Hello everyone,
I am so excited for our meeting this coming Wednesday morning. The Upper Room is reserved so just come on in after drop off. I have to admit that I haven't read Conference 2 yet but I am looking forward to it- reading the questions ahead might help give me some guidance!! Ok, just finished typing the questions and they are amazing- can't wait to read!
Humble Confidence
Review the challenge from conference 1: Choose one "hesitantly" taken-up cross in your life and carry it smilingly. What difference did doing this make?
Questions for meditation and discussion
1. "This word, confidence, summarizes the three theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity- sovereign virtues which bring all the others in their train." (page 25)
How do faith, hope, and charity relate to confidence? Is it possible to have confidence in God's love for us without these virtues?
2. "I, too, would like to find an elevator to lift me up to Jesus, for I am too little to climb the rough stairway of perfection." (page 27)
What is your "rough stairway"? How can we find the gentle elevator?
3. "We have been trained in the habit of looking at our dark side, our ugliness, and not at the purifying Sun." (page 29)
Under what circumstances do you most often look at your dark side? In what way can we minister to those in our lives (children, spouses, and friends) to look to the purifying Sun?
4. "Remember that each time you pick yourself up after a fall, the feast of the prodigal son is renewed." (page 34)
How do you approach the confessional?
5. "We do not dance enough in the spiritual life." (page 35)
Can you think of a time when you were moved to 'dance in the spiritual life'?
6. "How many young people have lost the Faith, not from having fallen, but from not having been helped, with love, to pick themselves up again as many times as was necessary?" (page 35)
The primary goal of parents is to get their children to heaven. Are you teaching your children, your grandchildren, your nieces and nephews, or any other children in your life about God's infinite mercy so that when they fall, they will have the humble confidence to "rise up and go to my Father" (cf Luke 15:18)
7. Regarding the good thief: "A whole life of sin, one humble and confident look toward the Crucified, and there was the first canonized saint, and canonized by Jesus Himself! A thief who stole heaven!" (page 36)
Jesus is telling us that there is always hope and a way to Heaven. Is there some stumbling block in your life that you have given up on correcting?
8. "We sometimes make a prayer of the words for which He reproached His Apostles: 'Lord, save us; we are perishing!'" (page 41)
Do you pray with confidence?
This Week's Challenge
"Your Father in Heaven clothes you again in His most beautiful cloak, puts a ring on your finger, and tells you to dance with joy. In a living faith, you will not approach the confessional with dragging feet, but as if you were going to a feast, even if you have to make a great effort each time to humble yourself and to conquer the monotony of the routine.
"After the absolution, you should dance like the prodigal son did at the request and for the joy of his father." (pages 34-35)
Approach the confessional as if you are preparing for a feast.
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