Where You Lead, I Will Follow

Hey Zeteo Community!

I was not at the last Zeteo event, and so, I have asked a few other people to fill in for me with the blog this month. I was very sad to miss it but am excited to hear what others have to say about what they took home from Father Roger's talk on every day discernment. 

This week is written by Brielle Waldner, and I hope you all enjoy it. Kudos to anyone who caught the Gilmore Girls reference in the title.

God bless,
Olivia

Week 1: Where You Lead, I Will Follow

When I was a little girl we went to the Canadian Finals Rodeo every November. It was a big event - we would go to the trade fair, wander around the farm fair, and end the day watching the rodeo in Rexall Place. It was a long day and leaving the stadium way past my bedtime I was always exhausted. I'm sure at times my dad would pick me up and carry me out, but mostly I remember walking behind him through a sea of people, holding his hand, or the back of his shirt. There were people pushing past from all sides, in all directions. We would pass countless doors and tuck into stairwells, the numbers on the wall meaning nothing to me and the street names above the doors of no help, as I never knew where the car was parked. I was little, and all I could really see was a mess of jeans, and cowboy hats, and tired people trying to get home. I could not fathom how my dad could find the way out of that place. Yet I never worried about it, because I trusted him. I knew I would get where I needed to go by holding tightly to his hand and following, one step behind. I never questioned him when he stopped walking because I knew he was waiting for the path to clear. I remember pointing out a door once, pulling him that way, but it was not the door we needed, so I fell back into step behind him. I settled in to keep my gaze fixed on his back, and walk in the path he was clearing for us. I was tired, it was easier to just follow, knowing we'd make it out. Last week I was feeling lost in discernment, I was getting anxious looking for answers of what to do and when. While I was complaining to God about being exhausted and not knowing which door to take, He reminded me that all I have to do is be a little girl again. I just have to cling to Him, keep my gaze fixed on Him, and walk one step behind my heavenly Father. We'll meet each step as we take it, walk through the right doors together, breeze past the wrong ones. Occasionally, we'll have to stop for a minute and wait for the path to clear. I'm not a little girl anymore, I have found my way out of Rexall Place all by myself plenty of times. At work, I walk the fifteen blocks to the swimming pool with a long line of kindergarteners trailing behind me. In the summer, we take the city bus for our field trips and I have to know which bus to get on, and which stop to get off at. It's exhausting sometimes. Always being the one who needs to figure out where to go. I realized I was trying to be the one who knew where to go in my discernment, too. I felt like I needed to find the right doors all the time, and was trying to find the step to take before I was there. It was exhausting. How much easier to fix my gaze on Jesus and walk one step behind Him, trusting that when I do need to stop, or change directions, or go through a door, He will show me. At Zeteo on Friday, Fr. Roger talked about the steps we can take to better hear God's voice. The first one will not surprise you. . . it is that we need to pray. How can I know the voice of God above the noise of the crowd if I do not get to know His voice in the quiet? How will I know His desires for me if I don't spend time getting to know Him? In the same way, that we get to know our friends, our family, our spouses, we need to get to know our Father. We need to cling to Him, draw ourselves as close to Him as we can so that He is walking with us, leading the way. We can point to doors we see, ask if that is the one we are supposed to go through, but we need to trust that if it is the wrong one He will guide us back in line behind Him. It is something I have heard so often that it almost goes in one ear and out the other: if you want to hear the voice of God then talk to Him. Pray. Listen. On that note, Happy Father's Day. To all the dad's, all the priests who lead us in the image of the Father, and to all those who are preparing their hearts for whichever vocation the Father will lead you to. Thank you to all of you, especially my own dad, for being images of our Father's love for us.

1John 4:17

Hey Zeteo Community!

After a little (okay long) break from the blog, I am back! Benedict is already two months old, and has been to two Zeteos already. Where does the time go?

Hope to see many of you at the Zeteo tonight, which will be the last one of the summer. Finishing off with a bang for the year with Father Roger Rouleau speaking on Everyday Discernment - a topic I am personally very excited for.

Week 1: 1 John 4:17

I started praying this morning, and then Jerome came into our room with no diaper on and pooped on the floor right by the bed. (Yep, the glamorous life of a mother.) Needless to say, I dealt with that first and did not end up finishing my prayer until twelve hours later.

At the last Zeteo event, Deacon Ken and Marlane spoke about how we need to embrace our circumstances, which can sometimes be compared to hugging a cactus. This morning, my cactus to hug was a floor-poop instead of starting the day with prayer like I had planned. In that moment, I had to admit to God that I would not be able to finish praying, but if He gave me grace in dealing with an un-graceful situation I could come to Him in a different way. If we are able to own up to the truth of who we are and what we have to contend with, we can experience so much growth in our relationship with Christ.

The topic of the last event was the Real Person of Jesus. Deacon Ken and Marlane Noster spoke about how we can come to know Jesus personally, the beginning of this journey being that we come to accept who we truly are. It is only then we can come to our relationship with Christ in openness and honesty.

Jesus chooses to present Himself to us in different ways, and we need to learn how to accept Him for who He truly is - just as He accepts us for who we truly are. As the Nosters said, Jesus is always both justice and mercy, though we tend to focus more on justice as it puts emphasis on our merit, or what we feel we deserve.

However, we need to reverse this idea that we can earn anything, for of that we're the case, we would be out of luck entirely. The truth is, we cannot and we do not need to earn goodness in our lives. Jesus does not love us because of anything we do, His love is not conditional as human love tends to be. He is the Father of Mercy, and we are far more valuable to Him than anything we could ever do to deserve this value. It is through His mercy alone that we receive and experience goodness, for we are already good enough for everything He wants to give us.

A question that came to my mind, and I'm sure it was there for many of you as well, is that, if we can do nothing to earn mercy, why do we bother to pray, or do good in our lives? If we are not trying to earn anything, what is the point? It seemed to me as if we were still going about it all wrong.

The answer came to me in a rather roundabout way. Tharin and I are in the midst of moving and selling our house. It is stressful because we really need to sell, and as a result, I was grappling with all kinds of fears. Will we sell in time? Will we lose the chance to buy the house I love because it is taking too long to sell this house? And on and on.

Then out of nowhere came the Bible verse, "there is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out all fear." 1 John 4:17. Since that day, I have been pondering those words, what it means to have perfect love, in my heart. Perfect love of Christ drives out all fear because if we have perfect love of Christ we are in unity with Him and with His will - therefore having no fear of anything the world, or sin, can try to throw at us. If we have perfect love of Christ we do not fear punishment, and so we can boldly hope for heaven.

Now, perfect love of Christ is not something we can attain on our own. No, like any true courtship, it takes spending time in communication with the other person, listening to and getting to know them, spending time together, and doing things that make them happy.

And so we must pray, fast, take part in the Sacraments, and lead moral lives in all aspects, for it is only then that we can learn to truly love Christ. When we love Christ and enter into unity with Him, we are so much more capable of receiving the goodness and blessings He had reserved for us. We do not earn His love, but we can learn to be more receptive to it. 

Yellow Slide

Hello Zeteo community!

I have a bit of a busy week ahead of me, but I saved the best part of Father Michael's talk for last, so I knew I needed to write a post today. I hope you enjoy his insights on discernment as much as I have - it has definitely been food for thought for me.

God bless,

Olivia

Week Three: Yellow Slide

Last week, Tharin and I brought Jerome to the swimming pool. When he was a tiny baby, he loved to be held in the hot tub, and would turn into a content ball of mush in our arms. Lately, he has been discovering his independence and spends most of the time we are in the hot tub trying to clamber out and back to the yellow slide.

At the pool, Jerome is fearless. He just mastered the art of climbing the four steps to the kid slide, and would most definitely plummet down it himself if we were not there to guide him. He does not yet have a concept of how he would sink to the bottom without daddy on the other end of the slide to catch him. He has no concept of the danger, but because we as his parents know his limitations, we are able to protect him from this unawareness.

We give him the independence we can, allowing him to waddle on his own in the shallow part and to climb those four steps - but we know there are simply things he is not capable of doing on his own, not yet, even if he does not yet understand his own smallness. So we catch him when he tries to go too deep, and we hold our arms ready when he gets to the top of the slide.

This is good analogy for my relationship with Christ. An important part of growing in Christian maturity is growing in our understanding of our human weakness, of our smallness, of our humbleness. Like Jerome at the swimming pool, God is holding us afloat whether we realize we need Him to or not and just as Jerome will eventually come to understand that he is too little for the deep end just yet, so must we develop a realistic view of our human shortcomings.

We all have yellow slides in our lives - things we are enticed by, that we think we should be able to do on our own. An important thing to realize about God is that He is deeply respectful of our free will, as Father Michael mentioned. God will respectfully and gently tell us if we are not ready for something, but ultimately leaves the choice up to us.

In Christian maturity, we must come to an understanding of our limitations, and learn to listen for the promptings of God and certainly the promptings of the deceiver. Satan, the father of lies, is intent on leading us into pride, away from the truth of our humanity and into a false belief that we do not need God. He is intent on convincing us we can take the yellow slide on our own, that we do not need God to catch us at the bottom.

Unlike God, the deceiver takes advantage of our freewill. If we interpret the promptings in our lives we are able to discern where the influence is from. Father Michael explained that promptings from the deceiver will contain lies, will feel seductive, accusatory or threatening, whereas God's voice is always respectful, always an invitation. He invites us to chose to love Him and to let Him catch us, and delights in our sincere response to this invitation.

In this swimming pool of life, are we realistic with where we need God to keep us above water? Are we listening to His voice when He is telling us we are not yet ready, to step away from the deep end? Or are we distracted by another voice, a seductive voice, telling us we are capable of doing it on our own, and getting ourselves in over our heads as a result?

I know that if I, in humility, am able to let the Lord lead and propel me, to give me the swimming lessons I so desperately need, I may someday be ready for the yellow slide in my life. Or likely something even greater. For the time being, I have the opportunity to lay back in His strong arms, and to know that I am safe.

Whom Shall I Fear

Hello Zeteo Community!

As per usual, I tried to sneak the Zeteo blog in at the last minute this Thursday. It did not go so well for me this time. The truth is, I have been avoiding writing the blog all day. Mostly because I feel completely uninspired today. But in obedience, here I am.

God bless you all, I hope you are all having terrific weeks as we get ready for spring - already, I know. Is it just me, or does it feel like we have barely had winter yet. Do not get me wrong, I really do not mind.

Olivia Fischer

Week 2: Whom Shall I Fear

Father Michael started his talk on angels and demons with an interesting thought. While most people admit to the reality of the demonic, and have a fear or even fascination with the forces of evil, God is more likely to be pushed aside. As Matthew Kelly says in his book, Rediscover Jesus: "Our culture seems intent on placing Jesus in the same category as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny." (Page 30)

I remember learning about the reality of the demonic world when I was a kid - I think after I watched a Padre Pio movie and Father Pio is physically chased by a demonic dog. I became terrified by this stunning realization that there were such evil forces at work in the world, and would sometimes be almost paralyzed with fear of it.

I was blessed to have a wise mother who taught me something very important, which has stuck with me throughout my life. In those times of fear, she told me to say Jesus, over and over. The name of Jesus literally means, "God saves." Just in saying the name of Jesus, we are professing an integral theology of the Catholic faith: God saves. There is no word more powerful than this, and the evil we can be so terrified of, is terrified by just the mention of it.

As Father Michael explained, the demonic world is actually very weak. Unlike God who has infinite power, satan has only the power which God permits. Just as God created us, God created all spiritual beings, as we pronounce in the Apostles Creed: "I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible."

A huge realization for me came from an answer to a question asked of Father Michael following his talk. It was asked whether the demonic world has a type of hierarchy as the angelic does. Father Michael explained that it does not. The demonic world is much weaker than we give it credit for because of the inherent disunity by which it is run. Where God seeks to unify and to gather, satan attempts to scatter and divide. This results in a structure that is void of rational thought and order, as these things can only be found in God.

It is easy to divide or unbalance something that is not rooted in God. Which is definitely something that rings true for me. Satan wants us to feel unbalanced, disunified, confused, alone - he wants us to feel like this world is hopeless, so that we can accompany him in his misery.

But we as Catholics know the truth, and we can proclaim it every time we say the name of Jesus. God saves, and as Jesus said on the Cross: it, the battle between good and evil, is finished. Evil is overcome, and despite how it may seem to us as humans, it is powerless at just the mention of the name Jesus.

I know I need to remember this as I go about my daily life and am tempted to be overwhelmed by doubts, fears, the feeling that I am trying to sort things out on my own. The answer is so simple, something I seem to have grasped so much more readily as a child: Jesus. And He is not some figment of Christian imagination, as Matthew Kelly puts it. He indisputably walked on the Earth, He indisputably performed miracles then, and continues to work them today.

As the song by Chris Tomlin, Whom Shall I Fear, so beautifully phrases, the God of angel armies is always by my side. To dispel the darkness that we allow to enter into our lives, to perform the miraculous in our every day. I do not know about the rest of you, but it takes an awful lot to get that to sink into my thick, stubborn, materially-distracted head. Good thing He is a lot more patient than I am stubborn, and while He is finished with evil, He is never finished with me.

Commend My Spirit

Happy Friday Zeteo community!

God bless you all in this second week of Lent. It is incredibly hard to wrap my head around how fast time flies by. Feels like we were just in Advent.

It was amazing to see so many people at the last Zeteo event! I hope you all enjoyed Father Michael's talk as much as I did. For those of you who have not seen it yet, I posted an infographic on the Zeteo page with some highlights from his talk.

Thank you for stopping by to read the Zeteo blog today!
Olivia Fischer


Week One: Commend My Spirit

The philosophical definition of time, according to Father Michael at the last Zeteo event, is an idea or concept we use to express the reality of change. Time is just measuring change - small changes, such as seconds or minutes, or monumental changes, such as eras or, for humankind, lifetimes.

One of the biggest differences between spiritual beings and humans, is the fact that we exist in time. We are constantly changing, learning, and growing, unlike spiritual beings who do not exist in time, and therefore cannot change. This is a fundamental reality about our physical bodies and our resulting relationship with God.

It is distinctly human to have the opportunity for repentance, because time and change are so necessary for it. As long as we exist in time, we have the ability to change our orientation from sin to life: this is the very reason we are placed in time.

"Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit." Luke 23:46

We are embodied souls. At the end of our time here on earth, our soul and body are no longer tied, and our ability for repentance is severed. It is imperative we use our time wisely, choosing every day to orient ourselves toward Christ, so that at the end of our days we
may say, as did Jesus in Luke 23:46, "Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit."

Commend has a powerful twofold meaning in this verse. With His final breath, Jesus entrusts His soul to the Father, while also presenting it as an acceptable and pleasing gift of praise to the Father. We have the opportunity, throughout our lives, to make a crucial decision every day - the consequence of this decision becoming eternally fixed when our time on earth comes to an end. To live in a way that will commend our spirits to the Father as acceptable and pleasing gifts, or to squander our time in a way that will separate our spirits from the Father for eternity.

It is important to note our human bodies are beautiful, and deeply respected by Christ; enough so, that He became fully human and existed in time. Our bodies are worthy of this deep level of respect, and should never be thought of as dirty or impossibly sinful. Our souls are not trapped in our bodies, but are beautifully and mysteriously connected. The fact that the desires of the body have become disordered and must consistently be reoriented towards Christ, is a result of original sin.

I am going to end with this quote: "you can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about it's width and depth." We cannot know the length of time God has ordained for us, as it is stressed in Matthew 25:13, "Therefore keep watch, for you do not know the day or the hour." We are called to evaluate the desires of our bodies, and to discipline ourselves, so that we may become aware of the desires of our souls. It is these desires which we must learn to follow, so that we may make the width and the depth of our lives worthwhile.

Drops of Blood

Hello Zeteo community!

Hope this Thursday finds everyone well. It has felt like Spring over here in Drayton Valley, and I am definitely getting excited for the snow to melt - and the new baby to arrive.

God bless you all!
Olivia

Week 2: Drops of Blood

This week, I want to focus on surrender.

Surrender is a heavy topic for Catholics because it is an integral aspect of our journey. We are meant to follow the example of Christ in all things, and when it comes to surrender, we have a pretty astonishing example: Christ was so perfectly capable of surrender that He was willing to sacrifice his life to the will of the Father. 

Though Christ would have fully understood the purpose of His mission on Earth - as fully God, He knew His life would need to be sacrificed in atonement for our sins, He also knew how much we need example. Just as He gave us the example of Baptism, so He gave us the perfect example of surrender - and the difficulty of it, in the agony of the garden.

In the agony of the garden, chronicled in Mark 14:36, Jesus prays: "Abba, Father. All things are possible for you; take this cup from me. Yet not my will, but yours be done."

Not my will, but yours be done.

A perfect surrender of our lives to God's will includes following His lead without knowing where He is taking us, waiting for God's timing without any expectation of when it will be fulfilled, and trusting in His purpose. As this article states, this type of surrender is hard work: "it requires intense warfare against our self-centered natures."

We tend to think, without really meaning to, that God needs our help. An example of this that revolutionized my idea of surrender came from Father Jim at the last Zeteo event. He described his discernment process, how he began by getting on his knees every night and asking that God would tell him what to do so that he could make it happen. He then challenged us to see what was wrong in that prayer.

God does not need us to know what He is doing, a lot of the time He does not need us to do anything. Anything, that is, but trust. Father Jim explained that his prayer changed to being one of surrender - he asked for the trust required to let God take care of everything, that he may simply walk forward with an open heart. This kind of open-hearted prayer assures that if God wants to tell us or show us something, we will be capable of hearing and seeing this guidance; the rest of the time, we are practicing stillness, trust, and patience.

A really good example of this came from my study of Isaiah last night. The Jewish people were being threatened by the Assyrian army, and even though God was telling them, time and time again through Isaiah, to trust He would not ket them be overtaken, they chose to take matters into their own hands. They formed an alliance with Egypt, which in their human understanding should have saved them, but because they had gone against God's ordinance, they were overtaken by the Assyrians and put into slavery. 

In that chapter, Isaiah 30:15, God gives us a beautiful message on surrender. He says: "By waiting and by calm, you shall be saved; in quiet and in trust your strength lies." It was hard for the Jewish people to believe that if they waited on God, if they trusted in His timing without interfering, they would be safe - so they chose to take action that was outside of God's will for them, and they were not blessed in that decision.

Like the Jewish people, how often do we feel God needs our help? How often do we think we are capable of saving ourselves - no matter how many times we have heard that we need to call on God, to trust in Him? How often do we think we can maybe do better than the God who is making us wait, be patient, take the difficult road of stillness?

The truth is, surrender is hard. Jesus gave us the example of how difficult He knew surrender to be in the agony of the garden, when He sweat drops of blood. If you struggle with this as much as I do, let your prayer be like those of Father Jim. A prayer for the trust required to let God take control and for us to simply walk forward with open hearts.

Love Song to a Beloved Friend

Hello Zeteo Community,

Hope all of you are having a fantastic week! I know my week this week is leaps and bounds better than last week. (I have been watching a lot of Downton Abbey lately, and am having a difficult time not talking like they do.)

Thank you so much for coming by to read the blog today. I respond to the prompting of the Holy Spirit in writing it, and I hope He blesses you with your response to His prompting to read it. 

God bless,

Olivia Fischer

Week Two: Love Song to a Beloved Friend

This week, the inspiration for the Zeteo post came from a reading in Isaiah. The parable is an admonition to the faithful, addressed by God to His beloved and often referred to as a love song. Which is a beautiful context for the importance of the message that follows - God stresses the deeply loving relationship He has with us, and why the resulting fruit is so desirable to Him. 

"Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard:My friend had a vineyard on a fertile hillside; He spaded it, cleared it of stones, and planted the choicest vines; Within it he built a watchtower, and hewed out a wine press. Then he looked for the crop of grapes, but what it yielded was wild grapes." Isaiah 5: 1-2

We are all vineyards, carefully planted by the Lord: the clearing of stones and planting of vines denoting the graces God supplies to us, while the watchtower stands for the Church and the tokens of His presence that He has placed in our lives by which we are meant to look to Him. From us, His vineyards, He expects good fruit, though we are often found to produce the opposite. 

I like how this commentary describes good fruits and wild fruits: It is sad with a soul, when, instead of the grapes of humility, meekness, love, patience, and contempt of the world, for which God looks, there are the wild grapes of pride, passion, discontent, malice, and contempt of God; instead of the grapes of praying and praising, the wild grapes of cursing and swearing. Let us bring forth fruit with patience, that in the end we may obtain everlasting life.

Of course, the Bible gives a detailed descriptions of good - the fruits of the Spirit and wild fruits in Ephesians 5: 19-23. "The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control."

Now, because we are human, we are incapable of producing these good fruits by ourselves, which is why God has set up so many means of grace by which we can obtain His help. As Father Jim pointed out, we have two ears and only one mouth, demonstrating the importance of listening, and of receiving guidance from the Lord. I read recently that there is no thorough change, in this instance from a production of wild fruit to the production of good fruit, without the presence of grace, which is the free and unmerited favour of God through salvation and the bestowal of blessings.

God has lavished His care on us, His vineyards, giving us so many opportunities for grace. One of these means of grace is Adoration, which Father Jim spoke on at the last Zeteo event. He began by explaining that we are all spiritual beings, and that we connect to Christ in different ways. For some, this may be through the rosary or the chaplet, to some this may be listening to Christian music, to some this may be Adoration - the importance is that we all discover how we connect with Christ, and we use this means to develop a deep, meaningful, personal relationship.

God desires so much more from us than good intentions and beginnings; He desires to help us cultivate a thriving vineyard, full of good fruits, the wild ones weeded out and corrected through patient prayer and relationship with Him. What are the wild fruits in your life that you need help weeding out to make room for good fruits? The one that stood out most to me was discontent, for it is easy to get caught up in what is not good, seeing an absence of blessing, instead of noticing what is good and blessed in my life.

It is amazing to me the difference that searching for blessing has had in my life, the more I look, the more I see - the beginning of good fruit where there was once bad. I hope to continue pruning, weeding, growing, so that my vineyard may not be found lacking.