Those Unknown Gifts of God

Those Gifts of God

God has placed various and sundry things in your life to help you on your journey to Heaven. One of the responsibilities of being a Catholic is that you take advantage of those things. You may not know what each of them is, but God always makes sure that you have the necessary means to obey Him. His hand is in everything and He rules over all. The first step in spiritual growth is to learn what those things are. The obvious ones are the same for all of us: the Sacraments, the Mass, prayer, Scripture, the virtues, etc. Yet, there are also more specific ones that He gives to each of us that we need to find. Maybe He has put someone in your life that is specially wise in areas that you need help in. Maybe He has given you the ability to attend daily Mass. Or, maybe you have the ability to help others learn the faith (and thus are learning it better for yourself!).

It is my calling as a Priest to help each of those that God places under my care to learn what they need to repent of and what righteous deeds they need to continue to perform. This means that sometimes I need to tell someone, "no, that is wrong" (and, it may come as a surprise, but that is not my favorite part of being a Priest), and other times I will encourage someone, "yes, keep doing that". With what was said above, it should be clear that spirituality is not "one size fits all"; we are individuals and we each need different things at different times in our lives. What I needed for my spiritual good 10 years ago, is not necessarily the same as what I need today. God knows the difference and we must trust Him to help us to see it.

Hence, we can all gain from regularly asking the Lord, "what am I missing?" Not just when we are confused, but at ordinary times in our lives, we need to understand that we may be blocking something from our hearts that God wants us to take advantage of. And, chances are, it is something that you already know about and that you have discredited or just dismissed as unnecessary. What might that be? Only you and God can really know that. This means, however, that you need to avoid slipping into that perspective which says, "I have already found and learned all that I need". It is true that we need to have closed minds to the world, but in regard to the Lord, our minds must always be open.