1/24/2019 0 Comments stand back It's funny, the way that God works.
Through the diocese, I was assigned a Youth Ministry Mentor at the beginning of the year. She's fantastic and is such a great resource for me and has so much wisdom to share. Now, I don't want you to get the wrong impression from what I’m about to say; I love my job, I couldn't imagine a better job than the one I am doing now, but the point of having a mentor is to talk about what is challenging in your ministry role and get a different perspective. So a few months ago, shortly after I posted this blog, I was talking to her about the challenges I was facing in my ministry. I talked about struggling with that "fierce independence" I wrote about, about the stress that comes with event planning, about the balance I can't seem to master of caring deeply about what I do but not holding it so tightly that God has no room to work, etc. She was sympathetic, to say the least, and offered anecdotes and advice from her own life, but then she told me to look up The Litany of Humility and to consider giving a try praying it. As any person being mentored would, I assured her that I'd look it up when I got home and go from there. When I was in high school the movie Evan Almighty came out. Now, I literally haven't watched this movie since I was in high school so I'm not sure how solid the theology is and am not recommending it by any means. I can't remember the characters names, I can't remember the setting, I can't remember most of the people who acted in it. In fact, I can't even remember the plot. All I really remember is that Morgan Freeman played God and he has this scene where he's talking to Evan's wife about praying. I remember he tells her that when people pray for patience, he gives them the opportunity to be patient. To my seventeen-year-old self, this made perfect sense. I'd never prayed for patience before watching this movie and after that movie I was certainly never tempted to. (In fact, although the Lord has given me many opportunities to practice patience, I still have never prayed for it.) It's funny, the things that form your consciousness and your perception of God when you're a teen, things that you don't realize (or at least that I didn't) but this was something that definitely shaped the way I prayed. And so, when my mentor suggested I think about praying The Litany of Humility, the thought of praying for patience slipped into my mind. I don't want to say that I dismissed her wisdom out of hand, but it was definitely something that I told myself I would "do later." Later, as it turned out, wouldn't be as long as I might have imagined. As I said at the beginning of this post, God seems to love irony (or foreshadowing, at the very least) and when there is something He wants me to do, there is never a doubt in my mind that I will end up doing exactly that. So, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me when, as I was reading over the lesson plan for this week and getting things prepped, that the prayer they suggested we pray together was, in fact, The Litany of Humility. I couldn’t help but laugh (and shake my head) at God as I read the prayer and thought to myself, what a challenge it was to pray. Click here to read it. The first sentence that you pray had me reeling- and it was just one sentence. “From the desire of being loved, deliver me, Jesus.” I’ve said it before, but I’m going to say it again; it is an innate human desire to be loved, I truly believe this. And, speaking for myself, it is something that I crave deeply; to be known and be loved. There is nothing more precious to me than the people who have loved me when I “deserved” it but especially when I most certainly did not. Then you go down a few more lines and it says, “From the desire to be praised, deliver me, Jesus.” I don’t know if you are familiar with the five love languages or not, but “words of affirmation” is tied with “physical touch” as my favorite way to have love communicated with me. It makes me inordinately happy when people tell me I did a good job at something, or that they appreciate me. This again was something that my mind rebelled against. There are several other things that cause my heart to balk a bit as I read them, but I started to think to myself, well it wants me to be delivered from the desire of those things, it doesn’t necessarily want you to pray that those things don’t happen. But then you go to the second half and read, “Jesus grant me the grace to desire: That others may be chosen and I set aside... That others may be praised and I unnoticed... That others may be preferred to me in everything…” This is not an easy prayer to pray and there is no way my brain can rationalize that message into anything it is not. It is blatantly asking me to pray that I would want to not be loved, or told that I was doing a good job, or chosen for special things. So, I started to really think about this prayer and it occurred to me just how many times I had said the word “I” when I was thinking about it. While I was struggling with my ability to pray this prayer, all I was thinking about was myself which, coincidentally, is the entire reason I ought to have prayed this prayer in the first place. It’s easy, for me at least, in today’s world and culture to get preoccupied with myself. There are all sorts of things that I try to do well at, that I work really hard at, and that I often feel I deserve to be recognized for in one way or another. But in all of these things, I am not (and should not be) the point. Jesus is the point. And when you think about Jesus, don’t all of these things that this prayer suggests praying sound just like Him? Jesus didn’t ask to be loved, or celebrated, or consulted, or approved of. He wasn’t afraid of being despised, or wronged, or wrongly accused, or humiliated. Jesus (the One who created the universe) knelt at the disciples’ feet and washed them. Jesus endured humiliation and suffering on the cross, he was wrongly accused and he didn’t even offer a defense. Jesus, who is God, allowed all of these things to happen. He took His eyes off of what was happening to him and looked to God the Father to see what was important. I realized then that this is what the Litany of Humility is all about. It is about taking my eyes off of myself long enough to see what is really happening in this world, to be amazed by God’s grace and His love, and to remind myself about the things that actually matter. It is impossible (and I do not use this word lightly) to show the proper respect and reverence to God when we are focused on ourselves. It is impossible to stand in wonder of the God of the universe when we are so focused on the tiny world we have created. He is so much bigger than we give him credit for. My challenge for you this week is the same challenge I gave myself (and your middle schoolers). I invite you to read and pray through the Litany of Humility and stop to think and pray about which parts are hard to say yes to and why that may be. I invite you to draw close to the Lord in awe and reverence and pray that He reveals himself to you in a new way this week. Peace, Michaela
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