Give God Permission: One Young Man’s Journey Into the Heart of the Catholic Church
How prayer, surrender, Mary, and the Holy Spirit led one 22-year-old from confusion and resistance to discovering his vocation and home wi
A Desire for Something More
My name is Jaxyn Flunder. I am 22 years old, and I am a member of the Seeds of the Word religious community in the Roman Catholic Church. Currently, I am in the stage of novitiate on the path of becoming a consecrated brother within the community and, God willing, further down the road, a priest.
The Catholic Church is like a garden with many different types of flowers, which can represent the many different charisms within the Church. This is the beautiful part of the Church: we are one body with many different members. If we each fulfill the purpose and calling that God has for us, we can complete the body, for there are no gaps in the Body of Christ.
Whether or not we are aware of it, we are all longing to find our place in the home of the Catholic Church, for it is God’s will for each one of us to live as members of His Church. This is not an easy process, but a very doable one by our willingness and desire to correspond to God’s will.
I would like to share a little bit with you about how God has helped me find my home within His Church.
Encountering Jesus Through the Sacraments
It has been just a little over three years since I began the process of reverting to the Catholic faith, personally encountering Jesus Christ through the sacraments of the Church, most specifically through daily Mass and Eucharistic adoration, as well as frequent confession.
Early on in my reversion, God filled me with a radical desire to give up the things of this passing world and pursue a life of seeking His will.
After five months of building a life of daily prayer through the sacraments of the Church, God led me to do a sabbatical year with the Seeds of the Word community. In my human understanding, I believed that I was going to do a sabbatical year and then God would call me to go to the diocesan seminary.
God had better plans for me…
“Why Not Here?”
Throughout the nine months of the sabbatical year, God proposed to me the question: “Why not here?” referring to me staying in the Seeds of the Word community.
Although I had many oppositions within me, I could not deny the fact that God had spoken and revealed His desire for me.
Long story short, through prayer and spiritual accompaniment, God made it very clear to me that the next step in my life would be to join the Seeds of the Word community for a candidacy year.
The Battle for God’s Will
Throughout my candidacy year, I faced many different internal challenges, most of them being exterior things that were distractions trying to take me away from God’s will.
The enemy of our souls likes to distract us with exterior things that are good but not necessary to fulfill God’s will. He will use them to try and pull us away from what is truly important: doing God’s will.
By God’s grace and will, He permitted me to pass through this combat so that I could better respond to His call.
Mary Opened My Heart
It was by the grace and help of our mother Mary that my heart was able to be opened up to the will of the Holy Spirit in my life.
Mary, being the spouse of the Holy Spirit, is the advocate of the Advocate and desires nothing more than for her children to do God’s will.
Through renewing my consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and reciting daily the Most Holy Rosary, Mary opened my heart to receive a new openness to the Holy Spirit.
Mary helped open my heart so that I could give God permission.
“Let It Be Done Unto Me”
I can truly say that without Mary’s intervention in my life, I would not have been able to answer this call. I also believe that she needs to play a role in each and every one of our lives so that we can give our fiat like Mary:
“Let it be done unto me according to your word.” — Luke 1:38
Mary is Immaculate, and she is the only member of God’s Church to be perfectly obedient to the will of God throughout her life.
If we desire to fulfill God’s will, we should be close to the Virgin Mary so that we too may learn to be obedient sons and daughters of the Father.
Trusting in Mary’s unwavering intercession, I entrust my vocation to her, knowing that she will help me fulfill the will of her Son moving forward to give my yes, day by day.
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FEATURE
Learning What It Truly Means to Be Catholic
Now, I am currently in my discipleship year as a committed member of the Seeds of the Word community.
If you were to tell me three years ago that I would be a member of a Charismatic community, I would have looked at you with a disappointed face.
Why?
Because of the many misunderstandings and illusions I had within my heart from what I heard from others, as well as my own preconceived notions of the Charismatic Renewal in the Catholic Church.
Mostly because I listened to the voices of other people expressing their own viewpoints and conceptions about the renewal rather than listening to the actual voice and will of the Church.
This caused a great distrust toward the Church and a division within me.
A “Current of Grace”
Thanks be to God, I can now say today that I am extremely happy and fulfilled to be a member of a Charismatic community within the Catholic Church.
St. Pope Paul VI described the Charismatic Renewal as a “current of grace.” Indeed, I have experienced this current through a life in the Holy Spirit with the Seeds of the Word community.
Living in this community, the Lord has begun a process of making all things new for me, as Jesus says in Revelation 21:5:
“Behold, I make all things new.”
The Seeds community has shown me what it truly means to be Catholic: to live a life centered on the sacraments of the Church and the Word of God that sustain and nourish a personal relationship with Jesus.
The Church Is Alive and Well
Jesus says in Matthew 16:18:
“And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”
The Church is alive and well.
The question is: Is our faith and trust in Jesus alive and well?
Jesus has given us His Church to have as our Mother and refuge, where we can realize the will of God in our lives.
Everything Begins With Encountering Jesus
In conclusion, everything needs to flow from a personal encounter with Jesus Christ.
If I do not have this encounter with the living person of Jesus, then I will have no desire to seek God’s will and listen to the Church.
Jesus has a personal call and will for each member of the Church, and it looks different for everybody.
The Church gives us all that we need to encounter the living God of Jesus Christ. We, on our part, need to take the step forward in trusting the Church in what it proposes to us so that we can live a life of intimacy with God, seeking His will.
Trust the Church. Trust God’s Process.
“The will of the Church is the will of God,” says St. Faustina:
“I will follow Your will,” St. Faustina promised the Lord, “insofar as You will permit me to do so through Your representative. O my Jesus, it cannot be helped, but I give priority to the voice of the Church over the voice with which You speak to me.”
— Diary of St. Faustina, 497
Whether or not you have found your home within the Church, we can all trust in God through His Church more, and in doing so we will all be gathered together as many members in the one Body of Christ, living together in unity as the Psalmist says:
“Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!” — Psalm 133:1
Trust God’s process and plan that He has for you, and live under the protection of obedience that Jesus gives to us through Holy Mother Church.
Obedience will save the world, as St. Paul says:
“For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.” — Romans 5:19
Without the Church and its protection ordained by God, we would be lost like sheep without a shepherd.
Most importantly, be open to the action of the Holy Spirit in your life and give God permission.
