Avoiding the Memory Trap: Weekly Message for 06-30-2020

Dear Fellow Digital Pilgrim, Pax Christi:

Now that life amidst the pandemic seems like it’s slowly getting back to normal, we face a new danger for our spiritual lives.  I am calling it the memory trap.

That’s a little misleading, to be honest.  The trap doesn’t have to do with remembering, per se.  Rather, it has to do with forgetting.  

I am absolutely certain that at the height of our uncertainty in the midst of the pandemic, each one of us found that God was teaching us something, giving us something.  God’s grace was at work in our hearts and minds even in the midst of all the suffering and anxiety.  But now that the suffering and anxiety may be waning (or at least changing their tune), we could easily find ourselves forgetting those lessons and ignoring those graces.

Will You Decide?

Let’s decide, right now, that we won’t let that happen.  

Our Christian lives are a journey of faith.  We are meant to keep moving forward, through good spiritual weather and bad, until we reach the Father’s House.  Let’s not fall back into our old ways.  Let’s take the time we need to stay united to the Vine, to keep reflecting on God’s love for us, to keep envisioning how our lives would look if we continue following the lights He has been giving us.  In a word, let’s keep being contemplative even if the world around us may be going back to being frenetic and distracted.

To that end, I want to remind you that we have another meditation novena coming up in preparation for the feast day of St. Mary Magdalen. It is called The Living Heart of an Apostle: A Meditation Novena to Walk, Pray, and Reflect with Mary Magdalene. We also have a beautiful Retreat Guide on St. Mary Magdalene, called The Apostle of the Apostles.  

July also includes the feast day of one of my favorite saints, St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the first North American Native American to be canonized.  Our Retreat Guide on St Kateri, A Virgin’s Courage, is one of my favorites.

Here at RCSpirituality.org, we want to help you keep moving forward on your journey toward the “more abundant life” that Jesus yearns for each of us to continue experiencing (cf. John 10:10).  We want to help you avoid falling into the memory trap.  And we are grateful for the support you give us to help make that happen.

God bless you! 

In Him,

Fr John Bartunek, LC