One of the most beautiful ways towards a greater spiritual self-awareness is by reflecting on our own personal life stories, our faith story especially.
That each one of us has a 'personal vocation' is a beautiful aspect of the COLW charism that can be discerned through our story and our individual walk with God. This in an unrepeatable call on our life that God has placed within us, the way He will lead us back to Him and deeper into Himself. Through examining our life as an unveiling of the stories within our lives to see what they reveal about ourselves and about God as the author of our stories.
Nothing is random in our stories. There are no meaningless details, everything has a meaning and is useful for growing closer to God. In examining our own individual story we can see the gifts we have received, the forming action of our Heavenly Father, His leading and guiding hand and all the ways He has cared for us through life. We can develop an awareness of where we have been closer to Him in life and where He might be asking us to walk closer to Him again now.
Even our sins are part of our story, when we mess up we need to address our sins, seek forgiveness and work on those areas with hope and courage. We can remember, with St. Paul, that 'His grace is sufficient' that His 'power is made perfect in weakness' (2 Cor 12 9,10). Our sins are often based in our patterns of behaviours but also in our gifts too, though this sounds counter-intuitive to us. Our weaknesses and sins, particularly if we often find ourseleves repeating the same sins or facing the same issues, can inform us further about ourselves. Through understanding the patterns of our behaviours, looking at our own story, we will see more clearly the gifts we receive from God and our own blind spots, any complusions or where we hurt others and ourselves.
Part of the value of spiritual self-awareness in and through our own stories and relationship with God is we can see how we seek fulfilment through our own inclinatations and gifts. Our God given gifts and talents can either draw us closer to God, if used for His service and glory, or away from Him, if used to serve ourselves. By looking at our motivations, we can see where our inclinations really lie. This is all part of the journey to greater self-knowledge.
When we come to the Father in true repentance, offering Him the gifts and talents that He gave us in the first place, but this time truly for His service, in His extravegant mercy, His loving and healing action will bind us closer to Himself, even through our sins. Think of a broken sword welded together, it will never break again at the welded point. Once healed and offered to His service, our gifts and talents - as expressed in our personal vocation - our sins too become part of our story to cause us to fall more in love with Jesus and with others. As we will hear in the Exsultet on Holy Saturday - 'O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam' - He even uses our sins for His glory! Every part of our unique story is a treasure and of infinite value to God. All the more reason to go to Confession at least monthly, for the healing power of Jesus over our wounds, sins and broken ways of using our gifts the God wants to use to build up His kingdom.
Lent, Holy Week and especially now as we enter into the Sacred Triduum, is a time to reflect on the story of Jesus AND also our own stories. We reflect on His gift of mercy, salvation and new life that began when we were incorporated into His life at Baptism. (Note the incarnational aspect of being 'incorporated' into His life, into the corpus of the Church, Christ's mystical body!). He wants us to be a part of this gift as our daily crosses are already part of what we experience in following Jesus to the cross yet again. We are part of Jesus' own story by His grace. Our little stories are part of salvation history and a praticipation in the Paschal mystery - by virute of our Baptism we are 'grafted' into the Paschal Mystery, as the Catechism puts it.
Every detail of our lives has meaning and is what God has written of our story in our hearts. We are each made in God's image and likeness. Once we are able to know and see ourselves as God sees us - through His eyes, as He sees all our potential for goodness, holiness and closeness to Hin, we will reflect even more the image of Jesus in our own unique ways - the way of our personal vocation and unique gifts. Our unique way of imaging God, to be 'hearers of the Word and bearers of the Spirit', as the Book of Life puts it, is our personal way to give His glory - our own unique way, unrepeatable and dreamed up individually by Him. In living in His will in this way too God's Divine Will shall also be worked out, in our lives and through us to others.
We can live boldly, with confidence, by looking at the lives of the saints and the courage they had to know thelselves, warts and all, in their reality before God. The saints are people who knew themselves, lived their personal vocations, made the prayer of Jesus their own and entered into their own stories to live them only for Him.
Using all that we have learned from St Teresa of Avila and gift of the charism of COLW, reflecting on our lives in our own reality, let's ask the Lord how He is calling each of us deeper into authentic joy and fulfilment through greater self-knowledge and closer union with Him.
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