Spiritual Batteries: Recent Episodes
Spiritual Batteries
These recordings of guided prayer are efforts to grow in faith, hope, and love while personally contemplating Jesus in the Gospels. Following the example of St. Josemaría Escrivá, I hope to provide considerations that might help as a person tries to pray on their own. For more see www.spiritualbatteries.com
Today we try to pray our way into the apostle Thomas' shoes as he experiences the dismay and the pain of coming back to faith after Jesus' death. How he loves deeply and passionately, but needs to reconcile that love with a deeper trust and faith in the person of Jesus.
Today we consider in our prayer how we Jesus' life and passion is present to us and how we can better open ourselves to this presence during Holy Week.
As we approach Holy Week, we turn to Jesus' encounter with a desperate father in order to understand the apparent frustration that Jesus expresses. In prayer we try to discover how, while we might be disappointed and frustrated with ourselves, Jesus only reacts to his desire for union with each one of us being impeded. This is what he wants, and in the depths of our hearts, we do as well.
Praying on the Solemnity of the Annunciation, we try to allow the Holy Spirit to guide us in a re-discovery of how Jesus' physical presence is God's presence. We want our prayer to become contact with that presence, and following two scenes from the Gospel of Mark, we seek it out.
Joseph had the courage to accept that in spite of his inadequacy, God wanted to live with him, to be that close to him. Under St. Joseph's protection, we too pray for the ability to be that close, that at ease with Jesus and with Mary.
At the beginning of Lent, we take up once again Pope Francis' exhortation to let God gaze upon us, and try to pray and explore how this can open us to the real graces that God wants to give us in these days.
As perfect God and perfect man, Jesus relates to us empathetically. In other words, he responds to and feels our interior world. Apart from helping us understand just how true and real our friendship with him can be, we can also understand our relationship to him on the Cross. In short, we want to better understand what we mean when we say that he "sees us".
For more fascinating ideas on this topic, they can be found in this recent book: https://www.amazon.com/Atonement-Oxford-Studies-Analytic-Theology/dp/0198813864/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?crid=37V9W9WKODA84&keywords=stump+atonement&qid=1550588791&s=gateway&sprefix=stump+at%2Caps%2C207&sr=8-1-fkmrnull
When Jesus invites us to take up our cross each day and follow him, he is inviting us to live, not to annihilate ourselves. This is the central paradox of our faith, and we need to pray and allow ourselves to be guided by the Holy Spirit so that we might understand it well. For it is in the joy of Cross that we can experience and radiate the attractiveness of Jesus to others. www.spiritualbatteries.com
Contemplating the woman who washed Jesus' feet with her tears and dried them with her hair, we try to open ourselves in prayer so as to experience the singular love that she did and to try and be just as grateful. The considerations in this meditation are inspired in large part by Eleonore Stump and her recent book, "Wandering in Darkness".
Coming to believe in God's existence and in his power, while challenging, does not ultimately require faith. Knowing that Jesus is God and that He desires union with me - this does require faith. Today we contemplate Jesus' encounter with a leper in St Mark's Gospel in order to pray for an increase in this faith, faith in His attitude towards each one of us.
The Psalmist tells us to "delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart". With these words as our guide, we try and contemplate the mystery of and infant-God so as to overcome the shame and inadequacy that we feel before such a mighty love. www.spiritualbatteries.com
In Advent, the Church invites us to rejoice as the coming of Christ approaches. In our prayer today we try to contemplate what it means that Jesus comes close to us, how he rejoices over us, and how in him we can experience God's own peace. www.spiritualbatteries.com
This is a meditation given on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Guided by the example of simple people who have marvelled at Mary’s beauty, we too try to join them in our prayer and make that same discovery for ourselves.
We all have the experience of wanting different things, of having all sorts of desires. But God wants to integrate us, to fill us with a unifying desire to be united with Him, and therefore to experience in an authentic way all of the other joys of life. Today we pray about our need to desire more, not less, and for that desire to be something that unifies us and liberates us. www.spiritualbatteries.com
Jesus encourages us to be grateful because he wants us to discover the joy and the communion that he himself has with the Father. Today we contemplate how one leper learned to be grateful, and pray that we might receive a similar grace in our own lives. www.spiritualbatteries.com
In his first letter, St. John meditates upon his experience that God has loved us first and that, as a result, we are able to love him. In today's prayer we try to follow his words so that the Holy Spirit can help us grow in the love that casts out fear and makes our souls beautiful in their pursuit of Him. www.spiritualbatteries.com
In order to believe in God's love for us, we need "proof" of a sort. What can I look to in order to know that He loves me? Many saints have found that answer looking at the Cross. This is where Jesus shows me not only that he loves me, but what that love means. However, in order for that not to remain a dry consideration, we need the fire of the Holy Spirit to ignite us with the faith that Jesus' action on the Cross was actually about me. This is what we pray about today. www.spiritualbatteries.com
Today we contemplate not only the reality of our own death, but the hope that awaits us: Jesus' return to renew the world and resurrect us into his own Life. Christian faith is a faith of hope precisely because it looks to the Resurrection. We do well to pray about these events that await us so that we can live filled with a certain hope in this present time - a hope that enables us to passionately love this world of ours.
St. John Paul II famously challenged us to, "Be not afraid". Today we remember how we have been given the "authority" to become children of God and that this is why we should not be afraid of responding generously to the mission that was entrusted to us in our baptism. www.spiritualbatteries.com
In order to become secure and free persons who are able to face the challenges and possibilities of life, as infants and throughout our life we need other people who see our needs, make us safe, and can soothe us in distress. All of this contributes to makes us secure in ourselves and therefore able to launch out into the world. Here we pray about how Jesus wants us to have this same security and how we can see him seeing us, protecting us, and soothing us in Scripture. And all of this so that, through prayer, we can have the secure confidence of Christian witnesses and transmit this to others as well. www.spiritualbatteries.com
Following the advice of St. Josemaria, we should seek the gift of a "prayer of quiet" - a prayer where it is God who speaks. In this meditation we turn to the prologue of the Gospel of John to practice preparing for such a prayer. Also, we consider how our contact with Jesus should lead us, as it did for Andrew and Philip, to bring others to "come and see" Jesus. www.spiritualbatteries.com
Jesus does not openly declare himself to be God, so much as show it through his actions. What he does reveals God, and his words shine light on those actions. Here we contemplate his encounter with a woman caught in adultery, and pray that we might have more confidence in coming towards Jesus ourselves. www.spiritualbatteries.com
Instead of relying on the podcast, many young adults came together in Dublin for the second edition of "Spiritual Batteries Live", held in Our Lady Queen of Peace parish in Dublin. This is a recording of the guided prayer portion, which was followed by musical adoration and personal prayer. Afterwards, we enjoyed a discussion on the science of human attention and focus, and it's relation to the Christian life. For more information: https://www.spiritualbatteries.com/live
After the Resurrection, Thomas saw his friend Jesus and declared, "my Lord and my God". Who was the God he saw in Jesus' face? Who do we understand God to be, actually? Here we try to prayerfully consider what the entire Bible tells us about the God Thomas saw in Jesus' face, the God we call, Abba, Father. www.spiritualbatteries.com
Every time we participate in the Mass, right before receiving the Eucharist, we say: "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed". As we know, these are the words that a Roman centurion spoke to Jesus, filled we faith. In order to more easily make them our own during the Mass, let's pray about that exchange between Jesus and the centurion. Our goal will be to live that moment in the Mass with greater faith and love. www.spiritualbatteries.com
Jesus is a master teacher and just as he did with Peter, he wants us to see for ourselves what it means to live as children of the Father in the world. Here we contemplate Peter's struggle with whether or not the Temple tax should be paid and, through Jesus' reply, how Peter was taught to be a son. www.spiritualbatteries.com
When circumstances around us - or within us - make it very hard to be award of God's presence, we have a chance to grow in faith. Like the Apostles, we can discover that even though it seems that Jesus is asleep, that he is not concerned, all the world is in his control. He is committed to us and seeks us out. Believing this, more than an emotional state in the moment, is the kind of spiritual maturity that we seek through prayer. www.spiritualbatteries.com
In our Christian life, we are perhaps most aware of our own efforts. It's what we immediately perceive. Contemplating the story of Zaccheus, we might also notice most of all his efforts to, "see who Jesus was": avoiding the crowds by shamelessly climbing a tree. But the real story is that Jesus was the one seeking out Zaccheus. It is a very important discovery to find out how this is also true for each one of us. For more, www.spiritualbatteries.com
We can benefit greatly from contemplating a man who was freed from demonic possession by Jesus. His desire to look at Jesus, to listen to Jesus, and to let others know about him all result from his experience of "salvation". When we see evil in the world - and evil done by members of the Church - we need to respond with an even greater faith in Jesus' salvific love. He deals with evil and conquers it, and that victory is made available to each one of us through the Sacraments within the Church. We want to experience Jesus' love to the full, therefore we want to experience it as Salvation.
www.spiritualbatteries.com Peter sees Jesus walking on the water, and guided by desire more than what he feels possible, asks Jesus to do something he's never done before. If we want to receive the gift of the Eucharist, we do well to foster that same faith, that same courage.
Jesus has made it very clear to us that following him is not an easy path. We must take up our cross each day and follow him. We need to re-discover, though, that paradoxically our joy resides precisely in the daily struggle, rather than in avoiding it. Here we try to pray with Jesus' parable of the talents to see more clearly how we might live this way. For more see www.spiritualbatteries.com
Contemporary psychology - and many other observant people - have noted how vulnerable we are to "confirmation bias": the tendency to notice what we already expected more than what is actually before us. Pope Francis has often reminded us that God is a "God of surprises". To actually be surprised, then, and to received what he wants to give us, we do well to be aware of and struggle against this confirmation bias in our relationship with God.
Great saints like Augustine understood that the human soul is insatiable, that it hungers for the infinite. Desire, then, is not primarily a problem to be side-stepped, but a reality that must be answered. This answer is Jesus, who calls for our deepest desires so that he might answer them.
When we contemplate the life of Jesus, we are doing much more than considering a possible way of acting. We are peering into the inner life of God, his Mystery. What we want to glimpse in this time of prayer is how his essence is self-giving and how that floods with light our own lives and the choices we face.
Pillars of the Church, the feast of Sts Peter and Paul gives us the occasion to consider our own Christian vocation.
True friendship is a rare and precious gift. While it is a gift, it is also something that we need. Jesus provides it, and by praying about what true friendship is, we try to rediscover how vital friendship with Jesus is.
Love has always driven people to great things. It can draw us to holiness, to receive and respond to God's own life. Contemplating Mary Magdalene is a powerful help for us in renewing our faith in God's love AND in our ability - through his grace - to love as well.
Contemplating Jesus' love during Holy Week is perhaps made easier by seeing its impact upon other people in the Gospels. Today we consider Peter's denial of Jesus as a way of seeing Jesus' love reflected, as it were, in the mirror of Peter's sin and repentance.
Following the Gospel of Matthew, we consider James and John's petition to sit on either side of Jesus in his kingdom. Even though they did not understand what they were asking for, they had eagerness and desire. Such desire will help us to understand, even if we don't understand in the moment.
Following Pope Francis' message for lent this year, we consider the essential elements of Lent so that we might react to any coldness in our love, perhaps brought on by discouragement.
At times, difficulties rage around us like a storm. In the midst of it, it seems as if Jesus were asleep: we no longer feel him or see him present. The apostles - just you like all of us - had to learn that even in those moments of "sleep", everything is in his hands. Today we pray about this mystery, asking for a renewed faith in Jesus' commitment to us and that this faith overflow in confidence - even in the midst of the storms of this world.
Jesus' personality is rich. In our prayerful consideration of the Gospels, we always want to rediscover facets of it so as to love him more and to trust him more. Today we consider how determined he was to love and to save. His unshakeable determination should be for us a source of confidence as well as a way for us to understand what it means for us to be children of the Father.
We know that God, as God, is invisible. At first, this might seem something that separates us from him. However, if we go deeper in our faith we can discover the reasons for our not experiencing him directly and, surprisingly, how this actually makes God our Father so much closer than we will ever realise in this life. Guided by St. Josemaria, we try to contemplate how this loving and invisible God can be found and loved in what is most visible and material.
We follow Jesus not only to heaven but also to our proper life on earth. He gives us the light we need to fully appreciate the gift of our life, and his redeeming love frees us to develop that gift as much as we can. As St. Josemaria would so often say, in order to be divine, we have to be very human. In this meditation, we contemplate this reality.
Today we contemplate the baptism of Jesus and the Father's words, "you are my Son; in you I am well pleased". Our own Baptism introduced us into Jesus' death and resurrection, making us children of the Father. We know this, but we need to pray about it so that it might determine the way we live in the world.
The mystery of Christmas is a chance to put aside words, and to simply see. In this meditation, we try to "get out of the way" so that our faith might grow in the riches of God's love, a love revealed in this Infant.
Right before Christmas, we try and contemplate the experience of being with Jesus that Joseph and Mary present us as they journey towards Bethlehem. We too want to repeat that experience in our lives during these upcoming days of Christmas.
Taking the reading from the day's Gospel, we contemplate the panorama Isaiah discovers to us: the breathtaking reality of our Christian vocation.
We try to contemplate how Mary's being free from sin is precisely what allows her to be so close to us. Her humility and her being for others are what we should strive to consider and be shaped by.
To begin this weekend retreat, we consider various goals, using Jesus' words to the woman at the well as our theme.
In order to believe that someone loves us, we all look for "proof": actions that confirm what they say. After the Resurrection, Jesus wanted to preserve the wounds of his crucifixion. He wanted there to be visible, physical proof of his love without limits. To renew our belief in that love, we do well to join Thomas in contemplating them and in touching them.
Today we pray about an aspect of Jesus' personality that we might often avoid, perhaps out of fear: his reactions of anger. However, we must take the entire portrait of Jesus that we find in the Gospels. If we do, we will find that his anger is unique. In fact, it is another expression of his love.
Considering Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, we try to discover specific ways in which our friendship with Jesus can become more sincere and personal.
Our prayer today centres on the parable of the talents. We try to contemplate the great confidence that God has in us, and how this is expressed in the baptismal vocation that he entrusts us with, encouraging us to make it grow and multiply.
We pray with some words of St. John, where he gives us a solid foundation for hope: hope in the unique dignity that God has given to us by creating us male and female. This hope, he says, purifies us. So we try to pray about how holy purity is nurtured by hope, whereas lust is a kind of despair.
In this meditation, we contemplate Jesus' own interior freedom and how, through grace and baptism, he wants us to work with that same freedom. In other words, to work with the freedom of people who love Jesus and are therefore free, no matter the circumstances.
We consider the rich young man's dissatisfaction with doing good deeds so as to pray about how God wants us to "enjoy" the Christian life he calls us to. Also, the example of the Prodigal Son's older brother shows how an inability to enjoy God's mercy separates us from him, and from the true Christian life that we are called to live.
Contemplating a woman's breaking of an alabaster jar of rich perfume, we try to see and to accept the vastness of Jesus' love. Once again, we try to pray about how this love needs to become more and more the reason for what we do and for what we avoid.
Jesus' encounter with Bartimaeus reveals to us many things about God and ourselves. In particular, we try now to contemplate how prayer helps us see through the fog of generalities and to clearly discern the specific actions that lead us to genuine Christian freedom.
We are very familiar with the story of the rich young man. Of the many things that God can say to us through it, today we want to try and pray about our own vocation and how commitment liberates us for the life that God lovingly invites us to live.
Today we contemplate the arc of Nicodemus appearance in St. John's Gospel. We try to see how he passes from fear to friendship and that public identification with Jesus is key to this. In doing so, we pray to become free from the pressures of other's opinion and assessment in order to be free to do what we want: become Jesus' friend.
Inspired by a reflection of Pope Francis, we contemplate the many ways in which Jesus takes the first step towards us, so that we might be free to go out of ourselves to others. We don't need to wait in the safe, and perhaps suffocating, spaces that we are already familiar with. Jesus calls us to imitate him in taking the first step.
We try to enter into St. Mark's account of Jesus blessing the children, so as to imitate their desire to have real contact with Jesus. Also, we try to pray about how receiving the Kingdom as a child means striving and struggling to live a Christian life to the full in a joyous and free way.
Continuing with the Gospel of St. Mark, we contemplate how the father of a possessed boy struggles to believe while feeling the weakness of that belief. And we try to make his words our own prayer: "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief".
In this meditation, we want to accompany the apostles in seeing more clearly who Jesus is. This mysterious moment is a revelation of how unique and vital Jesus is in our lives, but we need to come to this through prayer.
We contemplate Jesus' healing of a deaf man with a speech impediment in St. Mark's Gospel. And we pray about how he is crying out in our souls - and in our day-to-day lives - "be opened!"
In this meditation we contemplate St. Mark's presentation of Jesus' multiplication of the loaves and fishes. We want to see how God wants children, not puppets, who serve him by allowing him to multiply the gifts he has given us.
Samaritan woman at the well: The Joy of Reconciling others to God by Fr. Justin Gillespie
We try to follow the beginning of St. John's telling of Last Supper to see with fresh eyes the glory of Jesus' love, so that we might believe in it.
An effort to see the Cross as an expression of Love, by taking Simon of Cyrene's perspective. As always, the hope is that it helps to spark personal prayer and personal decisions.