manupthebook

One of the people that has been a spiritual parent to me is Fr. Ken Geraci. Fr. Ken is a priest of the Fathers of Mercy in Kentucky. We only spent about two hours together but his influence has been profound.

People of faith believe that the human being consists of both a physical and a spiritual nature. The physical being mortal and the spiritual being eternal. Fr. Ken shared that life is a constant struggle between the spiritual and the physical.

Most of us spend our lives dealing with the physical and precious little time focused on the spiritual. Given the reality of eternity versus a short physical lifespan shouldn’t that be turned the other way around?

Fr Ken taught me that the real challenge is really 80 percent spiritual and 20 percent tactical.

By deepening our prayer life, spending time reflecting on the Word of God and strengthening ourselves with the sacraments, we begin to balance the scales. But realistically most of us can not spend 80 percent of our energy fighting the spiritual battle.

When we grow within our faith community, we pray for others and they can pray for us. When we pray for others and they pray for us, we help each other by recognizing and helping each other achieve the 80%.

Devotion to community and to prayer are two of the keys to being a stronger Disciple of Christ.