HEWITT So often, our lives simply overwhelm us. We get blindsided by so many distractions — pursuing our career ambitions, satisfying our own desires or keeping up with our families’ busy schedules — that crowd out time to satisfy our deepest longings: to notice the Lord everyday, feel His loving presence more strongly and share that love with other people as His disciples.
So about 20 parishioners of Our Lady Queen of Peace (OLQP) here in the Hewitt section of West Milford have been taking time from their hectic lives to seek out God by participating in an eight-part faith-formation series, “Longing for the Holy: Spirituality for Everyday Life.” In the small-group program, Oblate Father Ronald Rolheiser explores how we “channel the deep longing at the core of our beings and explore the implications of the central mysteries of faith — the Incarnation, the Eucharist, and the Paschal Mystery — for spirituality.”
“Attending to the cultural challenges that keep us from realizing our true desire, it considers the important themes of church community, justice, sexuality, the practices of the spiritual life, and being a mystic of the everyday. We need someone to name the essentials,” writes Father Rolheiser, also a columnist for The Beacon, who noted that the parent book, “The Holy Longing” and the “Longing for the Holy” series help in “highlighting those essentials and making suggestions as to how we might integrate them more into our lives. Its intent is to try to offer guidance in terms of the struggle to get our lives together and to give them away in love and service.”
Leading the series at OLQP has been Mary Beth Osiecki, head of the parish’s outreach and evangelization. Sessions —which have been taking place on the first Wednesdays of the month from 10 to 11:30 a.m. in the parish library — will run to June. The group includes many parishioners, who have participated in many of OLQP’s previous Bible studies over the years, as well as several newcomers, Osiecki said.
The rest of the series will examine the following topics: Jan. 6, “The Paschal Mystery”; Feb. 3, “In My House Many Mansions, Eucharist”; April 6, “Walk Justly, Loving Well”; May 4, “Living the Life”; and June 1, “Being a Mystic in Everyday Life.”
“With ‘Longing for the Holy,’ we want to help people enrich their sense of the presence of God, develop a deeper spirituality and explore the central mysteries of our faith. The series encourages people to take time in life for spirituality and find God in all things and all times,” Osiecki said. “Father Rolheiser is very thoughtful and insightful and gives us a lot to think about.”
Each session begins with personal sharing by participants, answering the question, “How did the week go?” followed by reciting an opening prayer, playing a related spiritual song, taking some quiet time, reading a related Scripture passage and a selection of Father Rolheiser’s writings. Then, they learn about a Companion on the Journey for that session — an ideal Christian, whose example they can model — followed by engaging in faith-sharing and considering a challenge for the week to deepen their spirituality or expand their efforts at discipleship, Osiecki said.
At the beginning of the series, Father Rolheiser cautions participants that “One size doesn’t fit all! That isn’t just true of clothing; its’ true, also, of spirituality and discipleship.”
“The invitations that Jesus gives just to ultimately be perfect as God is perfect grow deeper and deeper as we mature in life. What discipleship asks of us in mid-life or when we are facing death is not the same as what it asks of us in our 20s, when we are still trying to find ourselves. The different seasons in our lives call for a different depth in terms of discipleship,” Father Rolheiser writes.
In Session 2, “The Challenge of Our Culture,” the group read St. Paul’s letter to the Christian community of Colossae (Col 1: 9-14), in which he writes, “We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord…bearing fruit in every good work.” Then, they learned about their Companion on the Journey, St. Francis de Sales, who “encouraged housewives, grocers and courters to pray, not like monks, but in ways that flowed out of their work and family responsibilities. He also helped them see the ways their culture prevents them from being attentive to God’s presence,” Father Rolheiser writes.
But often, random, fleeting desires preoccupy us and distract us from recognizing God’s presence in our lives and responding to that presence, which Father Rolheiser calls “our truest desires.” In Session 2, the priest poses questions for participants such as, “Do I find it difficult to sense God’s presence in my life?” and “What kinds of person do I genuinely long to become?” Then, he offers several challenges for them to consider, such as “When an advertisement entices you to purchase something, question the reasons why you would by it” and “Cultivate your spiritual life by scheduling and spending quietly time with God each day or at least a few times this week.”