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Life Ways Drawn by the Spirit Contemplation—a space and place where we learn to await the initiative of God—overflows into our lives with a sense of response-ability. Through contemplation we become more and more sensitive to these inner movements. We begin to recognize more clearly where the Spirit of God is present and where the Spirit is absent. Contemplation fine-tunes our awareness so that the Spirit’s presence becomes more and more radiant—we can’t miss him. The choice to respond to the Spirit is always in our hands. We are sometimes strongly drawn by the Spirit’s lead, but we are never coerced to choose the Spirit’s direction. We can refuse. We can feign ignorance. We can choose to be deaf. This deliberate choice to be non-responsive to the Spirit is the clearest way to grasp the nature of sin in our daily life. These refusals of the Spirit often flow into actions that violate the law of God and communion with his people, as well as our vocation to love and service. These negative choices also penetrate the marrow of our day more completely than a vague list of sins, which we may look over before confession. Perhaps we have seen such a drop in the sacrament of Penance precisely because our sense of the Spirit’s direction in our life has weakened. If we can freely choose to refuse the Spirit, we can also freely choose to respond to the Spirit’s gentle voice. Contemplation—where we practice listening to the voice of the Spirit of God—reveals to us our total dependence on God. The source of all our goodness is not ourselves, our willpower to do good, or our strength based on our health. We wait upon the Spirit. The ultimate fulcrum shifts from us to God. Try this exercise in listening to the Spirit: Make a list of your daily general activities. Choose a day and, as you go through each activity on your life, observe whether or not you are aware of being led by the Spirit. Do you start the day with even a short time of silent meditation? Do you stop to offer a short prayer before a decision? Is driving time simply a mindless exercise or are you aware of soaking in the Spirit’s peace while you move from one location to another? Do you feel God with you as you begin an activity? Are there some activities in which you feel this, and certain other types of activities in which you don’t? Try to notice as much as you can about your awareness of the Spirit’s presence and activity. If necessary, try this for a few days. Then, for a week, try starting each day with a five-minute period of contemplation. Even if you are very busy, do it while you’re drinking coffee, or get up five minutes earlier. Open yourself to the Spirit and ask for guidance during the day. In your mind’s eye, choose two activities during a typical day in which you especially wish to follow the Spirit’s lead. Picture the activity, what usually happens in the course of it, what you would like to change, how you would like to approach it differently, what you need. Ask the Spirit to come into that activity with you, in you, and through you. At the end of each day review those two activities and see if you were aware of the Spirit’s presence and where the Spirit was leading. It might be easier to look at the decisions you made in those activities and see the results of those decisions. Were the results good or bad? By these results you will know if the decision was made according to the Spirit or some other drive, compulsion or temptation. You might keep track of the decisions and their results on one side of a piece of paper, and on the other side take note of what you realize you did prompted by something other than the Spirit of God. The goal of this prayer exercise is to become more aware.
Copyright © 1999-2003, Daughters of St. Paul. All Rights Reserved.
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