About the Series, “Spiritual Difficulties.”

This series will focus on traditional spiritual analysis of
the passions and virtues, and the difficulties they present to our
own growth in desire for God and growing in divine likeness
that should be the goal of our life.
All these problems have a mountain of traditional experience,
analysis and beautiful writings to guide us. We should thank
God and our holy teachers in the faith for this store of wisdom
passed on to us, this extremely detailed instruction.
While traditional spiritual solutions involve restraint of
our appetites and desires as they are expressed in our
fallen world, they are oriented toward a greater and truer
affirmation of something beautiful and unlimited in the
spiritual world and the world to come. These disciplines
open to us the world and the human being as returned to
divine brilliance in God. These teachings are not a
rejection of the world. These spiritual disciplines involve
exercises that strengthen our “spiritual muscles” to
compete for the treasure that is hidden when a
disordered emotional temptation rules us. And that
hidden treasure, is beauty, life, love, and the divine light
that is obscured by the passions. Beyond every difficult
task of renouncing some pleasure or disordered pursuit
of an emotion, lies the true rich reward of finding what it
is to be human, to be whole and to be filled with the pure
love of God, our neighbor, and all of creation. These
spiritual exercises are like a song that we practice
singing, which tells of the divine gift of life, given again
to restore the world.