For this week’s reflection, let us consider this video from the BBC that features Bro Giles reflecting on prayer and freedom. I find his reflection a wonderful gift as we leave Eastertide behind and return to Ordinary Time. This is so because he reminds us — without saying it — that it is indeed the Holy Spirit that empowers us to pray, to love, to act in freedom, to surrender to God, and ultimately to return to God.
You can find his reflection here:
In this short video, Bro Giles makes these key points (paraphrased) below that are important for us who want to live just chaste lives — we can only this by freely choosing God and God’s ways:
Freedom anywhere and everywhere is love. Letting yourself be loved is risky. Loving is riskier.
Prayer is the greatest freedom of all because it is a relationship — a gift of God. In prayer we accept what comes.
Silence in prayer enables us to be free and to act freely. It frees us for listening. It frees us from many things and behaviours that draw us away from God. It can also free us for availability to God and for God.
What we possess can possess us. The less you’ve got, the more freedom you’ve got. This freedom is hard to acquire. This is because detachment is difficult but we must learn to let go. It is essential for freedom. In fact, one day you’ve got to let go of your life, the ultimate impoverishment, to get to the freedom of eternal life
Life is tough and difficult at times. But the promise of eternal life is out of this world.
Having listened to Bro Giles, here are some points for your prayerful reflection this week:
- Do you recognise how the decision to live a chaste life can be a freeing experience? How so? In what ways have you experienced this freedom when you have lived chastely?
- “Prayer is the greatest freedom of all because it is a relationship.” In what ways have you found the freedom to be yourself in prayer with God — as you are a person with SSA, with hopes to be holy and struggles to remain chaste? Would you consider these ways to be how God is labouring for your good and happiness? Why would God do these?
- We must let go in order to be free. Is there anything or anyone that you still need to let go of in order to be freer to respond to God’s call for you to be a saint? Share with the Lord what or who these are and ask the Lord for the graces you need to let go and let God lead you onward to holiness.
Words of Encouragement for this week
“Jesus became what we are so that he might make us what He is.” – St Athannsius