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8 min read

Faith

A Personal Relationship with Christ?

Karen Edmisten

March 17, 2023 8:36 pm March 17, 2023

8 min read

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8 min read

One can’t be a Christian in America without encountering the expression “personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” For many Catholics, this phrase is not a particularly accurate description of their faith. It conjures images of evangelical Protestants surrounded by the drumbeat of contemporary Christian music, or inspires visions of a lively service in a megachurch, with faith potentially reduced to an emotional response that’s been whipped up in the moment.

But is that an accurate description? Are Catholicism and “a personal relationship with Jesus Christ” mutually exclusive? When we set aside preconceived notions of what a “personal relationship” is, or what we think it is, we may be surprised to find there’s no need for opposing camps when discussing the truth about a relationship with Jesus Christ.

A common argument against the assertion that Catholics need a personal relationship with Christ is that such a thing is unnecessary or redundant. For some it would seem that so long as Catholics follow all the precepts of the Church, then we are already doing the personal work that is required of us.

Five Precepts

The five precepts of the Church require Catholics to attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation, to confess sins at least once a year, to receive holy Communion at least once (during the Easter season), to observe days of prescribed fasting and abstinence, and to provide for the material needs of the Church according to one’s abilities. These precepts are minimum requirements for life as a Catholic. The Church, a wise mother, gives us these precepts, which can sanctify us and draw us closer to Christ, much as an earthly mother tells her children to eat their vegetables in order to stay healthy and strong.

For Catholics, participation in the Church’s life reaches its culmination in the Eucharist, the most intimate gift the Lord can offer us on earth: His body, blood, soul and divinity. So, the notion that keeping the precepts places us in a personal relationship with God is correct. But does it stop there?

Pope Benedict XVI put it well at a 2008 audience: “We are only Christians if we encounter Christ. Of course, he does not show himself to us in this overwhelming, luminous way, as he did to Paul to make him the apostle to all peoples. But we too can encounter Christ in reading sacred Scripture, in prayer, in the liturgical life of the Church. We can touch Christ’s heart and feel Him touching ours. Only in this personal relationship with Christ, only in this encounter with the Risen One do we truly become Christians.”

All Christians are called to the authentic encounter — the relationship — of which Pope Benedict spoke. The Church’s precepts do not mention reading Scripture or developing one’s prayer life, but Pope Benedict and pontiffs before and after him have exhorted us to do these things. It seems as if the precepts presume the components of a relationship with Jesus.

The concept of a personal relationship with the Lord is an ancient one. In Deutoronmy 6:5, we are told to “love the Lord, your God, with your whole heart, and with your whole being, and with your whole strength.” Jesus repeats this command often throughout the New Testament, as can be found in Matthew 22:37, Mark 12:30,33 and Luke 10:27. The prologue of the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us: “At every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength” (No. 1).

The Judeo-Christian tradition is filled with the intimate relations of nuptial imagery, such as in the Song of Songs, likening our relationship with the Lord to the personal nature of the marriage relationship. Likely, we won’t dispute that marriage demands more than a bare-minimum fulfillment of marriage precepts, so why might some scoff at the idea that more is needed in our relationship with God? What spouse wouldn’t be appalled to hear, “We went through the ceremony, we’re legally bound — what more do you want?” Foundational aspects of true intimacy would clearly be missing: shared feelings, sufferings, joys and the depth of communication that reaches beyond casual friendship.

A marriage is grounded in commitment, regardless of feelings, as feelings will inevitably ebb and flow, and a relationship with the Lord calls for the same commitment, diligent attention and self-donation. And just as a marriage matures with every encounter, our relationship with Christ deepens as we encounter Him in Scripture, prayer and the sacraments, all of which serve to both nurture the relationship and anchor us when feelings fluctuate.

In comparing faith to a marriage, however, objections arise: “Isn’t there a danger that we will focus too much on feelings? Doesn’t all this talk of ‘relationship’ diminish the nature of God and elevate us to an undeserved level?”

Those are valid questions. It is prudent to acknowledge that our faith is not based on how we feel about the Lord. Objectively, God is God; we are His creatures and there is a gap between us that cannot be closed while still pilgrims on this earth. But the God who, out of pure love, brought us into being makes it clear — in Scripture, and through the teaching of His Church — that He desires great breadth and depth of love from His creatures.

“Love Affair”

In his book “St. Francis of Assisi,” G.K. Chesterton said, “To this great mystic [Francis] his religion was not a thing like a theory but a thing like a love affair.” That kind of language makes some Catholics nervous about “personal relationship.” But a love affair doesn’t mean losing ourselves in emotion or acting like a giddy newlywed. Authentic love is far more than initial infatuation. Real love is sustained through repeated acts of the will. We fall in love, we commit, and we promise to live out that commitment for the rest of our lives. Love is the anchor — in marriage and faith — that holds us in place when dryness, boredom and suffering set in. The initial consolations of both earthly and divine love fortify us for the future and ripen our souls for the richness that is to come.

Conversion, and a relationship with Christ, may begin with intellectual assent and obedience to precepts, but it needn’t stop there. Mature faith — like mature friendship, love and marriage — is a complex, organic entity, always growing. And just as human relationships vary in character, so will relationships with the Divine. They are neither “all about feelings” or “only about” keeping the precepts and receiving the sacraments. A faith life is not an either/or situation, but a both/and proposition.

Catholicism is a universal faith, lived and expressed in numerous ways. Witness the varying forms of spirituality, whether Benedictine, Dominican or Franciscan, among others. The Church approves them all. A personal relationship with Jesus Christ can look very different from one individual to the next. It’s not about choosing the camp of emotion versus the camp of solemn behavior. It’s about, as Pope Francis said: “Our own constantly renewed experience of savoring Christ’s friendship and his message. It is impossible to persevere in a fervent evangelization unless we are convinced from personal experience that it is not the same thing to have known Jesus as not to have known him, not the same thing to walk with him as to walk blindly, not the same thing to hear his word as not to know it, and not the same thing to contemplate him, to worship him, to find our peace in him, as not to” (Evangelii Gaudium, “The Joy of the Gospel,” No. 266).

Do Catholics need a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? If we can believe Scripture, the catechism, popes, the Fathers of the Church and the saints, the answer is “yes.” These have taught us that seeking an ever-deepening relationship with Jesus Christ is at the core of our faith. But we needn’t get bogged down in the semantics surrounding the issue. We can agree that a personal relationship is necessary without worrying about rigid illustrations of what that relationship looks like. From the charismatic college student to the elderly woman steadfastly praying the Rosary, from the hipster who loves chant or the middle-aged Knight of Columbus, personal relationships with Christ are unique, varied and impossible to label from the outside. The important point is that there’s nothing un-Catholic about pursuing the intimate bond that the Lord wants to have with each and every one of us. At its foundation, our connection to Jesus Christ is one of love. As Pope Benedict said in a General Audience in 2009: “Faith is above all a personal, intimate encounter with Jesus, and to experience his closeness, his friendship, his love; only in this way does one learn to know him ever more, and to love and follow him ever more. May this happen to each one of us.”

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6 min read

Prayer

Nine Days of Prayer: Why Pray Novenas?

Karen Edmisten

February 23, 2023 10:48 am February 23, 2023

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6 min read

Imagine this: With some trepidation about their future, a small band of people with a newfound faith commit to a period of intense prayer, out of obedience to their spiritual…

Imagine this: With some trepidation about their future, a small band of people with a newfound faith commit to a period of intense prayer, out of obedience to their spiritual master. He has left them seemingly on their own, promising something big on the horizon.

After they follow their leader’s instructions for nine days, God answers their prayers by acting in a singularly dramatic, transformative way. And the world is never the same again.

That’s precisely what happened to Our Lady, the apostles and the other early disciples of Our Lord. After His ascension they prayed, waited and perhaps even felt some anxiety over “losing” Him again.

But they also trusted and persevered. In the end, He rewarded them on the Day of Pentecost with the coming of the Advocate He had promised, the Holy Spirit (see Acts 1:1–2:4).

Jesus had instructed His followers to pray, and they obeyed. They were not disappointed.

Those nine days of prayer can be seen as the model for the Catholic tradition of the novena. A novena (from the Latin novem, “nine”) is a prayer, or set of prayers, prayed for nine days, hours, weeks or even months.

It is often prayed for a specific intention or grace and may be directed to particular saints for their intercession.

Sometimes non-Catholics, and even a few Catholics, may ask, “Why should we pray novenas?” The short answer is simply that Jesus Christ calls us to pray. In fact, He tells us to “pray always without becoming weary” (Lk 18:1), to pray with persistence.

We’ll never go wrong when we obey Christ. He promises that prayer works, and He often responds with electrifying results.

But that’s only the first, most fundamental reason why we should pray novenas. A look at the history of this tradition provides ample encouragement for making it a personal practice.

Historical Background

Over the centuries, four specific types of novenas have emerged: novenas for mourning, preparation, petition and indulgences.

Novenas of mourning are the earliest type. They probably grew out of an early Christian custom of offering nine days of Masses for the departed. The global Church witnessed such a novena in 2005 with the death of Pope John Paul II.

Preparation novenas are joyful and anticipatory. They look toward major feasts (such as a Christmas novena) or celebrate the founder of a religious order.

Novenas of petition developed historically among the laity. They most likely originated as petitions for good health and eventually became generalized to include requests for other needs as well. For instance, a novena to St. Hubert, for protection against madness caused by a dog bite, was first prayed in medieval times and is still prayed today.

Many other novenas of prayer, directed to saints for special intentions, have proliferated over time.

The final type of novena, the novena for indulgences, overlaps with the others. The Church offers partial and plenary indulgences for more than 30 novenas, including one of the most recent, the Divine Mercy novena.

If the Church has not only approved and recommended a variety of novenas, but has also designated certain novenas as a prerequisite for an indulgence, we can be sure that these prayers are much more than just an instance of popular piety.

The Church recognizes the special value of the novena, whose form is particularly suited to overcome certain tendencies of our fallen human nature.

Boon to Prayer Life

We concupiscent human beings tend toward laziness. Countering that tendency, the repetitive form of the novena can serve to intensify and reinforce our prayer life. It forms a habit of persevering prayer in those of us who, left to our own devices, may fall away from prayer despite the best intentions.

Fallen human beings also tend toward rebellion. We balk at being told what to do. But following a divine prescription such as a novena can be the perfect remedy for such rebelliousness.

In praying a prescribed set of prayers, for a prescribed length of time, we are drawn out of ourselves and our vanities and into prayerful concentration and obedience. In this way, our prayer time is kept on track, becoming more focused by observing a set form.

A novena can also release us from a false attitude that we are somehow in control of a situation and its outcome through our prayers for a desired result.

With its repeated appeal to divine aid, the novena recognizes that we are helpless without God, and that control of the situation is squarely in His hands.

We are like the desperate widow in Jesus’ parable who repeatedly asked the judge for help — whose humble, persistent petitions the Lord offers as a model in prayer (see Lk 18:1-7).

To suggest that with a novena we relinquish (rather than make a play for) control may contradict popular perceptions. After all, some novenas actually promise “never to fail” should we meticulously follow their directions.

Of course, such instructions (always tacked on anonymously) are little more than superstition. Novenas are not magic and cannot manipulate the Divine Will. After praying in a specific way for a specific number of days, we are no more in control than we were at the start.

Instead, we receive from God a result of His own choosing. Our part is simply to demonstrate faithfulness in our commitment to prayer.

That’s not to say, of course, that novenas aren’t powerful. They certainly are, as is any faithfully attended prayer. A novena may even lead to miraculous results.

So, even though the specific, “guaranteed” promises attached to a number of novenas needn’t be taken literally, they do reflect the confidence in this approach to petition that has grown through the experiences of millions who have received answers to their prayers.

Novenas Work

In short, novenas work, and we should pray them because they are a valuable form of conversation with God and His saints. They flow from faith, and God always attends to the prayers of His faithful.

We may or may not get what we want. But as we pray novenas, we are praising, preparing, waiting and trusting. And we will be rewarded, just as Christ’s first disciples were, in whatever way God sees fit.

Perhaps, then, what “never fails” when we pray a novena is that we always grow in faithful perseverance. And again, like the first disciples, we will not be disappointed.

Karen Edmisten is the author of “The Rosary: Keeping Company with Jesus and Mary” (St. Anthony Messenger, 2009).

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5 min read

Saints

St. Werburgh And Her Saintly Family

Karen Edmisten

March 18, 2019 11:14 am March 18, 2019

5 min read

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5 min read

Holiness tends to run in families. Many devout parents raise young men to look to the priesthood and pray for their daughters to consider consecrated life. Sometimes God even calls…

Holiness tends to run in families. Many devout parents raise young men to look to the priesthood and pray for their daughters to consider consecrated life. Sometimes God even calls more than one child in a family to religious life.

Rare, however, is the religious who can boast, “My mother was an abbess.” St. Werburgh, an Anglo-Saxon princess who became a Benedictine nun, and an abbess herself, could boast (though she never would) not only an abbess mother, but also a grandmother and great aunt who became abbesses, plus four other nuns in the family: her aunt and three more great-aunts.

All eight of these family members are venerated as saints.

Saintly Relations

Werburgh was born in Staffordshire, England, early in the seventh century. Her mother, St. Ermengild, was a pious, prayerful woman who married the pagan king of Mercia. Ermengild’s strong Christian influence transformed her husband’s life and that of countless others. The king became a Christian, and so did many in his kingdom.

When her husband died, Ermengild became a Benedictine sister at Minister-in-Sheppy, an abbey that had family connections: It had been founded by her mother, the abbess St. Sexburga. Eventually, Ermengild succeeded her mother as superior.

Actually, Ermengild was following in her mother’s footsteps. Sexburga had also become a nun after her husband’s death. After serving as abbess at Minister-in-Sheppy for several years, however, Sexburga yearned to grow in holiness through a quieter, more obscure life. She left Minister-in-Sheppy and placed herself under the authority of her holy sister, St. Etheldreda of Ely.

Nevertheless, obscurity was a luxury not granted to Sexburga. Her gifts of leadership dictated otherwise: She eventually succeeded Ethel-dreda as abbess of Ely.

Saintliness spread throughout this family. St. Sexburga’s sisters, St. Ethelburga, St. Saethryth, and St. Withburga, as well as her daughter, St. Ercongata, were all called to be nuns. So zeal for God was a natural and integral part of Werburgh’s everyday life as she grew up.

It’s hardly surprising, then, that Werburgh felt called to consecrated life. Though her beauty and elegance attracted a number of suitors, her strongest desire was to serve God as a nun. She eventually convinced her father to let her enter the Abbey of Ely, where she was trained by her great-aunt and her grandmother.

Saintly Gifts

Werburgh’s gifts of self-discipline, obedience and leadership were soon apparent. Her uncle, who assumed the throne after her father’s death, asked her to oversee all convents in his dominion.

Werburgh, like her grandmother, was drawn to solitude and desired to live an obscure life. But as with her grandmother, the Lord had other plans. Always obedient, she consented to His will and her uncle’s request.

The saint began her new role by reforming the convents. She also established new ones in Trentham, Hanbury, Staffordshire, Weedon and Northhamptonshire.

Many miracles are associated with the saint. It’s thought that she posthumously orchestrated the execution of her wishes regarding her own burial.

Knowing that all the monasteries in her charge would want to house her remains, she made arrangements to be buried at Hanbury. However, when she died in 699 at Trentham, the nuns there were determined to keep her. They stubbornly refused to transport Werburgh’s remains and even went so far as to lock them up and place a guard at the crypt.

The people of Hanbury, determined to honor the saint’s wishes, crept into Trentham late at night and marveled when all locks and bars fell open at their touch. Guards slept through the entire episode, and Werburgh’s body was spirited away to its resting place in Hanbury.

Due to the miracles and cures that occurred at the saint’s tomb, her body was exhumed in 708 to move it to a more accessible viewing place in the church. Werburgh’s brother, King Coenrad, was present and was stunned to see that his sister’s body was incorrupt.

He was so moved by what he witnessed that he experienced a conversion. Coenrad left his royal post and became a monk.

An Enduring Example

Werburgh’s remains were eventually moved to Chester, where a shrine was built to the beloved saint. She’s the patroness of that town, and a number of churches throughout England are dedicated to her.

When the shrine was destroyed (along with countless other holy sites) under the reign of King Henry VIII, her relics were scattered. Yet, amazingly, by the late 1800s, many parts of the shrine had been recovered and were reassembled. The shrine is still standing today in Chester Cathedral.

Though she lived in an age foreign to our modern sensibilities, St. Werburgh remains an enduring example of devotion, obedience and humility. Like her grandmother before her, she gave up her personal preference about how to serve God, instead doing as He willed. God gave her many gifts, which her family nurtured, and she, in turn, gave the gifts completely back to God.

Holiness does run in families. We may not all be able to boast a band of nuns in our lineage, as St. Werburgh could. But she and her saintly ancestors show us that living, teaching and handing down the Faith will always bear fruit, sometimes in sublime and miraculous ways.

Karen Edmisten writes from Nebraska.

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