Catholic Mindfulness can bring peace to your mind as you learn to pay attention to the present moment.
The Restless Mind
I think it’s safe to assume we all want to experience peace in our lives (and could probably use a little more of it these days).
Beyond wanting more peace, so many people have expressed to me their desire to tangibly feel loved by God – to be able to truly rest in His presence.
Our brains can make this so difficult, though. I’m sure you can relate to the following scenario: You go to prayer or attend Mass… after a little while though, you start thinking about the conversation you had with your spouse/friend/sibling/child that didn’t go so well.
Now you’re trying to solve the problem in your mind by thinking of all the things you could’ve said and you begin to worry that your relationship is in trouble.
Before you know it, your prayer time or Mass is over, and you’re more anxious than you were before it began!
In his incredible book He Leadeth Me, Servant of God Fr. Walter Ciszek accurately describes this phenomena when he writes “The human mind is restless and it cannot be confined. It will go on, every waking hour, thinking of something, or dreading some future happening with present fear and anxiety. You can control this restlessness, you can channel it, but you cannot stop it.”
We need some practical means of getting control of our ruminating mind so as to turn it more easily to the things of God.
Catholic Mindfulness is a tool that we can use for this.
Catholic Mindfulness
Mindfulness is simply “paying attention to the present moment without judgment or criticism,” and there’s tons of research showing its effectiveness at treating multiple forms of mental illness.
It is primarily a brain exercise that trains our “focus muscle” – a psychological skill we can learn to help us control what’s between our ears.
Catholic Mindfulness grounds all of this research and practice in a context that goes beyond psychology. My goal in creating it was to take the tool of mindfulness and parlay it into a deepening of Christian faith!
We can take the skill of learning how to control our mind and focus on the present moment and apply that to prayer or to adoration in the chapel, to meditating with intention, to going to Mass and hearing the whole homily, or entering deeply into the liturgy with full intention.
Catholic Mindfulness is all about coming back to an awareness of the presence of God; when we connect with Him in the present moment, that’s where Divine Intimacy happens. This translates into deeper peace and a felt experience of God’s love.
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Interested in learning more about Catholic Mindfulness?
Check out Catholic Mindfulness Virtual Retreat: an 8-week online retreat comprised of daily videos and reflection questions that deliver all the concepts of Catholic Mindfulness in bite-size chunks. Now available on the Integrated App!
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