We need to let go of other things so that we can hold on to Jesus like never before. Nothing will separate us from the love of God (cf. Rm. 8:39).

In his encyclical Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict XVI has a chapter titled “The Shape of Hope.” It seems a little odd – how can hope be a shape? He reflects on the nature of freedom and its relation to hope, and how it lays the foundation for true love while giving our lives purpose. According to Pope Benedict, to understand what we may hope for, and what we may not, we must first understand the nature of our freedom.

Hope isn’t shapeless – it has a form, a direction, a purpose. Our world looks at hope as a formless blob. We refer to hope when thinking about dessert but rarely connect it to our eternal well-being. Perhaps this is because we buy into the myth that things are always getting better, leaving little perceived need for God.

Freedom and the Myth of Progress

The myth of progress is ingrained in our cultural psyche. We imagine an inevitable cycle of improvement, unstoppable and unquestionable. Unquestioning faith in technology characterizes our age. Yet technological progress in material things does not mirror the freedom inherent to moral decisions and moral reality.

Are we freer because of technology – or more enslaved to it? Pope Benedict reminds us that freedom is based on more basic decisions. We can’t simply inherit virtue. We choose it ourselves.

Freedom presupposes that in fundamental decisions, every person and every generation is a new beginning (Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 24).

No matter how one generation fares, the next must decide whether to follow the same moral norms. We see how much can change even in a short time. Utopian philosophy misleads us, suggesting that structures alone can secure a just society. Structures are necessary, but they are never sufficient. True morality cannot be delegated to institutions.

Dystopian realities seem to emerge all around us. We feel darkness creeping in. Faith is often pictured as light, but hope can be seen the same way. Hope helps us with the perspective of eternity, anchoring us in God and preventing us from being bogged down by material concerns.

The Kingdom of God will never be definitively established in this world. We should do good while living on earth, but we must avoid the temptation of thinking that we can offer permanent solutions to perennial questions. Permanent structures would deny human freedom. This is the fallacy of the myth of progress.

What this means is that every generation has the task of engaging anew in the arduous search for the right way to order human affairs; this task is never simply completed (Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 25).

Moral progress is never finished. Looking at hope only in terms of progress is insufficient. Ask yourself: what are the big things that give you hope? The small things? Which of these truly draw you toward the Kingdom of God.

Limits of Progress

Structures are helpful but insufficient. They are necessary and should be encouraged, but they are not a definitive solution. If they were, they would deny human freedom. Just as technological progress cannot eliminate suffering, Jesus reminds us that some realities – like poverty – persist, inviting a different kind of response rooted in love and hope.

Can progress save us if our hearts remain unchanged?

While progress can shape the world materially, it cannot address the moral and spiritual realities that Christ calls us to. This is why Jesus’ words to His disciples remain relevant today. When his disciples grumbled at the rich ointment poured over his head, Jesus rebuked them, saying:

Why do you trouble this woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me (Mt. 26:17-18).

Jesus is not advocating waste, but He recognizes the act as worship. Poverty will always exist, giving the wealthy the opportunity to serve and detach from earthly possessions. We may desire salvation in this world, but it is impossible. Science and resources alone cannot save man.

Francis Bacon and those who followed in the intellectual current of modernity that he inspired were wrong to believe that man would be redeemed through science (Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 25).

Sometimes progress blocks future progress, as with our reliance on fossil fuels. If we had recognized earlier the limitations of oil, we might have advanced alternative energy sooner. If progress cannot give us meaning, what can? We must turn to love, the only power that redeems.

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Life as Relationship

Life is relational. The more we fall into selfishness, the more disconnected we are. When we feel hopeless, we can pray with Psalm 35: “How long, O lord?” God reaches each of us personally and through community. Salvation and hope are never merely individual. We grow in our communion with Jesus.

The other day, I saw a small boy walking down a big set of stairs, holding on to his mother’s hand. He was overconfident in his method; if she was not holding him up, he would have crashed down the stairs in dramatic fashion. But he trusted the goodness of his mother and know he could take big steps with no risk of falling. Jesus invites us to have similar trust in him. This is how we grow in our communion with Jesus.

Communion with Jesus calls us to communion with others. To love Jesus totally, we need to be deeply free.

Loving God requires an interior freedom from all possessions and all material goods: the love of God is revealed in responsibility for others (Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 28).

Building up our relationship to Christ allows us to recognize the greater and lesser reasons for hope that we have. When we reflect on our reasons for hope, we learn to see our lives in the context of our relationship with Christ and experience how we cannot be separated from him. This gives us a sense of interior freedom. This freedom calls us to community, even though we might often feel pulled to a more individualistic way of looking at the world.

Modern Christianity, faced with the successes of science in progressively structuring the world, has to a large extent restricted its attention to the individual and his salvation. In so doing it has limited the horizon of its hope and has failed to recognize sufficiently the greatness of its task (Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 25).

We learn to trust Christ’s promises and not our own strength. We must remember the communal aspect of salvation. Faith is born in the Church, and it is in the Church that we most confidently live our faith. Paul was able to hold on to Jesus, but only after he let go of so many other things. This gave him confidence to love God above all else.

For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rm. 8:38-39)

God is always present, even when we feel isolated. But what can put our relationship with Christ at risk? Sin. Self-centeredness blinds us to its danger. Our friendships, habits, and daily choices can either lift us up or drag us down. One of the greatest sins is despair, because it destroys our will to keep fighting. Never give in to despair. If you ever fall, pick yourself up, shake off the dirt, and keep walking towards Christ.

Sometimes, we can get dragged down by our friend group. Look around and see who you are hanging out with. I remember speaking with some students who wanted to work on their language. They recognized that they were using foul language too frequently. “But Father, my friends do it more than I do.” Ok, well there’s the problem. If we do not find friends who lift us up, we will be dragged down to their level. If your friends do not challenge you to be better, look for better friends.

No friendship, job, internship, or program should come between you and the love of Christ. How do you make this happen at a practical level? Ask: what keeps me from Mass? From confession? These are things that separate us from him. Without hope, we stumble; in Christ, we soar free.

Redemption and Love

It is not the science that saves us.

It is not science that redeems man: man is redeemed by love (Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 26).

We learn to rely on the Holy Spirit. We try so hard to save ourselves, but we can never do it on our own. We can’t earn our redemption. We need his love. Love leads to redemption.

I know a story about an emergency room doctor who was struggling with addiction. One thing that happens to men is that we strive for success. We tend to run away from where we fail to experience success. For him, home life was tough. His kids were at that age where they are difficult to deal with. His wife was busy with her own life. He found solace in two things: work, and the bottle. He had a parking space at the hospital. He would get a phone call to come in. “Without you, this person will die.” It gave him a tremendous sense of accomplishment to be at work.

He was living out of whack. He would sometimes take shots of vodka to steady himself before performing emergency operations. He knew that his life was going down the wrong path, but he was unsure about how to steady himself. His despair became so great that he wanted to end his earthly existence. His son’s birthday was coming up on Sunday. His plan was to take his own life the following Monday. Thankfully, he made it to a rehabilitation program just before it was too late. Without hope, we fall into despair. We need to rediscover love as a source of hope.

Through love, we are drawn beyond ourselves and opened to the transcendent. Separation from Christ destroys hope.

You were at that time separated from Christ… having no hope and without God in the world. (Eph. 2:12)

Hope is grand. One image of hope is the anchor because hope allows us to be firmly grounded in what is most important. The connection that we have with Christ is a true covenant, that is sealed by our baptism. Our baptism allows us to share the sentiments of Paul that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ (cf. Rm. 8:38). We sense this connection when Jesus speaks about the Vine and the Branches (cf. Jn. 15). Jesus makes it clear that we can bear fruit only when we are connected to him. We have a God who wants to reach out to us and be close to us.

Hope anchors and roots us in him.

Interior Freedom

This hope gives us the gift of interior freedom in spite of suffering when we unite our crosses to Christ’s:

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Gal. 2:20).

St. Augustine lived this way after his conversion. He decided to live completely for the word of God and for the eternal things. He was deeply in tune with how Christ dies to separate us from sin and death. Jesus died for all of us, so that we might live not for ourselves but for him (cf. 2 Cor. 5:15). He snatched us from the jaws of death and from the grasp of sin. He has the right that we should live for him. We do this by getting out of our own heads and living for others (cf. Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 28).

Hope frees us. Hope sustains us. Christ grounds us in Himself and makes us truly free.

New life

When we think of the words “conversion story,” we might as well jump to St. Augustine. His conversion story has inspired millions down through the centuries. He described his daily life as correcting the turbulent, cheering up the faint-hearted, supporting the weak, and refuting the opponents of the Gospel. Further, he felt the need to guard the Gospel against insidious enemies, teach the unlearned, stir up the indolent, and check the argumentative. This still wasn’t everything; he needed to put the proud in their place, set the desperate on their feet and reconcile those engaged in quarrels (cf. Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 29).

The Gospel is challenging and St. Augustine recognized this even to the point of exclaiming:

The Gospel terrifies me (Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 29).

Why was he terrified of the Gospel? He knew that it had a lot of control over his life. Sometimes, we are too simple when speaking about the Gospel. The word of Jesus challenges us to deep moral conversion and dramatic changes in our lives. Augustine recognized this and knew that he could no longer live purely for himself, as he had done for much of his life. We too are called to experience a healthy fear that:

prevents us from living for ourselves alone and compels us to pass on the hope we hold in common (Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 29).

We grasp after so many things, when what we really need to do is to hold onto Jesus. We rely not on our strength, but on the Holy Spirit. This is a concrete way of living out hope. This deep, theological hope is described in an interesting way in Hebrews 11.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Heb. 11:1).

Hope is described indirectly, in how it relates to faith. Hope is a strong virtue, not a whimsical characteristic. Hope lays the foundation for a strong faith and bridges to love. Living hope in this way is a form of relying on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Our hope is like the piece of metal in us that is attracted to the great magnet of God’s love. The things we hope for are often not so easy to grasp or perceive. This does not make them less real. Rather, we need to hold on to them with all our might. When we learn to see things through God’s eyes, we begin to grow in hope and can face even difficult situations with a courageous heart. Hope makes us free in Christ when we stop grasping and start trusting.

So many people lack conviction. And if you live with passion and conviction, other people will be jealous of you. You can see it in any room. There are some people who are constantly taking their cue from others. They are followers and insecure. Then, there are some who have deep conviction and passion. Others look to them naturally. Perhaps they exercise a quiet leadership. It is no less real for that.

Practical Steps to Cultivate Hope

We have already mentioned some greater and lesser hopes in our lives. There are little things that motivate us and big things that are the major drivers of our actions. Sometimes, we can get caught up in these hopes. There is a risk in these little causes for hope if they distract us from the Kingdom of God.

Sometimes one of these hopes may appear to be totally satisfying without any need for other hopes (Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 30).

We can put all of our efforts into buying a Lamborghini and when we acquire it, we feel like we are fully accomplished and desire nothing else. It ends up closing our hearts and minds to what is more deeply necessary for our happiness. When we are too comfortable, we lose our motivation for hope.

There is a risk that Biblical hope for the Kingdom of God could be displaced by hope for the kingdom of man. Materialism overwhelms our hearts and we forget that we are made for so much more than what this world has to offer. In Proverbs, we read that our minds have many plans, while it is the purpose of the Lord that will be established (cf. Prov. 19:21).

We often get caught up in our own hopes and dreams. In doing so, we forget what God has prepared for us – a reality far better than we can imagine.

We cannot hope for the world if we do not first trust that hope is available to us. When we think of a part of the world overcome by famine, violence, or war, we can see how desperation wipes out hope and leads people to drastic choices that end up continuing the cycle of pain and suffering.

We need the greater and lesser hopes that keep us going day by day. But these are not enough without the great hope, which must surpass everything else. This great hope can only be God, who encompasses the whole of reality and who can bestow upon us what we, by ourselves, cannot attain (Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 31).

God is the only one who can truly satisfy our greatest desires and so we naturally desire him. The problem is that too often we trust in ourselves instead of in God. The Psalmist invites us to do it differently.

Commit your way to the Lord, trust in him, and he will act (Ps. 37:5).

Here, we have an entire plan of spiritual life. If we learn to commit ourselves to the Lord, we will naturally grow in trust of him. He will act, even though we don’t know exactly how and when.

God is the foundation of hope: not any god, but the God who has a human face and who has loved us to the end, each one of us and humanity in its entirety (Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 31).

If we find in God the foundation of our hope, we will continue working, even when things seem bleak. It will help us re-discover the freedom that we lose when we get sucked into our own selfishness. Discovering hope is discovering freedom to do what is good and just in the eyes of the Lord.

Hope makes us free in Christ; despair drags us down.

How can you build up your hope? Identify one attachment you can let go of so that you can hold on to Christ more firmly.

Desire the Kingdom of Heaven. Trust Christ more than yourself. Rely on the grace of the Holy Spirit, rather than your own strength. When we hope in God, we throw our anchor into Heaven. No storm can drag us away.

Even if we live in a world that sometimes seems unreal or chaotic, hope in God anchors us in true freedom and purpose. When we learn to focus on the things that build us up, we learn to give the proper shape to hope and to live in the freedom that only Christ can give us. Learn to hope in God. Freedom begins when you learn to hope in God – and hope begins when you trust His love more than your own strength.

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From Freedom to Hope