Bishop's Interview: Time with God is priority, even in summer

From the Catholic Spirit, June 2009, Good News

Editor: Bishop Aymond, summer is upon us! For many of us, making time for prayer can get lost in the dog days of summer. Will you share some tips with us on how to maintain and even increase our faith even though our routines are less structured during this time of the year?

Bishop Aymond: I remember a long, long time ago when I was in elementary school. At the end of each school year, our teacher would remind us that vacation from school and from the daily routine of the school year is not meant to be a vacation from God. Fifty something years later I still remember that. It was lovingly drilled into my mind and heart that God reaches out to us in the daily routine of life, whether it includes school, vacation or holidays, and invites us into a relationship. There is no time to take a vacation from God.

For most families, the summer months are busier than the school year. Summer includes vacation time, but it also includes summer camps, special projects, family gatherings, sometimes a trip here or there, Bible school and other events. Parents not only carry on their usual responsibilities of motherhood, fatherhood and work but also become chauffeurs, nurses, doctors, caregivers and teachers for their children.

But your question is a good one. With schedules that are more busy, how can we include God into our lives? May I suggest a few things:

In order to make time for God in our busy lives we have to have a hunger for our relationship with God as well as the discipline to set aside some time each day to talk to God from our hearts, to read Scripture or to say prayers that have specific meaning to us. Sometimes we, ourselves, say or we hear people say I don’t have time to pray. I wonder how that sounds to God? “God, I’m so busy and you have given me so many responsibilities I don’t have time to talk to you.” I don’t think that sounds right and I think God’s response would be, “Please let me into your crowded schedule because I want to tell you how much I love you. I want to show you my plan for you this day and how you can take advantage of caring for others and showing them love in my name.”

I suspect that during the summer we spend a lot more time in the car or walking to different events. I have learned, as I drive around the diocese, that those are some of the most profound times of prayer. Instead of talking on my cell phone or listening to the radio or being addicted to the news (which often isn’t accurate anyway), it is a great time for conversation with God. Also, our Family Life Office has put out a visor clip of questions that parents and children can talk about in the car that have to do with meaningful relationships within the family and also questions on sharing things that happen in our relationship with God.

There are some wonderful CDs out on prayer, spirituality and the Scriptures that can also help us as a family to share our relationship with God. The CDs are good for the car or for use at home.

While we will say that our lives become more complicated and busy and certainly they do, we can and must include God in our busy schedule and have the discipline to take time to be in conversation with him. When people we truly love say, “I don’t have time to spend with you,” we don’t take that very well. We certainly would never want to say that to God.

Editor: Can you give us some hints on how to start conversations about God and our faith when it comes to opening up and talking with our family?

Bishop Aymond: From parents to children simple questions like, “What does God look like to you? What do you and God talk about? In your heart, have you recently heard God tell you how much he loves you and how special you are?” In seeing a child do something good, to be able to say, “I am very proud of you and I know God is too because you are using the gifts that he has given to you.”

Between adults, it could be taking a Scripture passage and sharing thoughts about what that particular passage means to us or sharing with some level of openness and intimacy an experience that we have had of God. For married couples, to be able to spend just a few minutes at the end of the day thanking God for what has been good in that day and then asking God’s help in those troubled situations. For single parents, this could mean finding someone else to be a faith partner or prayer partner who will encourage them in faith.

There is an old slogan that says, “Families who pray together, stay together.” That is not just a slogan. There really is a lot of truth to it that when a family includes God in their lives there is a deeper level of relationship, of intimacy, among the family as well as with God.

Children do look to their parents to find an example of faith. That is why it breaks my heart when I hear about parents dropping their kids off for Mass or religious education on Sunday and they do not attend with them. Are they actually fulfilling their promise that they made at baptism that they would be the first and best teachers of their children in the faith? Parents who do this need to be reminded by others that God is giving them the strength to fulfill these important responsibilities and not to do so is unfair to the child.

Editor: Going to Mass away from our home parishes is sometimes difficult as a lot of us are taking vacations during the summer. How can we make the most of celebrating our faith in a community that is not quite what we are accustomed to?

Bishop Aymond: That is a very good question and it reminds us that as Catholics we are not only invited by God to celebrate Mass every Sunday but we hold that as a sacred obligation. We celebrate Mass on Sunday not primarily because we “get something out of it” or because “it makes us feel good.” We celebrate Mass on Sunday because we give praise to God for the very gift of life, for family and for the good that is in our lives. We also celebrate Mass on Sunday because we receive strength and guidance from the word of God, proclaimed in the Scriptures, and the Body and Blood of Christ given to us in the Eucharist. The obligation to celebrate Mass on Sunday is an important one and we should never take it lightly.

Statistics show that about 30 percent of Christians in the U.S. celebrate in a church on Sunday. If this is true, it is disappointing and families need to think about this important opportunity to pray together.

Certainly in traveling and in a different routine, it may be more difficult to find a church to celebrate Mass. That is when we are reminded that God invites us into relationship with him and sometimes we have to make a sacrifice in order to respond to his loving call. When traveling to another city or part of the same city that we are in, it does mean doing some extra research – making a phone call or using the Internet to locate a church.

One of the blessings of going to different parishes is that we see that although the Mass is the same in every Catholic church, there are some slight variations that can be nurturing for us. It is important when we go to other communities that we not judge the way in which they celebrate the Mass, but that we try to be part of that local family and celebrate joyfully with them.

Editor: Will you be able to take any kind of vacation or time off this summer and how will you spend it?

Bishop Aymond: I will and I must say that I look forward to that flexible time. The first week of July I will do a private, silent retreat alone. It is a wonderful time to be able to review the past year and to try to recount the ways in which God has loved me and used me as a shepherd to guide his people. It is also an opportunity to be able to look frankly at some of the things that I am not pleased with in my own life as well as my own weakness and sin, and to be able to make firm resolutions to become more open to the spirit of God. I look forward to this time of retreat. It is a time of refreshment and it is an opportunity to spend quality time with God for seven days and to be able to enter into prayer, reading the Scriptures and celebrating the Eucharist.

After my retreat, I will spend two weeks on vacation just visiting friends and family. Vacation for me is literally not having a schedule. To be able to wake up when I want and then to say at the beginning of the day, “what will I do today?” I need that kind of flexible quality time to re-energize myself and to be more attentive to the spirit of God working within me. Vacation for me is being able to focus again and center on how important people are and how God is a part of these intimate relationships.

Editor: What is your prayer for those in Central Texas this summer as many of us take a break from our normal schedules?

Bishop Aymond: My prayer for all of you within our Catholic family is that the summer will afford each of you, in a routine that is different, a deeper glimpse of the God who lives within you and the God who has made his dwelling within you. I also hope and pray that families will become more appreciative of one another and focus again not on their busy schedules and tasks but on the importance of relationships.

When we use the word “family” in the present time it can mean two parents and children, it can mean a married couple without children, single parents, parents who have adopted children, parents who have foster children and families who are struggling in relationship and there is a lot of tension. Whatever your family looks like God has invited himself to be a part of your family and he longs for you to say to him, “Stay with us, Lord.”