Jeremy P. England

2024-10-02 - Week 6 Forum Post - Third Meditation rewritten

7 min read

Rewritten Meditation

Group Focus: Late High School/Young Adult Small Group Focus: Being a good steward of what you have.

Opening

  • Take 3 deep, slow breaths, leader says “Holy Spirit, you are welcome here”
    • Pause for at least 60 seconds to pray in silence
  • Say: “Holy Spirit, draw us close to you, form our hearts to be full of love and grace.”
    • Pause for at least 60 seconds to pray in silence

Lesson

Teaching

  • Read: 1 Corinthians 12:1-11
    • Ask the group if a word, phrase, thought, or idea came from the reading
  • Ask the people in the group to consider what they are good at.
    • It can be unique, exciting, adventurous, or even seemingly boring
  • Invite some people to share their answers
  • Ask the people in the group to consider what they may have an abundance of.
    • It can be money, time, energy, skills, yarn, etc.
  • Invite people to share their answers.

Activity

Split the small group into smaller groups of 2-3 people

  • Each smaller group reread 1 Corinthians 12:1-11
  • Share in their smaller groups their answers to their skills and their abundances
  • Working together answer these questions:
    • In your local church context, in which ways can you use your skills to point people towards God?
    • In your local church context, how can you use your abundance to point people towards God?
    • Is there something new that you can do with your skills that is not being done in your local church context?
    • Is there something new you can do with your abundances that is not being done in your local church context?

Reflection

  • Bring group back together
  • Invite people to share any activities or insights from their smaller group sessions
  • Ask the group: “Why is it important to know your skills and abundances?
    • Read 1 Corinthians 12:12-31
      • Each person is important to the Kingdom of God. Everyone has a purpose in the body of believers to point people to Christ.

Thanksgivings

  • Take a comfortable position of prayer
  • Invite people to take 3 big-slow breaths.
  • Say: “Holy Spirit, thank you for your presence with us. Thank you for how you have gifted each of us. Let us give thanksgivings for these gifts.
    • You can either leave silence here, offer people a chance to name what they are thankful for, or give thanks for someone else in the group and their gifts
  • After hearing the thanksgivings, say: Lord we thank you for thinking of us each and giving us unique ways to build your Kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven. Help each of us to find clarity in how we are to serve you. Amen.

Additional Considerations

  • Optional activities:
    • Do the group activity together if the group is small enough
    • If the small group has a strong identity, seek clarity and guidance in what it can do in reference to the small group questions
    • Go through this activity again and see if a pattern emerges, and seek to start something new from the gifting and skills of the group members.

I picked this meditation because we have a seemingly big identity crisis in our world. With the rise of media in all capacities trying to sell something, or a vision of something, we can lose who we are as a people of God. And then, when we being to follow Jesus, we look at those who have been in the faith before us for many years and decide it may be too difficult to go from nothing to everything. But as Francis de Sales writes:

But you see before you the mountain of Christian perfection, which is very high, and you exclaim in fearfulness that you can never ascend it. Be of good cheer, my child. When the young bees first begin to live they are mere grubs, unable to hover over flowers, or to fly to the mountains, or even to the little hills where they might gather honey; but they are fed for a time with the honey laid up by their predecessors, and by degrees the grubs put forth their wings and grow strong, until they fly abroad and gather their harvest from all the country round.1

In choosing how to rewrite this meditation, I wanted the targeted group be able to move from having an assigned identity (the “youth”) to seeing that they are gifted by God to do good things. These questions and activities allow others to move from identifying, to embracing, and finally doing. Working together in a group, allows others to edify and confirm gifts from God. Much of the consideration and conclusion from the original meditation can be covered in the prayer time, so the activities should help give some more impact for the group.

Original Meditation

CHAPTER XI. THIRD MEDITATION.

Of the Gifts of God. Preparation.

  1. PLACE yourself in the Presence of God.
  2. Ask Him to inspire your heart.

Considerations.

  1. Consider the material gifts God has given you—your body, and the means for its preservation; your health, and all that maintains it; your friends and many helps. Consider too how many persons more deserving than you are without these gifts; some suffering in health or limb, others exposed to injury, contempt and trouble, or sunk in poverty, while God has willed you to be better off.

  2. Consider the mental gifts He has given you. Why are you not stupid, idiotic, insane like many you wot of? Again, God has favoured you with a decent and suitable education, while many have grown up in utter ignorance.

  3. Further, consider His spiritual gifts. You are a child of His Church, God has taught you to know Himself from your youth. How often has He given you His Sacraments? what inspirations and interior light, what reproofs, He has given to lead you aright; how often He has forgiven you, how often delivered you from occasions of falling; what opportunities He has granted for your soul’s progress! Dwell somewhat on the detail, see how Loving and Gracious God has been to you.

Affections and Resolutions.

  1. Marvel at God’s Goodness. How good He has been to me, how abundant in mercy and plenteous in loving-kindness! O my soul, be thou ever telling of the great things the Lord has done for thee!

  2. Marvel at your own ingratitude. What am I, Lord, that Thou rememberest me? How unworthy am I! I have trodden Thy Mercies under foot, I have abused Thy Grace, turning it against Thy very Self; I have set the depth of my ingratitude against the deep of Thy Grace and Favour.

  3. Kindle your gratitude. O my soul, be no more so faithless and disloyal to thy mighty Benefactor! How should not my whole soul serve the Lord, Who has done such great things in me and for me?

  4. Go on, my daughter, to refrain from this or that material indulgence; let your body be wholly the servant of God, Who has done so much for it: set your soul to seek Him by this or that devout practice suitable thereto. Make diligent use of the means provided by the Church to help you to love God and save your soul. Resolve to be constant in prayer and seeking the Sacraments, in hearing God’s Word, and in obeying His inspirations and counsels.

Conclusion.

  1. Thank God for the clearer knowledge He has given you of His benefits and your own duty.

  2. Offer your heart and all its resolutions to Him.

  3. Ask Him to strengthen you to fulfil them faithfully by the Merits of the Death of His Son. OUR FATHER, etc. Gather the little spiritual bouquet.

Footnotes

  1. Sales, Francis de.Introduction to the Devout Life. Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, n.d. https://ccel.org/ccel/desales/devout_life/devout_life?queryID=39703112&resultID=725. 179 ↩

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