Hello my friends! Several of you have asked me to address both personal & spiritual questions. Here are some questions and my answers to them. I invite more questions. Call me, write me or send questions to Diana for this bulletin article (d_hudock@yahoo.com). This article will also appear on our Facebook and Blog on our website.
This question comes from a segment that Dolores underlined from Fr. Pete’s Positive Messages: It is through God’s direct work on your soul that you experience that love, His love.
Dolores asks: Is there more you could share about this direct work?
FP: This is what I mean by “God’s direct work” on my soul. I experience God’s love, first of all, indirectly. I mean I have known love through parents and family through friends and good memories, and through good food, good fun, and nature itself.
I have also experienced God’s love through prayer, through Mass and the sacraments, through devotions, and through meditation of the bible. All of the above is what I refer to as experiencing God indirectly.
I have also experienced God “directly.” By this I mean often a subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, sense of His Sacred Presence. I believe that this is a gift that is available to me. I cannot manufacture this sense of His Presence. Yet He is almost always present to me.
I believe that this is what the Church teaches us to be the gift of contemplation. We can not earn or produce contemplation. We can dispose ourselves to it through consistency in other forms of indirect prayer.
I used to hide the fact that I experienced this. I now think that hiding of my gift was an effort at false humility. I now witness to this gift with the hope of inspiring others. I believe that Jesus was referring to this gift when he spoke of preparing a dwelling place for us. Keep the questions coming!
Love, Father Pete