As I shared with you in the last issue of this article, I have come to understand that the call to holiness is a call to faith and personal transformation or change. Personal change or transformation really embraces a change in the way we think and behave, embracing the way that Jesus thought about God, life, creation and other human beings.

This being the case, then the very first thing we have to do in order to respond to God’s call to holiness is to honestly and sincerely assess what we think about these things (i.e., God, life, creation and others).

Last week I shared four ways of thinking that can block personal change and suggested that it is extremely important to examine what I think about my own life. I have found that most people don’t even question what they think about their life, being firmly convinced that what they think is correct and doesn’t need to be changed. The problem I have found is that what people think about life is so firmly repressed or truly suppressed that they are not aware of their thoughts until they encounter a serious challenge. It seems that it is only when humans have to face illness, the death of a loved one, failure, or serious disappointment that they even think about what it is that they actually think about their life. Very few people ask the question: What is the meaning and purpose of my life. Most of us just get so involved in living that we don’t even think about what we think about life.

Personal transformation, however, can’t take place until we sincerely begin to examine our thinking and actually reflect upon what we think about life. So the first challenge we all face is to take time and just think about our life. I say this because I have come to believe that the most important thing in my life has been to discover the meaning of my life. The questions that need to be asked are: Why am I here right now? What is my purpose in life? Why has God placed me here, especially at this time?

Hopefully my readers are beginning to see that the call to holiness is a call to personal reflection and introspection. One of the reasons I have come to this conclusion is the lives of the saints that I have read. Each of them spent much time in personal reflection, introspection and also   contemplation. Jesus did it repeatedly. True contemplation requires that I think about God and my relationship with Him. This requires, of course, that I formulate for myself an answer to these basic questions. Remember, the answers are not necessarily objectively right! The answers only need to be meaningful to me!
I am not here without a purpose!