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Spiritual Friendship How Our Relationships Prepare Us for Intimacy with God

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Growing in intimacy with God

¤  Silence & Solitude §  In silence we come to know God,

to hear his voice, to experience Presence

¤  Pain and Suffering §  I learn to depend on Him at my

weakest, at my most vulnerable

¤  Intimacy with Others §  Those who accompany me §  Those who help me know me §  Those who help me know God §  Those who minister to me, and

whom I have the opportunity to minister to

§  Those who challenge me to be who God created me to be

Parents, friends, spouses, children, spiritual leaders, directors, mentors… the people God’s placed in our lives.

Clip from ExploringGod.com – first 4 minutes of Community and God

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Sacred Companions by David G. Benner

“If you are making significant progress on the transformation journey of Christian spirituality, you have one or more friendships that support the journey.

If you do not, you are not. It is that simple.

Spiritual friends nurture the development of each others souls. Their love for each other translates into a desire that the other settle for nothing less than becoming all that he or she was intended to be.”

We need one another

Today we will:

1.  Identify the barriers that keep us from intimacy

2.  Discuss the nature of our desire for connection

3.  Identify those who accompany us on our own spiritual journeys, how they help us grow, where they challenge us, what we offer them

¤  Family, ¤  friends, ¤  Saints (those who have gone before us)

4.  Discuss strategies to grow communities of faith (how we encourage, empower and equip people in our communities to offer themselves in friendship)

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Barriers: Too distracted to be present?

We check our devices on average - every 6.5 minutes, approximately 150 times per day2

Photographer B. Romero1

We build up walls and live behind screens

Consumer Affairs reports checking our social media – as addictive as sex and nicotine.1

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Barriers to intimacy and vulnerability

¤  We are the most in debt, obese, addicted, and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history. (Brene Brown)

¤  You can’t selectively numb emotions, so when we choose to numb pain, hurt and loneliness, we numb joy, gratitude, and happiness

Soul friends are healers, builders, supporters, encouragers

Barriers to intimacy with God and others

¤ Overscheduled

¤ Overworked

¤ Overmedicated

¤ Stressed Out

¤ Distracted

¤ Hurt/Heartbroken

Most of us don’t need a psychiatric therapist as much as a friend to be silly with. ~ Robert Brault

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In the deepest parts of our being … we long for intimacy

¤ Author David G. Benner says, “Paradoxically…what we most deeply long for we also fear.”

¤ We want companions for the journey, companions with whom we can share our soul and our journey.

¤ Where does this longing come from? And how do we acknowledge and answer it?

Friendship is the nature of God

¤ God, who is Love, lives in community

¤ Made in God’s image - we are wired for relationship

¤ God creates us with a desire for intimacy

¤  It’s meant it bring us back to him, closer to him

¤  The Catechism says this beautifully….

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Video Clip – C4 Ignite Your Faith Archdiocese of Milwaukee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VslNxpsfCik

Rolheiser describes it this way - Lent 2005

¤  Ancient philosophers and mystics used to say that, before being born each soul is kissed by God and goes through life always in some dark way, remembering that kiss and measuring everything in relation to its sweetness.

¤  Inside each of us is a dark memory of having been once touched and caressed by hands far gentler than our own. This caress has left a permanent imprint inside us , one so tender and foo that its memory becomes a prism through which we see everything else.

¤  Thus we recognize love and truth outside of us precisely because they resonate with something that is already inside us. Things “touch our hearts” because they awaken a memory of that original kiss.

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F i r s t moments of deep knowing…

“A family is our first community and the most basic way in which the Lord gathers us, forms us and acts in the world.”

Some of those relationships are like marathons

“Maybe God designed marriage more to make us holy than to make us happy.” ~ Benner

In these relationships we learn to love as Christ taught: sacrifice, prayer, forgiveness, healing

Who are your marathon people – through thick and thin?

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Other people come along and “see” you

Who really sees you? The good, the bad, the ugly? With who are you free to be yourself? Who asks you how your soul is? Who asks you, “where do you see God in this? Who challenges you to live for the next world, our eternal life?

Bucket List – Find the Joy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iioBwO6vnEs

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Bucket List – He Saved My Life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiy-sT9JgRo&list=PLD5CA492FA0157EAF

We desire deeply to be “seen”

¤ Our souls ache for a place of deep encounter – hunger for connection is one of the most fundamental of the human heart (Benner)

¤  Love is the threshold where the Divine and human presence ebb and flow into each other (O’Donohue)

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Were Not Our Hearts Burning

¤  SOMEONE else accompanies us in these relationships – we mediate Presence

¤  A soul friend is really an act of recognition and belonging

¤  The supreme gift anyone can give another – to help that person live life more AWARE of God’s presence.

¤  Celtic tradition calls this friendship Anam Cara

¤  The Anam Cara is God’s gift to you, “friend to your soul”

So who journeys with you?

¤  If we’re asking others to grow in their spiritual life, in their relationship with Christ (and isn’t that why we’re in ministry), we must be growing ourselves, and as we said at the beginning we must have at least one or two others who support this journey.

¤  Who are those people for you?

¤  How do they support your journey?

¤  An accountability partner, prayer partner?

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Catholic Tradition: Friendship as Virtue

¤  Jesus had friends, he called the disciples friends and invited them into the most intimate moments of his life.

¤  In Scripture we read of his friendships with Lazarus, Mary, Martha, and Mary Magdalene as well

¤  St. Francis and St. Clare

¤  St. Catherine of Siena and Pope Gregory the Great

¤  St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross

Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire. ~Catherine of Siena

Elizabeth as Spiritual Director (Mike Hayes)

¤  “Ever see two pregnant women together? It’s magical”

¤  Discerning the future

¤  Elizabeth a little more pregnant than Mary, older, able to give advice, comfort, support, knowing

¤  She helped Mary find God’s presence in her

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Scripture, Saints, and Philosophers Have Long Valued Friendship ¤  Ecclesiastes: “Two are better than one…If the one falls,

the other will help the fallen one. But woe to the solitary person! If that one should fall, there is no other to help.”

¤  St. Ambrose saw human friendship as a necessary part of the outpouring of God’s love

¤  Aristotle “What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in 2 bodies.”

¤  Cicero said the friend is the greatest gift of all, “even when absent, he is present.”

¤  St. Thomas Aquinas called friends “Treasured gifts”

¤  St. Augustine – Read from Confessions Book 4, 8

Contemporary Authors Agree with the Saints

¤  Friends are “earthen vessels in which we carry the wonder of God’s love”. (Wendy Wright)

¤  Friends bring out a “self within each of us aching to be born”. (Alan Jones)

¤ We desperately need each other, not merely for sustenance, not merely company but for any meaning in our lives whatsoever. (Scott Peck)

¤ A friend is a loved one who awakens your life to wild possibilities within you. (John O’Donohue)

¤ A friend is a sheltering tree. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

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Augustine: Reading books together

¤ How do you share the spiritual journey with a friend? ¤  Reading books together

¤  Bible study

¤  Praying for each other

¤  Praying with each other

Journeying WITH people

We cannot do “violence” to them as my friend said, convincing them God is present, or convincing them of the Truth.

We must instead journey with them, accompany them through the highs and the lows.

Growing Communities of Faith

What does that look like in parish and school settings?

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What does that look like in parish

¤  Small Groups (Bible Studies, Gospel Series, etc)

¤  Social ministries that support people on their journey, like MOMS or Junior Women’s Club, and Men’s Ministry

¤ Ministry networks – connecting ministries to each other and to the families in the parish

¤  Preparing leadership to mentor/accompany people the way sponsors do candidates and catechumens in RCIA

¤  Retreats, mornings of reflection on friendship (Jesus, saints and more, ex: Hart)

Breaking the Silence – Parent Panel Qs ¤  Which of Jesus’ teachings is most meaningful for you?

¤  What role does the Eucharist play in your life?

¤  Who are significant people in your life through whom Jesus has spoken?

¤  How has Jesus brought healing, sustenance, power and/or new life to you?

¤  In your life is Jesus a friend, brother, guide, or…?

¤  How do you nourish your relationship with God?

¤  Describe an experience in which you placed your trust in him?

¤  How are you Christ’s hands and feet in this world?

¤  What are you compelled to do because of your relationship with Jesus?

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What does that look like in a school setting?

¤  How do we help children prepare for and grow soulful friendships? It’s not much different than what we do for adults, but we have to remember to teach children about trust and safety too.

¤  As with adults, we teach children about soul hospitality – being present to self (silence), others, and God. LISTENING.

¤  We need to help them recognize friendships in which they are comfortable being themselves, no faking, no posturing, trying to be someone they’re not.

¤  And we teach them that those friends come in all shapes and sizes (ages, colors, etc.)

¤  We share with them the stories of the virtuous friendships of the saints.

¤  We give them prayer partners (any age).

The Church’s role in healing

¤  In recent years the Church has been tragically marginalized as a provider of soul care….The rise of therapeutic culture dominating the West in the last century led to an artificial separation of the psychological and spiritual aspects of persons.

¤  If the Church is to be restored to its rightful place of relevance to and preeminence in supporting the care and cure of souls we must equip and encourage people to offer themselves to others in relationships of soul friendship and spiritual companionship.

¤  This will require parents, spouses, and friends who refuse to settle for anything less than the genuine spiritual friendships for which they themselves long.

~ Benner

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Resources: Books

¤  Benner, David G. – Sacred Companions: The Gift of Spiritual Friendship and Direction

¤  Barry, William – A Friendship Like No Other: Experiencing God’s Amazing Embrace

¤  Chittister, Joan, OSB – The Friendship of Women: The Hidden Tradition of the Bible

¤  DeTurris Poust, Mary - Walking Together: Discovering the Catholic Tradition of Spiritual Friendship

¤  Halfacre, Philip – Genuine Friendship

¤  Rievaulx, Aelred – Spiritual Friendship

¤  Waddell, Paul – Becoming Friends: Worship, Justice and the Practice of Christian Friendship

¤  Wilcox, Peter C. - Sheltering Tree: Inspirational Stories of Faith, Fidelity and Friendship

Denise Utter

¤ dutter@stjudes.org

¤ You can find Life of the Parish info at www.stjudes.org and www.stjudes.org/explore4

¤ Check out the Facebook pages at: ¤  www.facebook.com/stjudesfaith ¤ www.facebook.com/

strongcatholicfamilyfaith

¤  Check out the parent pages and more at www.AliveinChrist.osv.com