Love Yourself and Become the Person God Wants You to Be

 

January 21, 2025

Opus Dei

Hello!  How is each and every one? The New Year of hope 2025 is running on its first 20 days running fast forward with a lot of things to look forward to and invites each one of us to continue with joyful prayer of thanksgiving, adoration, reparation and petition.  Tranquility of order is being aimed at and worked on by a whole country with its entire good willed people cascading down to the people all over the world. With God let it be so for His great glory and for each one of us who is a child of His.  God created the world beautiful and good for His children to enjoy and to work on using all the talents, gifts and resources He has given each one of us. In doing so each one of us becomes the god our Father God wants us to be.  Remember His words:  “Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48).

Path To Holiness

The Kingdom of God is ours.  We belong to the one family of God and this is the reason for our being and the reason for His death on the Cross.  He wants each one of us to be saved but not without each one of us wanting it so. Remember He gifted us with freedom.  Freedom to love Him or not; Freedom to want to be saved or not; Freedom to do God’s will or not.

Opus Dei Today

Following is the conclusion of the chapter on our divine longing for trust (From Broken Gods, Hope, Healing, and the Seven Longings of the Human Heart, Gregory K. Popcak, Ph. D. Ch 8).

Satisfying Your divine Longing for Trust: An Exercise

Pray

Lord Jesus Christ,

Through your passion, death, and resurrection, you give me everything and make it possible for me to become a partaker in your divine nature.  I accept your gift.  Come into my heart more and more each day and as you do, inspire me to give myself fully to the people in my life.  Let me look for ways to give more of my time, presence, and treasure to those I live with, and those I meet throughout my day.  Give me a heart that burns with generosity so that I may surrender the illusion of control in my life and trust nothing more than I trust in you.  You are my all in all, and I trust my life, my work, my relationships, my well-being, and my eternity to your loving care.  I ask this through Jesus Christ my Lord.  Amen.

COAL:  Fuel for Change

As you reflect on ways you can satisfy your divine longing for trust, take a moment to consider how COAL can help fuel the changes you would like to make in your life.

CURIOSITY AND OPENNESS

Ask yourself:  Where did I learn that I need to “take care of myself” and that the best way to do this is by working to an excessive degree or hoarding what I earn?

Who taught me this response?

What situations impressed this lesson on me?

Do I want to continue to allow these experiences to rule my life?

Do not judge or edit yourself.  Receive your answers in a spirit of openness and grace.

ACCEPTANCE

Say, “These are the experiences that have shaped my struggle to satisfy my divine longing for trust.  I accept my past even as I accept God’s call to change and grow.”

LOVE

Loving myself means working to become the person God wants me to be.  I know that I can fulfill my deepest longing for trust only by being generous and charitable in the face of the struggles I encounter.

In what specific areas of my life do I feel my conscience—the voice of God in my heart—calling me to be more generous with my time, presence, or treasure?

What obstacles would I have to overcome to achieve this goal?

What help, resources, or support might I need to overcome these obstacles?

Say, “I will love myself and accept God’s love for me by choosing this path of generosity over the temptation to greed.”

Review these loving resolutions each morning.  Imagine a time in the coming day when you might be tempted to greed.  Imagine responding instead with generosity.  Ask for God’s help to remember this more loving response in those times when you are being tempted to refuse to share your time or your treasure with others.

Practicing Generosity:  Action Items

Develop a devotion to the Divine mercy of God.  St. Faustina’s constant prayer was “Jesus, I trust in you.” Praying the Chaplet of Divine mercy can help us to trust in God’s generous plan for us and inspire us to be similarly generous to others.  You can learn more about devotion to Jesus’ Divine mercy at www.the-divinemercy.org.

Sharing our Lives with Jesus

 Blessed Teresa of Calcutta once told a wealthy woman who wanted to be more charitable that when she went shopping for a new sari, she should choose two she liked, buy the less expensive one, and give the difference to the poor.  What are some ways you could practice this idea in your life the next time you go shopping for clothes, house wares, or even a car or a home?

Prayerfully reflect on your finances.  Consult with a financial planner about how much you could reasonably give to charitable pursuits after you consider your needs and the needs of those who depend upon you (including a rightly ordered need to enjoy the life God has given you). Slowly and prayerfully, work toward increasing how much you allocate to charitable pursuits each month.

Prayerfully reflect on how you spend your time.  How might you be a little more generous with the time you spend with the people in your life?  Go through the following list and write down approximately how much time you spent with the following people over the course of a week:

--Your spouse:

--Your children:

--Your co-workers:

--Other people you meet throughout the day:

Review your responses each day and ask yourself how mindful you were about opportunities to be more present to the people who share your life.  Once you have mastered these initial goals, consider additional ways you might be more generous with your time and presence to the people

 

 

The Divine Mercy

The Divine Longing for Trust: A Promise

Through all the chaos and storms of life, the divine longing for trust reminds us that the impossible is possible.  We can stop worrying.  We can stop working ourselves to death.  We can stop hoarding.  We can afford to be generous with our time and presence and the material things God has given us.  And, finally, we can trust that God has amazing plans for our lives and that, specifically, he intends to take the most broken, hurting, despicable parts of ourselves and transform them so that we will be able to give ourselves as freely and totally to God as he gives himself to us.

Throw yourself into the loving arms of God, who wants nothing more than to provide for every physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual need; who longs to fill all the gaps in your life, including most of all, the space that exists between his heart and yours.  Every moment of every day, let each breath cry out with the words of St. Faustina:  “Jesus, I trust in you!” And feel the loving generous presence of God filling your life and transforming you into the generous image of his very own face.

How about you and I agree from here onwards to live our daily life with DAD, with the dignity of the children of God, with attention and with devotion as Jesus taught us.  He did all things well.  Let you and I be holy and good in everything we desire, think and do. Let you and I allow each and every one around us to do the same, be good and holy doing things with the dignity of the children of God, with attention and with devotion as Jesus did during His life on earth, doing all things well.

St. Josemaria (opusdei.org):  Peace begins with interior struggle.  We have to find peace in our own hearts first.  Otherwise:  “peace, peace, and there was no peace,” Scripture says. To have peace in our hearts we have to win our interior struggle, because we are all inclined to sin.  We were born like that, “proni ad peccatum,” inclined to sin.  And if we don’t fight, we will fall and lead a really unhappy life.  We’ll always be losers and look like it, we’ll have the wrong criteria and we’ll always feel unhappy.

I feel so sorry for people who behave badly, because I could behave even worse than them if I didn’t struggle.  So we have to struggle, and then, with God’s grace, we’ll win!  And with victory comes joy.  Joy is a treasure that belongs to Christians, and especially the Christians in Opus Dei.”

Common sense tells us that doing good in God’s presence, pleases God and makes each one of us better children of God and happier at that.

See you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may you find love and laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care; ‘til He brings us together again.”

Affectionately,                    

Guadalupinky