I talk often here about the importance of knowing yourself.
"Knowing yourself" meaning, listening to your thoughts, recognizing an emotion and connecting it to a feeling in your body, being able to identify your triggers, appreciating and anticipating reactions of your particular temperament, knowing your parts, knowing your story, knowing what makes you tick, what makes you YOU.
It gives an appreciation for the depth, beauty and complexity of who you are as a human person and helps us to step back and sometimes see how true it is that we are
fearfully and wonderfully made.
All of this is important and good, but Fr. Mike sharpens our eyes on the reason for it all. In his homily for the first Sunday of Advent, he reminds us that ultimately the final goal here in the work we do is not to be healed, but as Fr. Mike said,
"To have the strength to stand."
In order to have the strength to stand on our last day I think we need to ask ourselves who we'll be standing before. Who are we standing in front of for which we will need to have the strength to stand.
I think all of us probably have very different ideas and images of the God we stand before at the end of time. And I think it's a very important element of the work we do here and now on earth in the advent of our lives before the end of time that we start to work through the misunderstandings we have about God and start to help the different parts of ourselves come into alignment with who we feel God to be in our bones and who we know God to be according to truth and divine revelation.
This too is the work of the interior life. This is the deeper work of getting to know ourselves truly and coming to understand where the small and wounded parts of ourselves are, how they see God, why they see God that way, how they came to have the misunderstanding and then to look to our adult selves and the Lord to help these younger parts of ourselves work through these misunderstandings.
It's these distorted "God images" these very young but deeply ingrained (not even chosen but impressed upon us through lived experience), ideas that we have about who God is that colors the way we see the world and ourselves. It is vital that we begin to uncover and work through these deep beliefs because whether we know it or not we act in a way that is consistent with who we feel God to be rather than who we know God to be, and often that lands us in a whole lot of trouble.
Lots of us are baffled sometimes by our actions this is a perfect example of how we act from implicit understandings of who God is rather than a conscious creed. It is the work of ourselves as Christian adults to make the implicit, licit. To unearth these ideas of who God is and what he's about and bring it to the light, bring it to Him, bring it to our conscious awareness and ask for the help and the grace to heal these misunderstandings in order to reshape the face of God in our minds so that our actions follow who we know God to be.
I believe that in doing this work, that at the end of the time of time, not only might we have the strength to stand, but we will be standing before someone we know, someone we trust, someone we love and who we know loves us, not someone we fear.
In doing this kind of work here and now, we work hard toward becoming, toward growing, toward reaching for and developing a relationship with this person who will have the final say. In our will we will want to stand before him, and I think to him the desires of our hearts matter more even than what we are physically capable of doing.
I don't know if we will have the physical strength to stand when the time comes but I think in our wills we will want to stand before God because we have been moving toward him this whole time and in our hearts we will know that he is good. The final judgment could be that "cry of recognition" St. Therese describes, a moment of finally coming home, and instead of fear and trembling, perhaps it could become a tender moment of wonder and awe as the one whom my soul loves and I come finally face to face.
Fr. Mike reminds us this Advent that if the goal of the Christian life is to see the Lord face to face, then I invite you to do this work of the interior life, the weeding through of our thoughts, emotions, intentions, impulses, desires, dreams, upsets and struggles with the Lord, and allow St. Catherine of Siena's timeless wisdom ring true in your life, that
"Every step of the way to heaven, is heaven."
So join me in this work. Allow your journey toward heaven to start now, allow me to walk with you as you journey into your own heart, as you learn to know yourself so that on the final day, you may have the strength to stand.
God love you,
Nora
Catholic Mindset and Interior Life Coach
Join us inside the Grateful Blessed Mess Community for monthly lessons and group coaching or reach out directly for 1:1 coaching and/or accompaniment so together we can do the work to unearth these misunderstandings we have of a good God and can live more in alignment with who we are and who we want to become so that we may look forward to the time we get to see the Lord face to face!
God Bless and Happy Advent!
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