Don’t Need Virtue??

Gem from last Sunday
“Don’t try to protect yourself against God by thinking you need to know how to [pray] or being afraid that you don’t know how to do it. Anyone can do it. God does it. Simply be there and let God do it. Prayer is God’s business, not our business. All he wants is to give himself to us. We just have to be there to receive him.”

More Sister Wendy wisdom for you today!
“You don’t need any special virtues,” says the good Sister, “God will draw you into those virtues.”

What? Don’t need virtues?
Don’t we need justice, self-control, courage, prudence, faith, hope, and love? Isn’t that what Virtue Connection is all about—learning how to grow our virtues so we can be like Jesus and get to heaven, taking as many people with us as possible?

Yes and yes. But before all that, Sister Wendy puts trust in God first. Trusting him to speak to us in silence and to draw us into all the other virtues.

First trust
If building our trust in God is the way to make all the other virtues possible, how do we do that?

Sister shares the eye opener she got at her First Communion:

“I had gotten into my head—or maybe [we were told]—that Jesus would speak to us. I was all agog to hear Jesus speak. I can remember as though it were yesterday, coming back from the altar rail intent to hear Jesus speak. And after a little bit it dawned upon me when there was only silence, That’s how he speaks! He speaks in silence! And that has held me in God’s light all my life: the knowledge that we don’t need anything except just to open ourselves and to let him speak in silence.”

Gotta-have virtues
Ah, so simple. But most of us have less time to spend in silent listening to God than dear Sister Wendy does. So we may need a little more help growing in all the virtues that God wants so much to give us.

I like to call gratitude, prayer, and patience the three “gotta-have” virtues that increase our trust in God, which is job #1.

In the next few weeks, we’ll investigate the “gotta-have” virtues and some “kick-start” ways to open ourselves to them. Meanwhile, scroll down and let me know if you want a webinar (a live presentation that you “attend” on your computer) on gratitude, prayer, and patience—I’d be happy to offer one later this year. Let me know what days and times are good for you!

Love always,
Rose

Read the whole interview with Sister Wendy in the October 2013 issue of St. Anthony Messenger.