Expert: Padraig Caughey - 2/7/2010

Question
I have been a catholic all my life. I am now 37 years old. I've been blessed with great family and friends and spiritual growth. I still struggle with the same things. I work 4 jobs and have struggled as where god wants me. In school i was always behind and was even tested for learning problems. A few years ago I felt inspired to write movies and so I have written two, but have not sold any. It is very difficult to sell scripts. I also feel a call to religious life. (Priest) I feel I need to complete a few more scripts first before further discernment. But I feel so angry at times and frustrating for not being succesful or having many usable skills. I pray the rosary every day, made cursillo, attend healing masses and go on retreats. but I have a lack of peace in me. could you recommand a meditation or prayer for a)where God wants me and b)to attach to god's graces and not my despair.   
Thank you
kevin murphy

Answer
Hi Kevin, good to hear from you.

I can greatly sympathise with what you write for I , I suppose with most people have ha so many dreams which never came to pass and I suppose never will now; to be a priest, a writer, a buisnessman, the list goes on.

One thing I always wanted to be, however was to be a saint. On French writer wrote that, 'The only failure in life is not to be a saint@ .Scripture agrees with this for it is written:

[b]Matthew 6:33
But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.[/b]

Every morning I wake up I realise how I am just at the very,very beginnings of the Road of Prayer but this only makes me happy for now I realise that this Golden Pilgrim Road is Eternal...and if the Road before me is as wonderful as it has been in the past, then I shall not have to wait for heaven for heaven has already found me out.


And so I found this Golden dream, this dream of following the path of the saints, no matter that  Fall a billion times a day is the dream of dreams and has swallowed my every other dream in its Golden Belly. Not that I still do not dream a little but they are distant echoes now. For I have discovered a very wonderful but sad fact. Wonderful in that I am the very happiest and most peaceful person I know. I wake up in the morning with a large smile on my face and fall asleep at night with the same happy smile stuck there, my heart sings all day like a little bird. Not that there is not pain, sometimes great pain and suffering, but beneath the Golden Sun of Prayer it always summer time and peace with a heart of prayerful love. The sad fact comes when I look around me and see the deep, the very,very deep sadness and restlessness of those around me who follow other dreams and climb other paths.

Do not loose your dreams Kevin, for dreams are precious. But fling them in the heart of God, the furnace of His heart of love and you shall them returned to you as precious jewels, glittering and golden transformed in His love. Follow the great path , the Path of Prayer. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and you shall find rest for your soul, follow the dream of dreams and seek to be holy , then all these other things shall be granted unto you.

[b]God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.

       --Reinhold Niebuhr

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