"I am an Atheist"

 I was walking across the day room at the Loadstar Day Resource Center when I saw him sitting in a chair looking absent-mindedly at the floor. I approached him and greeted him. We exchanged names. “How long have you been here.” “About a week.” “What is your plan to get out of here.” “I am permanently homeless. I lost my apartment about three weeks ago over a misunderstanding. I have been homeless before. What do you do here?” “I am the chaplain here.” “I am an atheist.” “Oh, that just means you don’t believe what I believe. What do you believe?” “I don’t believe anything.” “Really? Did you have breakfast this morning?” “Yes, it was pretty good over at St. Vincent’s. Biscuits and gravy.” “While you ate breakfast you were believing it was good for you. You believe something.” “I am an atheist.” “Okay, but you believe something just like the people whose bumper sticker says, ‘I believe I’ll have another beer.’” We both laughed. “What can you do for me?” “I can listen to you, talk to you, pray with you.” “Okay.” “You seem like a very intelligent man. I would like to talk to you some more. Please come by and we can have a coffee together and talk” (pointing to my office door). “I like to drink coffee and talk.” Pray that Tom will come by for a coffee and further conversation.

Ron Friesen (c) 2020

An Anointing

One Tuesday as the group was gathering around our tables in the Rev. Gerald Roseberry Conference Room, in the offices of the Ecumenical Chaplaincy for the Homeless, one of the participants, “George” asked me if I wanted to be anointed as he pulled out a 12 ounce, green-colored bottle of olive oil out of his backpack. I said, “Yes. Is this like the anointing of Moses and Aaron? Are you planning on anointing me from the top of my head?” As I walked toward George, he poured a cap-full of olive oil into his hand. I was grateful. He then took his finger and tabbed it into his cupped-hand and proceed to anoint on my forehead while praying a blessing over me and my ministry. Among people experiencing homelessness are people of faith who want to receive and give ministry.

Ron Friesen (c) 2020

God Hears Our Prayers

Last Tuesday, Bobbie came to our Bible study. On Thursday, she returned. “I was told you would pray for me.” We talked a while about her circumstances. She lost her place to live and her job after she returned to her past use of drugs. She has contact information for her family but she feels distant from them. “I don’t think they will return my calls.” She told me that she had an interview for a job at a Call Center on Wednesday. I said, “Let’s pray.” As I was praying for a favorable response from the interview, Bobbie’s phone rang. We stopped praying as she answered the phone. She hung up the phone with, ‘I got the job!”  I rejoiced with Bobbie and ask Carol, our office manager, to join me in praying a prayer of thanksgiving for the job. 

2019 © Ronald Friesen

God's Endless Love

"God cannot cease to love me. That is the most startling fact that our doctrine reveals. Sinner or saint He loves and cannot well help Himself. Magdalen in her sin, Magdalen in her sainthood, was loved by God. The difference between her position made some difference also in the effect of that love on her, but the love was the same, since it was the Holy Spirit who is the love of the Father and the Son. Whatever I do, I am loved. But then, if I sin, am I unworthy of love? Yes, but I am unworthy always. Nor can God love me for what I am, since, in that case, I would compel His love, force His will by something external to Himself. In fact, really if I came to consider, I would find that I was not loved by God because I was good, but that I was good because God loved me. My improvement does not cause God to love me, but is the effect of God's having loved me."

— Fr. Bede Jarrett

What is your Confidence in?

"Our confidence in God must be founded on His infinite goodness and on the merits of the Passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, with this condition on our part: that we should preserve and recognize in ourselves an entire and firm resolution to belong wholly to God, and to abandon ourselves in all things, and without any reserve, to His Providence. Observe that I do not say that we must feel this resolution to belong wholly to God, but only that we must have it and recognize it in ourselves; we must not concern ourselves with what we feel or do not feel, since the greater part of our feelings and satisfactions are only the movements of self-love. Neither must it be supposed that in all this practice of abandonment and indifference, we shall never have desires contrary to the will of God, or that nature will never shrink with repugnance from the dispositions of His good pleasure, for these will often occur. The virtues of abandonment and indifference reside in the higher region of our soul; the lower region, generally speaking, has nothing to do with them. We must remain at peace, and paying no attention whatever to what that lower nature desires, we must embrace the divine will and unite ourselves to it—whatsoever this may entail. There are very few persons who reach this height of perfect self-renunciation; nevertheless, we must all aim at it, each according to his little measure."
— St. Francis de Sales, The Art of Loving God, p. 22-23

Live Intentionally!

"It is necessary to have an absolutely sure intention in all our actions, so that the generous fulfillment of our daily duties may be directed toward the highest supernatural ideal. Thus, our life, apart from moments of prayer, will be a prayerful life. It is clear that the habit of giving an upward glance to God at the moment of action is a great assistance in aiding us to behave always with a pure intention and in freeing us from our natural impulses and fancies, so, that, retaining our self-mastery, or rather, God becoming the sole Master, all our movements become dependent upon the Holy Spirit. We see in the Gospel that whenever our Lord was about to undertake some important step, He always paused for a moment to raise His eyes to Heaven, and only after this moment of recollection did He take up the work He had to do. 'He lifted up His eyes to Heaven' is a phrase that recurs with significant frequency. And doubtless, when there was no outward sign of this prayer, there was the inward offering. The ideal is the same for us. The constant subjection of self to the guidance of the Holy Spirit is made easier from the fact of His presence in the soul, where He is asked explicitly to preside over all our doings . . .  We shall not submit wholeheartedly to the invisible Guest unless He is kept in close proximity to us."

— Raoul Plus, S.J.,How to Pray Always, p. 37-8  

Oh, why? Oh, why?

"Let us pass on now to the other question—namely, what you can do to strengthen your resolutions and make them succeed? There is no better mean than to put them into practice. But you say that you are still so weak that, although you often make strong resolutions not to fall into the particular imperfection of which you want to cure yourself, no sooner does the occasion present itself than down you go. Shall I tell you why we are still so weak? It is because we will not abstain from food that does not agree with us. It is as if a person who wished to be free from pains in the stomach were to ask a physician what he should do. The doctor replies, 'Do not eat such and such food, because it brings you pain'; and yet the person will not abstain from it. We do the same. For example, we should like to love reproof, and yet we obstinately cling to our own opinions. That is foolishness. You will never be strong enough to bear reproof courageously while you are nourishing yourself with the food of self-esteem. I wish to keep my soul recollected, and yet I will not restrain all sorts of idle thoughts: the two things are incompatible. Ah! How much I wish that I could be steadfast and regular in my religious exercises; at the same time I wish not to find them so trying—in fact, I want to find the work done for me. That cannot be in this life, for we shall always have to labor."

— St. Francis de Sales, The Art of Loving God, p. 97