Wherein lies the distinction between a general and specific renunciation? Can we have a specific renunciation without the general renunciation? What exactly does it mean to give up our own will? Why is it important to get rid of even our non-sinful imperfections? Does God delight in our sufferings and mortifications? For those in a religious order, mortifications might come from the superior. But for the laity, should mortifications come from a spiritual director? Or from the customs adopted
Jul 5, 10:22 AM
Sister Susan Marie (Moderator): Or from the customs adopted by one’s family?
Jul 5, 10:22 AM
Sister Susan Marie (Moderator): Sun chat July 5 730pm est
Jul 5, 2:51 PM
Brian Bunny (Guest): Hi Sister Susan !!! Hope and Pray all is well !!! Still working 4-12 evening at the Hospital for awhile longer . All is going well sorry I have been unable to participate in Chat !!!! Thank You for all your Prayers and Encouragement !!!!! Keep Shining for Jesus !!!!! I miss you all and look forward to attending Chat when I Can !!!! God Bless You All !!!!
Jul 5, 7:12 PM
VisitationSiste: GLAD TO HEAR FROM YOU BRIAN
Jul 5, 7:33 PM
VisitationSiste: another slow night maybe I think we will change topics to our mystics what do you thin?
Jul 5, 7:33 PM
VisitationSiste: for next week?
Jul 5, 7:35 PM
Sr Jennifer (Guest): Yes I think that’s interesting
Jul 5, 7:36 PM
Sr Jennifer (Guest): Hi viewer
Jul 5, 7:38 PM
VisitationSiste: This book is not working too well
Jul 5, 7:39 PM
Sr Jennifer (Guest): Yes
Jul 5, 7:40 PM
VisitationSiste: I’ll stay til 8 only if no one else shows
Jul 5, 7:40 PM
Sr Jennifer (Guest): Good
Jul 5, 7:43 PM
Ruth (Guest): Again having difficulty signing in. Guest sign in worked.
Jul 5, 7:43 PM
VisitationSiste: Hi Ruth How are you feeling any better?
Jul 5, 7:43 PM
Sr Jennifer (Guest): Hi Ruth
Jul 5, 7:46 PM
Ruth (Guest): Feeling better, but requested an extension of deadline for
Jul 5, 7:46 PM
VisitationSiste: I will post the first q: Wherein lies the distinction between a general and specific renunciation?
Jul 5, 7:48 PM
VisitationSiste: deadline for?
Jul 5, 7:49 PM
Ruth (Guest): CME and still intermittently running a fever. Got COVID-19 test but told it may be a week before the results are back and I am not to enter the hospital — except in an emergency — even though I have or had multiple appointments on Monday and Tuesday. So I figured I’d better stay home from church, too, until we are sure I am safe for others to be around even with mask and social distancing.
Jul 5, 7:51 PM
VisitationSiste: I was worrying about Covid when you wrote you had flu like symptoms. I hope itis not! We will be praying!!!
Jul 5, 7:52 PM
Ruth (Guest): Thank you!
Jul 5, 7:53 PM
Sr Jennifer (Guest): I have been praying for you.
Jul 5, 7:53 PM
VisitationSiste: Last week there was only a few at chat as well I am seriously considering changing the topic for the next weeks to the Visitandine mystics
Jul 5, 7:55 PM
Sr Jennifer (Guest): Hi Callie
Jul 5, 7:55 PM
Callie Nowlin: Hi
Jul 5, 7:56 PM
VisitationSiste: I think renunciation is general could be renunciation of sin, and in particular a specific sin
Jul 5, 7:58 PM
Callie Nowlin: The desire and specific intention to avoid sin for the love of God verses rooting out a specific sin?
Jul 5, 7:58 PM
VisitationSiste: Yes I think so!
Jul 5, 7:59 PM
Ruth (Guest): Specific renunciations< it seems to me that is the nitty gritty of choosing in every here and now to serve the lord and do so as joyfully as possible> pardon the capitalization and punctuation errors> just started that a lot of it does not work properly just now> that”s what took me so long in responding> > > it is easy to say i WANT TO SERVE THE LORD> But then when what that entails faces us . . .
Jul 5, 7:59 PM
Ruth (Guest): Hi Callie! First time here? I was absent last week.
Jul 5, 8:00 PM
Callie Nowlin: Yes. Just taking it all in at the moment.
Jul 5, 8:01 PM
Callie Nowlin: But I am trying to remember which visitation group this is. I’m assuming it’s a member of the second federation, but that’s all I remember.
Jul 5, 8:02 PM
VisitationSiste: It is hosted by Second Federation but any Monastery Sister can join in with any one else who wants top talk spiritually
Jul 5, 8:03 PM
Ruth (Guest): Welcome! I’ve been a regular for, it must be close to five years now. Has helped me a lot. Maybe mostly in just not feeling so alone in my efforts to learn to Love the Lord and serve Him.
Jul 5, 8:04 PM
Ruth (Guest): Huh! The cap reversal seems to have “healed” itself. Hurrah!
Jul 5, 8:04 PM
Callie Nowlin: Ah. So the intention of this isn’t specifically vocations?
Jul 5, 8:05 PM
Ruth (Guest): Yes, Mystics would be a very interesting topic. I once started a Masters
Jul 5, 8:05 PM
VisitationSiste: It started out as a discernment chat to help people thinking about a vocation but siince others came along we have done works by St Francis de Sales as well
Jul 5, 8:06 PM
Callie Nowlin: Ok
Jul 5, 8:06 PM
Ruth (Guest): Thesis — wanting to address the seeming gap between what is knowable by scientific methods, direct, observable, measurable and what is knowable by mystical experience.
Jul 5, 8:08 PM
VisitationSiste: If you are discerning a vocation we can answer questions too
Jul 5, 8:08 PM
Ruth (Guest): I did earn my MA in philosophy from St. John’s U., NY but wound up writing on an entirely different topic. Profs felt that my topic was TOO original, and too difficult.
Jul 5, 8:10 PM
Ruth (Guest): Sometime it feels like my vocation is just to keep myself alive long enough to “get it right” and learn to trust God and show my love and His for others effectively.
Jul 5, 8:11 PM
VisitationSiste: Did you do any research on it at all?
Jul 5, 8:11 PM
Callie Nowlin: thanks sister but I’m Jn a listening And waiting mode of discerning.
Jul 5, 8:12 PM
Ruth (Guest): Callie, originally it was. Then we sort of branched out to reading various texts by St. Francis de Sales.
Jul 5, 8:12 PM
Ruth (Guest): Callie, that is GOOD. That is, really, I think the only way to KNOW.
Jul 5, 8:14 PM
Ruth (Guest): Well, maybe not the ONLY. Sometimes a person may THINK they have a “calling” to the religious life or to a specific community, and somebody else, whose opinion matters, has a different idea!
Jul 5, 8:14 PM
VisitationSiste: Yes learning HIS Will for you
Jul 5, 8:16 PM
Ruth (Guest): OR the other way around. It seems God has a way of lassoing some people who may be running in the opposite direction. Do you know the long poem “Hound of Heaven”?
Jul 5, 8:16 PM
VisitationSiste: Yes
Jul 5, 8:17 PM
VisitationSiste: What is the other way around?
Jul 5, 8:17 PM
Ruth (Guest): Love it!
Jul 5, 8:18 PM
Ruth (Guest): God so actively pursing a person who has not the least desire for a religious vocation . . . Like the Hound of Heaven.
Jul 5, 8:19 PM
VisitationSiste: There are others I am sure that I read of
Jul 5, 8:20 PM
Ruth (Guest): But then we are probably using the word “vocation” AS IF it only meant joining a religious community — Visitidines, Franciscans, Benedictines, Caremelites, etc. OR becoming a priest or a permanent deacon.
Jul 5, 8:21 PM
VisitationSiste: But we can expand to its fullness of meaning
Jul 5, 8:21 PM
Callie Nowlin: Testing
Jul 5, 8:23 PM
Ruth (Guest): Of course MARRIAGE is the more usual vocation. And even the single life, “in the world” can be — must be if we are to become Saints in this state in life — also a vocation. The Vocation of EVERY Catholic — every human being — is to become a SAINT. These other things actually refer to ones state in life.
Jul 5, 8:24 PM
VisitationSiste: Well put!
Jul 5, 8:25 PM
VisitationSiste: We move from one to the other sometimes as well, as did St jane de Chantal
Jul 5, 8:26 PM
Ruth (Guest): And Callie, we often do just chat about whatever is on our minds.
Jul 5, 8:27 PM
Ruth (Guest): I’d just been cut off; had to go hunting for the Chat site again.
Jul 5, 8:27 PM
VisitationSiste: It is time for me to leave. Please count on my prayers!
Jul 5, 8:28 PM
Ruth (Guest): Not sure what you mean by “testing” Callie. Are you still here?
Jul 5, 8:28 PM
Ruth (Guest): THANK YOU, Sisters! That means so much to me. And it is time to sign off anyway.
Jul 5, 8:42 PM
Ruth (Guest): I ate BEFORE the chat this time, but I still have dishes to wash and my back is telling me it is time to go to bed! Sr. Jennifer, it looks like we are the only two here just now. I hope you are growing in the Lord in your still rather new life at the Visitation Monastery. I was thinking specifically of you just the other night, in connection with the three monasteries we both visited, especially the one in Erie. All so different from one another!
Jul 5, 8:46 PM
Ruth (Guest): Most of my too long message just got cut off. There’s a limit on what one can put in a single message, and I never seem to know exactly where that limit is.
Good night, dear viewer, may you have a blessed week, and return a bit braver about possibly sharing on chat. The topic will probably be different, as Sr. Susan indicated: the mystics.