A deep and intimate relationship with God is not only for nuns and priests.
Father Scott Traynor, rector of St. John Vianney Theological Seminary, says a healing and abiding joy in Christ is within everyone’s reach.
This Lent, Father Traynor will lead a six-week series to give faithful the practical tools to turn their hopes for a personal relationship with the Trinity into reality.
“I want every participant to know that a life of real, deep, personal intimacy with God is for them,” Father Traynor said. “And I want them to come away from these nights with practical tools and knowledge that will allow them to enter more deeply into the daily adventure of growing intimacy with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”
The sessions will be held Wednesday nights starting March 12 at St. Thomas More Church in Centennial. There is no cost or registration required.
The new rector, who is an experienced spiritual director and seminary formator from South Dakota, has spent much of his priesthood helping people begin and deepen their prayer lives.
Once Father Traynor shared his passion for teaching people how to pray with Ben Akers, director of the Denver Catholic Biblical School, Akers suggested he offer a prayer series.
The series will focus on practical tools to help begin, renew or deepen a daily habit of personal prayer. An introduction on Ignatian discernment will also be given to aid faithful’s lived experience of the presence of Christ.
“Many people desire to grow in relationship with God in a daily habit of personal prayer, but don’t know where to start,” Father Traynor said. “Or they have tried to pray before and gotten stuck or discouraged and given up. The Church has a great wisdom in assisting each of us in a real lived experience of the presence, power and love of God in our daily lives.”
Christ himself has the desire to draw each person into real intimacy. Faithful can do their own part to respond by offering God all that’s in their hearts.
“If a person can say at the end of a period of prayer, ‘I came to God and honestly offered him whatever I found in my heart,’ they can rest assured they will be growing in real intimacy with God,” he said.
A person’s felt experience of God’s presence and love are gifts to be received graciously but are a “lousy measure” of the real depth and intimacy of a relationship with God, he said.
God has promised, as is read in Romans Chapter 8, that nothing can separate people from the love of God.
Father Traynor said these sessions will “encourage and equip the participant to place their hope in this great and precious promise of God.”
Lenten Series: “Growing in Intimacy with God: Prayer, Discernment and Healing”
Father Scott Traynor, J.C.L., rector of St. John Vianney Theological Seminary, will lead a six-week Lenten series.
When: 7 p.m. Wednesday nights, March 12, 19, 26-April 2, 9, 16
Where: St. Thomas More Church, 8035 S. Quebec St., Centennial
Cost: free, no RSVP required
Info: Call 303-715-3195
Five tips on growing in intimacy with God
1) Raise your awareness of what is going on in your heart; start paying attention to your thoughts, feelings, desires and memories at any moment.
2) Grow in the habit of choosing to entrust what’s in your heart to God honestly and consistently.
3) Strengthen your ability to understand which things in your heart are from God and which are not.
4) Learn how to generously receive what is from God and to vigorously reject what is not from God.
5) Grow in the assurance that God’s love is unconditional and is powerful to overcome any difficulty or obstacle.
