Association Of Catholic Bloggers

If we are brutally honest, most Catholics must concede we view the world as if we stood at the centre of the universe with everyone and everything else revolving around us. This egocentric stance affects how we think, feel, act, and pray. Even though many committed disciples have renounced a ruthless pursuit of power and money to serve God and His people, most of us still function more conscious of self than God, living daily life in a state of interior isolation, not in communion with the Holy Spirit. What this self-centered viewpoint meant in my own life was I only appeared saintly on the surface as I mothered nine little people. Despite the fact I honestly longed to live in constant communion with the Holy Spirit, I was focused more on myself than on Christ. continue

When Jesus invites us to die to ourselves, He is not referring to some pious act of self-sacrifice which will make us look or feel holy. No, He has something much more radical in mind. The kind of inner transformation Christ desires will literally rip the rug up from under our feet and shatter our world view. For the very brave, I suggest a quick method to facilitate this sanctifying process. Ask yourself, “Am I really Christ centred or do I live egocentrically, basically functioning psychologically the same as I did as an unbeliever?” Shocked When a spiritual director posed a similar question to me, I was shocked. His query was a verbal slap across my face, snapping me out of a spiritual fog.  continue reading

If we are brutally honest, most Catholics must concede we view the world as if we stood at the centre of the universe with everyone and everything else revolving around us. This egocentric stance affects how we think, feel, act, and pray. Even though many committed disciples have renounced a ruthless pursuit of power and money to serve God and His people, most of us still function more conscious of self than God, living daily life in a state of interior isolation, not in communion with the Holy Spirit. What this self-centered viewpoint meant in my own life was I only appeared saintly on the surface as I mothered nine little people. Despite the fact I honestly longed to live in constant communion with the Holy Spirit, I was focused more on myself than on Christ. read more

Advent is a proverbial time of waiting  and listening in the darkness for the birth of the Christ Child within our own hearts.  However, the biggest stumbling block to truly listening is our self-important business. Henri Nouwen S.J., Jesuit author and university prof,  complained to God about all the students who came to his office, interrupting his writing of an important book. God’s answer? “I just gave you that book to write to keep you busy in between appointments; your real work is all those interruptions.” No matter what our occupation, we tend to think that our work, our agenda is important. It is almost in our nature to let ambition and drive push other people to the fringes of our awareness while we toil in an isolated bubble of self-importance. There are many methods that can shake us out of this selfish obsession but for me as a mother, it was my children.                                 continue reading

I am living in a fantasy when I see myself as the centre of the universe, viewing everything as it circles around me. As believers, we sing and recite prayers that proclaim that God is the centre of all but our psychological make-up screams the exact opposite. I view people, events, history and yes even God through my eyes, judging what is right, trusting my thoughts and my feelings as the final judge of what is real. For example imagine you are sitting on the top of a hill admiring a beautiful sunrise. You think you are glorifying God, however you are very much aware of yourself. There is a world of difference between a man who is aware of himself, sitting on a hill and looking at a beautiful sunrise and a man so enthralled with that very same sunrise that he forgets himself and becomes  absorbed  in  the scene. In the first instance, the man is egocentric; he is at the centre of his world, not God. When I see beauty everywhere, I experience joy and a sense of connection