Study Topic for February     

The Teams Endeavours are essential characteristics of our Movement. They are stepping stones in our journey of faith, and are intended to create an open encounter with the Lord. The endeavours are a lifelong challenge that keep us moving forward. They are a constant help to awaken our inner attitudes and lead us to a new way of life. They require effort on our part and are quite demanding – this is why sharing on the endeavours at the Team meeting helps us to be encouraged by the efforts of others.

To take on the endeavours requires us to be pro-active. We have the initiative and the responsibility to take on a new way of life or to alter our present way of living. If we take time out to be in touch with and be aware of our own value system, this will affect the we behave in life. To change ourselves in this way requires commitment. This commitment needs to be arrived at through self-awareness, independent will and imagination.

In the Second Wind we read:    “The Lord takes hold of us wherever we are. We do not need to rush ahead or try to ‘skip a grade.’ All we need is a sincere desire to progress from our present situation.”

Taking on the endeavours with a sincere heart will truly transform our lives. With this in mind let us look at our Endeavours:

Listening to the Word of God                                  The Sit-down

Personal Prayer                                                      The Rule of Life

Conjugal Prayer                                                      The Annual retreat

1.     Listening to the Word of God

God Speaks to us through Scripture - In our daily lives what place do we give to the Word of God? Does it really touch us and influence us? Do the passages of Scripture we visit strike us or challenge us?   Can we pray as Samuel did?  “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.”

All of us make friends and relationships through speaking with one another and revealing more and more of ourselves to each other. God speaks to us because he wants to build a relationship with us and make himself known to us. Through listening to or meditating on the Word, we get to know more the person of Jesus. If we insert our own name while reading Scripture, it may help us hear the Word of God speaking more personally to us in this time and place. For example:

                        “John/Mary- Be not afraid. I am with you always…”

This may make it more real, that God is speaking directly to us just where we are. Through attentive listening to His Word with our hearts, we will find our lives directed in different ways to answer His call to live our lives to the full.

Cardinal Henry Newman used to pray, “God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another…”

The Word of God helps daily to motivate us personally and in our life as couple.

2.     Personal Prayer                       

“When you want to pray…pray to your Father who is in that secret place.” (Matthew 6:6)

“God tirelessly calls each person to this mysterious encounter with Himself. Prayer unfolds throughout the whole history of salvation as a reciprocal call between God and man.” (Catechism 2591.)

Do we ever realise the wonder of the friendship we can have with God? Have we ever thought what it means to be able to have God present, and be able to speak with Him? God has given us the right to enter His Presence whenever we wish - we can summon Him to our bedside, to our workplace and He is there with us. We need to think of the mighty, tender, humble condescension of His friendship and to respond to Him.

“Become aware—I do not say of the presence of God, but of God present. He is alive, the Living God. He is there; He awaits you, sees you, and loves you.” (Lettres sur la Prière – Father Caffarel Sept. 1964.)

In 1954 at the Pilgrimage of Teams in Lourdes, Fr. Caffarel said that:

“All we need to do is to be silent and attentive. It is not a matter of spiritual sensation, of interior experience, but of faith: that is to say, to believe in the Presence, to adore the living Trinity in silence, to adhere to and to enter in communion with its eternal activity.”

Each of us must step out along this secret path, the only path that allows us to join Christ personally.

“Nobody can lead you to this secret – and narrow – path. It is for each one of you to discover it. Be humble, docile, praying, persevering and you will find it – and you will meet Christ.” (The Legacy of Father Caffarel – Fr. F. Fleischmann – Rome 2003.)

There are many forms of personal prayer; some of us may just be silent and rest in the presence of the Lord, others may practice Lectio Divina, others meditate on a phrase from scripture, or use a mantra. It is up to each of us to find the way or ways which help us to have a close encounter with God our Creator.

                                     Pray as we can  -  not as we think we should!

After personal prayer, the couple may benefit from sharing on how God speaks to each one differently. This sharing will help enrich the relationship and help the couple deepen their commitment to personal prayer and to prayer as couple.

3.      Conjugal Prayer.

“Nothing builds closer ties than seeking God together.” Fr. Caffarel.

When a couple pray together, they immerse themselves in the deepest sharing. Hearing each other praying, they make their souls transparent to one another, they share compassion for one another and share their experience of God.  This prayer takes effort to put time aside and the effort of praying together.

Sometimes, one spouse may exercise the gift of prayer and pray on behalf of both. In times of difficulty, the prayer of the couple will bring the strength to sustain the marriage.

“To pray is to say: Lord, I am here, we are here, we seek You, we want You as a companion on our journey, and as a guide along the way, a brother and friend in sharing our daily life, a teacher in the face of confusion and our limited understanding.” (The Couple in the Gospel – Carlo and Maria Carla Volpini – Rome 2003.)

As couples in Teams, we will all have ways as husband and wife to pray together. However, new ways may be valuable and may help keep our prayer fresh and alive. On occasions we may find ourselves on a mountaintop, beside a river, sitting under a starry sky at night or sitting in the kitchen as dawn breaks. The closeness of God to us as a couple at times like these may lead us to pray together in praise of God or in silence in the awareness of His presence  with us. On journeys in traffic we may recite the rosary together, others may attend daily Mass together. Our morning and evening prayers are a daily opportunity to pray together as couple.

4. The Sit-down                               

“Leave the shore and set sail for the high seas.”

This was how Fr. Caffarel suggested we should approach the endeavour of the sit-down. The Philosopher Seneca further advises, “There is no favourable wind for him who does not know where he is going.”

All of us from time to time drift away from our chosen direction in life. The sit-down gives us an opportunity to talk together about the life we have charted out and to point our compass in the right direction. We need to turn to one another, face to face and ask: “Where are we in our spiritual development”?

It is a time for us as couple to take time out together in the sure truth that God is with us. This may be helped through some gesture or symbol such as lighting a candle, starting with a prayer or just taking time in silence to acknowledge the Spirit present with us and within us.

It is a time to reconsider the ideals we started out with – to look at our relationship to God, to each other and to our family. We need to develop a capacity to listen and to understand the other through the eyes of the other. Listening has at its heart wanting to be in communion with the other, to welcome their sharing.

“Listening is at the heart of married life; it is pointless to speak of the married state if we do not learn to communicate genuinely in depth, in the sense of ‘being in union’….We may imagine that we are relating in depth because we say a lot…. The sit-down brings us back to this depth of soul where only a dialogue based mainly on listening has a place. …The sit-down is making time to listen to our most intimate needs and to try to express the strength of a love that grows in spite of difficulties or of daily routine that tends sometimes to make everything duller.” (The Couple in the Gospel – Carlo and Maria Carla Volpini – Rome 2003.)

This time together should give us the opportunity to approach any topics which concern us as couple or as family. It is a good practice to record what commitments come from our sit-downs so that we may remind ourselves from time to time of the outcome of our sharing. It is good to plan a specific time for the sit-down like a date in our days of courtship. We should try to ensure that we have time and privacy to be completely open and honest with one another.

Bishop Michael Fitzgerald spoke about the sit-down in his homily at Lourdes – the full text can be found on

 http://www.lourdes2006end.com/_anglais/ang_prions/ang_evangiles_homelies/Homily19Sept_AN_mardi.pdf

5. A Rule of Life.                                                

“A rule of life is of practical value because it helps one to keep life balanced, focused, oriented toward God.” (Brother Roger of Taize.)

In order to identify a rule of life, we need to take time by ourselves to review honestly how we live our lives. In our lives all of us are aware of particular weaknesses which hinder our progress in living our lives fully in keeping with God’s will.  When we identify such a short-coming in our lives, our rule of life is the decision on a direction to resolve this.

A climber who wants to reach the peak cannot afford to wander aimlessly over the mountain – he must be clear about the paths he intends to follow.

It is the same with our spiritual journey – we need a clear sense of direction- we must detach ourselves from obstacles which weigh us down. The progress of our spiritual life is not continuous we must constantly stop and start again. This is why it is necessary to take on rules of life till they become habit, then take another and little by little we will remove from our lives the obstacles which hinder our progress. We should also add into our lives attitudes or habits which bring us closer to Christ-like living.

Our rule of life should be short, specific and written down. It should be personal and a free choice to which one commits oneself.

6. Annual Retreat.

“You must come to some lonely place all by yourselves and rest for a while.” Mark 6:31

We live in a world of constant busyness and demands. In order to see this world in a more objective way, we need to remove ourselves from our day to day life from time to time. Our annual retreat gives us this opportunity – to go away to a quiet place and to spend 2 or 3 days contemplating on some aspect of our spiritual lives; an opportunity to become closer to God. It is like an oasis in the desert where we can drink from fresh waters of the Spirit. It is like a banquet of rich food on which we feed our Spirit. To do a retreat as couple is particularly valuable, as after returning home they can share on the experience.