Attachment to Christ

We can all be very attached to some thing or someone.  As Christians we are called to attachment to Christ.  Jesus wants for a soul to love Him first above all things and others.  I know myself in my own life that I have not always put Jesus first in my heart.  In our weakness we can develop an inordinate attachment to another person or persons, a movement, an apostolate or some thing or even feelings that blinds us to what Christ truly wants of us.  If any of these attachments take over our hearts where we no longer depend on Jesus but on a person or something else, we lose our perspective and we can more easily fall into sin.  Disordered attachments to creatures torment a soul because they enslave the will and limit its freedom

Jesus is very gentle with us and will show us these things perhaps even through other people's advice, their words or through circumstances.   It is not easy to detach sometimes from a person or from things that we like because they are in a sense in our comfort zone and can make us 'feel good' or 'feel loved'.   We have to ask Jesus for help and to help us to know His love in our own hearts.  It helps of course to bring these attachments to Jesus in a humble and sincere Confession where He will forgive us and give us the grace to detach more and perhaps to depend on Him more and more.  Fasting with prayer is also a good means to detach as it strikes at our sensual nature and is in fact a great way towards healing. It can also bring to the surface those sins that lurk deep in our own hearts that we perhaps cannot see otherwise. When we put Jesus first in our hearts He helps us to love others properly and we can love with the love of Christ.

From St. John of the Cross, Inordinate desires "are the source of unruly appetites, affections, and operations, and the basis for failure to preserve one's strength for God."  The will must thus be purified of these inordinate desires.  Turning to the emptying of the memory, St. John gives us the principal that, "As often has distinct ideas, forms, and images occur to...[individuals], they should immediately, without resting in them, turn to God with loving affection, in emptiness of everything rememberable
Inordinate attachments to other people can cause alot of damage to the life of religious and consecrated people.  Jesus asks especially for a Religious or Consecrated person that they must put Him first in their hearts.  If they are over attached to a person in their community or parish,  it is dangerous and can lead them into error and sin.  In our hearts we can justify ourselves very cleverly to avoid letting go of these attachments.  The heart indeed can be devious.  

These are all very subtle things that can take place in the heart where the greatest battles are fought.  We fight also with the attachments to sins; to unforgiveness, inordinate grief, pride, arrogance, dishonesty, bitterness and anger, gluttony, greed, power, envy, lust and an inordinate attachment to material things, such as money, food, entertainment, clothes, cars, houses, land, mobile phones, the internet etc etc.  In the Gospel of  Mark, Jesus refers to the things that come out of the heart ....Mark 7:20-23  He went on: "What comes out of a man is what makes him 'unclean.'  For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man 'unclean.'

Sometimes we don't want to let go of these unhealthy attachments but we must if we are to become what Jesus wants for us and for our true happiness.  Jesus understands all these things and His Mercy knows no bounds.  But it is up to us to bring these things to Him in honesty in Confession otherwise they cannot be healed properly.  Psalm 34:1 18  The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart, And saves such as have a contrite spirit.

The Sacred Heart devotion reminds us of the great love Jesus has for us and perhaps through this devotion and also through the Divine Mercy, our hearts can be healed of these things when we entrust them to Christ and completely put our trust in Him alone. 

Sacred Heart of Jesus I place all my trust in You.  Jesus I Trust in You.  Lord have mercy on us and have pity on us, we need You and we ask You to help us in our weakness......Jesus meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto thine. 

Spiritual Direction

The need for spiritual direction in our world today which is utterly confused has never been greater.  To find a Priest spiritual director is not easy, even the Saints found it difficult.  But to have a good Priest to guide one's soul is a great grace and a gift.  A learned and prayerful Priest can lead a soul closer to God and help to develop and find one's true vocation in life.  There are many people in need of spiritual direction who desire to give their lives to Jesus and they find it difficult to find someone who is willing to help them, but the Lord knows the desire of their hearts and shall not abandon them once they remain faithful to the Sacraments, to prayer and works of mercy.  How many vocations are lost perhaps because of the lack of good spiritual direction ?  Let us pray for more Priests to become open to this task and learn to guide souls on the way of holiness. 

St. Alphonsus Liguori believed confessors could do great good by applying the “bit of diligence” necessary to direct souls that are ready for guidance in the spiritual life. “And what an accounting of it they must render to God,’ he exclaims, “If they are slack about it”; for confessors are bound to achieve the good of their penitents “as much as they can.”  By directing these souls in the way of prayer and then ‘asking them at least in the beginning of the spiritual life, whether they made their prayer or not,” confessors could prevent many “relapses into grave sin” and “put many on the road to perfection.”

St. Alphonsus also has this to say: ‘As soon as a good confessor sees a soul shrinking from mortal sin and desiring to advance in divine love, he ought to... guide it to the making of mental prayer, that is, meditation on the eternal truths and the goodness of God;” (13) and the Saint then proposes a follow up. Moreover, one will at times find it desirable to persuade penitents who come burdened with mortal sin, even habitual, to receive his guidance in the ways of mental prayer; (14) and this easily leads the conscientious priest to full responsibilities of direction.

Some penitents seem to expect, before they would submit to anyone as their director, that he display the heroic virtue one expects in a canonized Saint. St. Alphonsus treats them as over-demanding. (33) Yet he warns that one should not choose his spiritual father “haphazardly nor through predilection,” but should pick the “one he deems best suited in relation to the profit” of his soul, a man of “learning and experience... and prayer” who “walks in the way of perfection.” If he reproves one’s faults, “that is no reason for leaving him, but rather for never separating from his guidance.” He adds that there “is no worse confessor than one who does little rebuking and shows too much sympathy for his penitent’s faults;” for in this way he “will cause the penitent to think lightly of them.” (34)

St. Teresa of Avila said

She believed that if a person who practices prayer consults good, learned men, “the devil will not deceive him if he does not wish to be deceived.”(50)

Favoring recourse to a doctrinally sound, learned director, St. Teresa judges that if one finds one, and he is not advanced enough in the spiritual life to understand certain things needful in the guidance of advanced souls, but is virtuous, it is not presumptuous to hope that God will enlighten him about what he should teach and even make him advance in the spiritual life himself in order that he may provide better help. “I do not say this without experience,” she remarks. “It has happened to me at least in two cases.”

A lay person who “can choose whom he is to submit to, should praise God and not lose” this liberty, but rather “let him be without” a director until he finds a qualified one whom, “if he is fully grounded in humility and has the desire to succeed, the Lord will give him.”

What to look for in a spiritual director -

1. Knowledge of the spiritual life

A good director must have a sound knowledge of the science of the soul – he or she must know the various spiritualities of the Church’s tradition and, more importantly, must have a firm grasp of the fundamental principles of the spiritual life. In this regard, St. Teresa is famed for having advised that, if we must choose, it is better to have a learned director than a holy one – since one who is learned will be able to advise the safest course to take in the spiritual life, but one who is holy (without being learned) will not know of any spirituality beyond his own.

2.  Faithfulness to the Church

Since the primary way in which God’s guides his holy people is through the pastors of the Church, a good director must be orthodox – faithful to the Church in every point upon which she has pronounced her judgment. Even in those matters of faith and morals upon which the Church has spoken only in her ordinary (and not infallible) Magisterium, the spiritual director must submit to the Church’s wisdom with a spirit of religious obedience and must never contradict her judgment. A spiritual director who lacks a love for the Church and her pastors (and especially for the Pope) will serve only to lead souls astray – such a director is a thief or a robber and has not entered the sheepfold through the gate.

3.  Prayer and mortification

The principle means of progress towards spiritual perfection consist in the exercise of prayer and mortification. Within these two principle works, there are many and varied directions in which the Holy Spirit might lead the soul. However, without a true commitment to prayer and mortification, the spiritual life will be dry and barren – a desert wasteland without water. Prayer provides the primary matter to be discussed in spiritual direction. Without contemplation, without at least a movement toward the interior life, there can be no true

direction. Thus, any good spiritual director will advocate the life of prayer (and even contemplation). Moreover, in order to grow in prayer, mortification is needed. Thus, these two – prayer and mortification – must be an essential part of the program of direction

Called to be Children of Light

As Christians we are called to follow Christ and the Gospel.  To put our faith, our hope and our trust in Jesus who is all powerful.  In some circles there is a strange fascination with praying against evil spirits, binding evil spirits and deliverance prayers.   But I have never read anything in the Saints writings about deliverance ministries or about binding evil spirits except of course in relation to the ministry of exorcism which is for Priests alone.  St. Jean Vianney and St. Padre Pio for instance endured many direct attacks from the evil one.  But they simply concentrated their lives on Christ, the celebration of the Holy Sacraments, and praying to Our Lady and the Saints.  The evil one hated them because they were saving many souls through their lives of prayer and sanctity.

Jesus, Mary, the Saints and the Angels will protect us and fight for us on our behalf when we turn to them in prayer.  We have the Sacraments of Confession and the Holy Eucharist, the Rosary and Sacramentals (holy water, scapulars, relics etc).  We have great treasures in our Church.  I think we have to be very careful and wary of praying directly against evil spirits and using deliverance prayers.  This should be left to a Priest who is trained in this area if someone needs help.    When we think of the Saints such as St. Jean Vianney, St. Padre Pio, St. Faustina, St. Therese, St. John of the Cross and so many more, none of them mention deliverance ministries or how to bind evil spirits.   Their lives were centred on Christ and the Gospel, and that is all they needed.  The Holy Mass, regular Confession, Eucharistic Adoration, the Rosary, devotion to Our Lady, the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, Prayers to St. Michael and the Angels, living a life of honesty and simplicity, doing the works of mercy, reading the Bible and the lives of the Saints and staying away from sin - these are our remedies against evil...

John 8:12 “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

Visions and Visionaries

We have very many approved apparitions and mystics in the Church.  Though the Church does not require us to believe in private revelation.   But God does intervene directly sometimes to alert mankind to come back to Him.  

Mary, the Mother of God appeared in Lourdes, France to St. Bernadette in 1858  and in 1917 in Fatima, Portugal to three young children to ask everyone to turn back to God and to prayer. 

The Lord Jesus appeared to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque between 1673-75 and so began the devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.  Then in the 1930's Jesus appeared  to a Polish nun St. Maria Faustina Kowalska to make known His great Mercy for souls and to have her spread devotion to His Divine Mercy.  We also had St. Pio of Pietrelcina who suffered the stigmata and who put himself completely under the authority of the Church.  These are just some of the approved private revelations and mystics in the Church.

And of course with every genuine visionary there will be many false ones. St. John of the Cross wrote of the dangers of seeking to have visions or special gifts  "... the devil causes many to believe in vain visions and false prophecies; and strives to make them presume that God and the saints are speaking with them; and they often trust their own fancy. And the devil is also accustomed, in this state, to fill them with presumption and pride, so that they become attracted by vanity and arrogance, and allow themselves to be seen engaging in outward acts which appear holy, such as raptures and other manifestations. Thus they become bold with God, and lose holy fear, which is the key and the custodian of all the virtues; and in some of these souls so many are the falsehoods and deceits which tend to multiply, and so inveterate do they grow, that it is very doubtful if such souls will return to the pure road of virtue and true spirituality."


Most of the above approved visionaries were poor, uneducated, and also suffered greatly because of the mission that God had given to them.   They did not become Saints because they had witnessed apparitions or that they had extraordinary gifts, but because they lived lives of heroic virtue and holiness.  They also submitted themselves completely to the authority of the Church and were totally obedient to their superiors.  When 'visionaries' start giving out publicly about the Church authorities or are openly disobedient to the requests of the Parish Priest or local Bishop, they are not genuine.  St. Pio was silenced for eleven years by the Church and he obeyed.  And of course this showed that he was a man of genuine holiness. 

The following is an excerpt from St. Fausintas Diary on the importance of obedience to the authorities in the Church....

'Jesus told me, Go to Mother Superior and ask her to let you wear a hair shirt for seven days, and once each night you are to get up and come to the chapel. I said yes, but I found a certain difficulty in actually going to the Superior. In the evening Jesus asked me, How long will you put it off? I made up my mind to tell Mother Superior the very next time I would see her.

The next day before noon I saw Mother Superior going to the refectory and, since the kitchen, refectory and Sister Aloysia's little room are all close to each other, I asked Mother Superior to come into Sister Aloysia's room and told her of the wish of the Lord Jesus.

At that, Mother answered, "I will not permit you to wear any hair shirt. Absolutely not! If the Lord Jesus were to give you the strength of a colossus, I would then permit those mortifications."

I apologized for taking up Mother's time and left the room. At that very moment I saw Jesus standing at the kitchen door, and I said to Him, "You commanded me to ask for these mortifications, but Mother Superior will not permit them." Jesus said, I was here during your conversation with the Superior and know everything. I don't demand mortification from you, but obedience. By obedience you give great glory to Me and gain merit for yourself.


Also St. Faustina wrote  "Satan can even clothe himself in a cloak of humility, but he does not know how to wear the cloak of obedience." (Diary, par. 939).

St Margaret Mary Alacoque was told by Our Lord: "Listen, My daughter, and do not lightly believe and trust every spirit, for Satan is angry and will try to deceive you. So do nothing without the approval of those who guide you. Being thus under the authority of obedience, his efforts against you will be in vain, for he has no power over the obedient" [Autobiography].

Let down by those in the Church

People will always let us down.  We see this especially in the Church, because we are all sinners.  Perhaps we have high expectations of others because we expect people in the Church to be Christian towards us always.  Unfortunately this doesnt always happen.  As we know very well.  It is more often the case that the people that hurt us the most are those that are in the Church.   What can we do in this situation. 

We have to remember that it is only Christ we can depend on ultimately.  Jesus will never abandon us or hurt us when others do.  Many of the Saints were harshly treated within their own communities such as St. Francis, St Bernadette, St. John of the Cross, and St. Faustina just to name but a few. 
But when we look at Christ, He too was humiliated and painfully hurt by those around Him.  He was crushed by suffering because of jealousy and pure hatred from some members of His own community and ultimately betrayed by one of His disciples.  But He accepted all of this for us, for our sins.  So perhaps for those who feel abandoned, who feel lost, who feel let down by those in the Church, remember Christ on the Cross because He too felt the same.  It doesnt mean that we have to accept sin, no, but we must rise above it and yes we are called to love one another, but to do this we have to continually turn to Jesus.  We cannot always expect that love we give to others to be returned.  But, God calls us to love anyway.  It is a hard task but we are called to rely on Jesus and to trust Him alone.  He took up the way of suffering by taking up the Cross, so to follow Him, so must we.   It is not the Catholic Church in itself that lets us down, it is its members, we all let each other down. 

Lord have mercy on us for we have sinned.