personal development on Fasting

More than any other Discipline, fasting reveals the things that control us. … We cover up what is inside us with food and other good things, but in fasting these things surface. If pride controls us, ...

O God, whose blessed Son did fast forty days and nights in preparation for his holy mission; beget in us, we beseech thee, the same desire which was in him to learn and do thy will. Forbid that throug...

Finding Grace in Lent The practice of Lent has become a place of grace for me over the last number of years. While some feel that Lent is a failure to recognize that our salvation is rooted in gr...

“Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the Lord your God, for he is...

So in the last three years, in order to reorient myself and head back onto the narrow way, I’ve given up social media and/or the internet for Lent. At first it’s agonizing. I’m like a caffeine or nico...

A life of prayer, fasting, and spiritual disciplines can easily be a life of empty religious effort if the goal isn’t communion with God. We don’t need self-improvement; we need to come home.

Healing begins at the place of hunger.

The more I use stuff to fill up my hungers, the more distance I put between God and myself. And as I continue to fill up my infinite hungers with finite things (when I run through the Starbucks drive-...

Good Father, we thank you for inviting us to your table. You invite us to your heavenly feast, but we don’t show up to the party. Rather, we ignore your invitation, we get distracted by other work we ...

With the global coronavirus pandemic in spring 2020, life stopped. Overwhelmed by the threat of a disease we couldn’t stop and for which we didn’t have the hospital capacity, everyone moved work and s...

Sabbath honors the necessary wisdom of dormancy. If certain plant species, for example, do not lie dormant for winter, they will not bear fruit in the spring. If this continues for more than a season,...

Desperate prayers may be an indication of spiritual health rather than a sign of spiritual deficiency.

Bread of Heaven, Bread of Heaven Feed me till I want no more.

Spiritual nourishment cannot be seen purely in our outward behavior. The process of sanctification is a deeply internal process. Outside growth is merely a symptom, and acting better does not mean our...

Yes, we mark our heads with ashes—public shows of piety are not in themselves evil. But we must guard our motivations and do most of our spiritual work in private, because the privacy of those acts re...

Ronald Rolheiser recounted an old Jewish folk tale. A young man, aspiring to be holy, approached his rabbi and said, “Rabbi, I think I have achieved sanctity. I fast from sunrise to sundown, work hard...

With the global coronavirus pandemic in spring 2020, life stopped. Overwhelmed by the threat of a disease we couldn’t stop and for which we didn’t have the hospital capacity, everyone moved work and s...

Christianity began in a culture where “desert” and “wilderness” were familiar environments, both respected and feared as the place where angels and demons might be found. In wild, desolate places God’...

Jesus said, "Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:33). We must honestly face the question, "Am I willing to give up a certain practice or ha...

The practices of solitude, silence and listening to God started to slow me down and enabled me to focus my attention more and more on coming to Jesus and following him rather than talking about Jesus ...

With the global coronavirus pandemic in spring 2020, life stopped. Overwhelmed by the threat of a disease we couldn’t stop and for which we didn’t have the hospital capacity, everyone moved work and s...

It’s not just what you eat that matters, it’s what eats you. You can have all the right macrobiotics and organic food, but if your body is filled with resentment, worry, fear, lust, guilt, anger, bitt...

Shabbat is like nothing else. Time as we know it does not exist for these twenty-four hours, and the worries of the week soon fall away. A feeling of joy appears. The smallest object, a leaf or a spoo...

Prayer without study would be empty. Study without prayer would be blind.

Eucharist [thanksgiving] is the state of the perfect man. Eucharist is the life of paradise. Eucharist is the only full and real response of man to God’s creation, redemption, and gift of heaven.

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread; and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. ...

George Fox as a youth was religious enough to meet all earthly standards and was even proposed as a student for the ministry. But the insatiable God-hunger in him drove him from such mediocrity into a...

Almighty and most merciful Father, giver of every good and perfect gift, we give you thanks for blessing us so richly with your good Word and the holy Sacraments, and supplying so abundantly all our d...

Sometimes the most urgent and vital thing you can possibly do is take a complete rest

Solitude is the most radical of the disciplines for life in the spirit. In penal institutions, solitary confinement is used to break the strongest of wills. It is capable of this because it excludes i...