Meeting 3 — How Do I Seek?

Tags: Seeking, Holy Spirit, Discernment, Truth, Text work, Discussion, Formative

Goal of the Meeting

Sharing the experience of one’s own search. Discovering the illusion between the declaration of seeking and actual seeking. The educational goal is to put to each participant the basic question: what are you looking for?

Notes for the facilitator

Today’s meeting concentrates despite everything on spiritual seeking. I identify this concept with “seeking in faith” very consciously. Threads of “methodology of seeking” in general cases were considered exhaustively at yesterday’s second conference. I also make certain analogies between seeking and waiting – even though these are qualitatively separate matters they are connected with each other. If I seek seriously I must be aware that not all answers will come immediately (part of the participants can/should be at exactly such a stage). The meeting may seem short, but it possesses about 10 sharing questions, there are about 8 participants and 90 minutes. This gives a minute per person if nothing else happened at the meeting.

Initial prayer

Lighting the candle: Ps 105:4

Introduction

• Did you manage to realize yesterday’s resolution? Was it difficult? Did it give you something?

Note

participants could give themselves an application that concerns a point of the retreat that has not been yet – then of course they do not answer

Would that you were cold or hot!

At the beginning let’s consider a fragment from the Apocalypse of St. John. Let participants after reading it speak out how they understand it.

And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write:

‘The words of the Amen,

the faithful and true witness,

the beginning of God’s creation.

I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot.

Would that you were cold or hot!

So, because you are lukewarm,

and neither cold nor hot,

I will spew you out of my mouth.

—Rev 3:14-16

Let’s try together with participants to conduct a characterization of attitudes listed in this fragment.

• What does it mean to be cold or hot? What does it mean to be lukewarm?

• How can each of these attitudes be characterized?

Let’s read a statement of a certain priest:

Paul Tillich believed that the most important border does not run between those who consider themselves believers and those who consider themselves atheists, but between the group of those who relate indifferently to questions that faith suggests – whether it is conventional atheists or conventional believers – and those who raise these questions – whether it will be believers for whom faith does not cease to be an “extraordinary adventure of seeking”, or atheists who in this or that way “wrestle with God”.

—Fr. Tomasz Halik

A lukewarm person is a person trying to hide their doubts and questions. Who does not want to seek because it is more convenient for them. In this text there are several intriguing issues – let’s discuss them:

• Have you ever tried to look in this way at “lukewarmness in faith”?

• Does faith suggest any questions to us? Or maybe due to the fact that from birth we are Catholics “everything is obvious to us”? What are these questions?

About the value of seeking

Our searches arouse many different emotions – we talked about this yesterday. Often it is impatience, anxiety, maybe even anger, sometimes joy. They are not assigned to whether we are looking for something material or spiritual. You can enjoy taking part in a treasure hunt in a field game, you can enjoy cracking the Holy Scripture. You can also be extremely nervous not being able to find an important document in the apartment or completely unable to answer the question about your own vocation.

One should clearly distinguish joy from seeking and finding! These are completely different things.

• Have you ever experienced anger in seeking?

• Have you experienced an “extraordinary adventure of seeking”?

• Which example was easier for you to find in your memory? Why?

In fact, the answer to this question discovers before us to what extent we are able to experience our seeking as something valuable in itself. It cannot be hidden that it is difficult. One should not get depressed when it does not work out for us. Let’s put a certain question by analogy (Artur: which appeals to me personally):

• Are we able to enjoy the hike to the top of the mountain itself and the view at the end or maybe we consider the hike as a “necessary evil”, which however is worth undertaking because of the beautiful view?

Let’s try to reach the “beauty of seeking/searching/waiting”. Let’s imagine another example. Each of you surely experienced something like this, that when you returned late home you already saw from afar in the window a slightly drawn curtain and the figure of your mom looking out for our return. Here the goal is our coming home. Mom’s waiting in the window – searching for our silhouette in the dark.

• What does it testify to that someone is looking for something/someone?

• What does seeking give to the person seeking? What does seeking give to the person sought?

Let’s notice that all this good takes place despite negative emotions: fear, anxiety, unrest, anger that we are not there yet etc.! However, these are emotions, they do not have moral value. In other words – good things can happen despite not cool emotions. It is the same in our searches! (Artur: this is not meant to be an encouragement for participants to return home late! ;))

Each of us is looking for something – we have been realizing this since the beginning of this retreat. Without talking about what we are looking for (if we do not want to) let’s answer ourselves a question that will show us how one can use this time of our “seeking”:

• What does/can my current time of seeking/waiting give me?

Note

important moment of the meeting, please dedicate enough time to it. If we think that there is such a need and possibilities then the question can be “moved” to the final prayer as part of thanksgiving for the fact that we can seek/wait and why. Of course from the context of the statement one can “guess” what matter it is about, but participants if they do not want to say it will find a way to express it more generally.

How do I seek?

Our searches are therefore something extremely important. We would like them therefore to be the best possible. The question arises – how to do it? How to seek well? We know perfectly well that seeking is a certain skill that can be mastered to a better or worse degree. Not everyone will find information in google equally quickly, just as not everyone uses an encyclopedia with the same efficiency. Let’s try to talk a little about this - How to seek? Let’s start by listening to a fragment:

Human beings are not made to live alone. They are born into a family and in a family they grow, eventually entering society through their activity. From birth, therefore, they are immersed in traditions which give them not only a language and a cultural formation but also a range of truths in which they believe almost instinctively. Yet personal growth and maturity imply that these same truths can be cast into doubt and evaluated through a process of critical enquiry. It may be that, after this time of transition, these truths are “recovered” as a result of the experience of life or by dint of further reasoning. Nonetheless, there are in the life of a human being many more truths which are simply believed than truths which are acquired by way of personal verification. Who, for instance, could assess critically the countless scientific findings upon which modern life is based? Who could personally examine the flow of information which comes day after day from all parts of the world and which is generally accepted as true? Who could reconstruct the paths of experience and thought which have yielded the treasures of human wisdom and religion? This means that the human being – the one who seeks the truth – is also the one who lives by belief.

—John Paul II – Encyclical “Fides et Ratio”

• In what way do we look for an answer to the question that faith suggests to us? Where do we reach? Who do we listen to? Do we act completely independently?

• Do we have any of our “favorite sources of information”? (e.g. writings of St. Francis, Pocket Catechism, Encyclicals, friendly priest, Google, animator)

Note

this point should be appropriately paraphrased depending on the group’s answer. If they did not list the Holy Spirit one should not point it out to them on the principle “aha! Got you!!!!” – that’s not the point.

Did we list the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is the light of our heart, indicates the way, is the source of inspirations in our life, which suggest in which direction we are to go. Among believing people often around the Holy Spirit there are many “paradoxes”. On the one hand we pray to him “most often”, on the other hand often we do not believe in his real action. We succumb perhaps to the attitude “The Holy Spirit can cause movement in prayer, but let me know if I should …… – no, that’s my business”.

• Who is the Holy Spirit for you? Do you direct yourselves towards him with your searches?

• Do you look for an answer in Him or do you look for an answer together with Him? (“replacing oneself with God in my decisions”)

Note

this question is a slippery matter [God knows all answers so he does not seek them] – I leave it in the outline, because I think you feel what I mean and if needed you will be able to say it appropriately)

We spoke yesterday at the meeting about a certain dynamics of seeking. If we seek all the time then we are open to surprises, changes, breaking “what seemed to us”. Let us read:

That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, “What is this conversation which you are holding with each other as you walk?” And they stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” And he said to them, “What things?” And they said to him, “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since this happened.”

—Lk 24:13-21

• Why did the apostles speak such a sentence? (because they stopped seeking)

• Have you experienced something similar, that you pigeonholed something and then were sincerely surprised as it turned out that you did it wrongly?

I seek being open to surprise

Being “constantly open” to surprise is being a man of faith. This surprise does not have a negative connotation. Every such “surprise” is a deeper discovery of some truth. See perhaps yourselves!

• Do you associate any fragment of the Holy Scripture saying that as long as we are on earth then seeking should be something normal for us?

Let us read:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels,

but have not love,

I am a noisy gong

or a clanging cymbal.

And if I have prophetic powers,

and understand all mysteries

and all knowledge,

and if I have all faith,

so as to remove mountains,

but have not love, I am nothing.

If I give away all I have,

and if I deliver my body to be burned,

but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind;

love is not jealous or boastful;

it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way;

it is not irritable or resentful;

it does not rejoice at wrong,

but rejoices in the right.

Love bears all things, believes all things,

hopes all things,

endures all things.

Love never ends;

as for prophecies, they will pass away;

as for tongues, they will cease;

as for knowledge, it will pass away.

For our knowledge is imperfect

and our prophecy is imperfect;

but when the perfect comes,

the imperfect will pass away.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child,

I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child;

when I became a man,

I gave up childish ways.

For now we see in a mirror dimly,

but then face to face.

Now I know in part;

then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.

So faith, hope, love abide,

these three; but the greatest of these is love.

– 1 Cor 13:1-13

This fragment is of course very well known to everyone and maybe that’s why it’s hard to notice these verses “as if not fitting there”. When we open the Hymn to Love we often look for what we would like in it, bypassing what is in it! Let’s try “to be surprised” reading what the Scripture says to us:

• What do these “misfitting” verses speak about?

• Are they surely “misfitting”? How would we read them in the context of the Hymn to Love?

Yes – being on earth we will never know the Truth to the end. However, this does not mean that we cannot do anything here. Do we consider that when we love someone for 3 years we already know to the end what love is? No! In 15 years we will say that our love from that time was still so immature, we knew so little about it yet. But both our love here and now and the one as we will understand it at the end of our life and with the whole baggage of experiences of struggles/prayers/conversations is the same and comes from God!

St. Paul says “I see in a mirror, dimly, I know only a part” right next to “if I have not love, I am nothing”. This never excludes each other… it complements. Therefore continuous seeking is something normal… is a way.

Application

As an application from this meeting let’s make a resolution in connection with something we are currently looking for, that we will try to treat it as a gift, and not as an obstacle in our life. (Partly immediately to be realized at prayer after the meeting)

Prayer

Spontaneous prayer of thanksgiving for the fact that we can seek/wait. For all gifts that we received thanks to this (discovered (e.g. character traits) and undiscovered). Mention also all those seeking their first meeting with God, so that they find responsible people of the Church who will testify about the Creator.