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The ESL Times / December, 2001
"Spiritual Growth"
Never Alone: A Personal Way To God
Fr. Joseph F. Girzone
Doubleday 1994
By Hoang Nguyen
"I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me" (St. Paul). Living in our society, the ideas of spirituality seem vague to many people. Being Christian can make you concerned and identified to the idea of a spiritual life because every Christian is called to develop a good personal relationship with God. However, a spiritual life sometimes is very difficult for people to figure out. It is also hard to be able to start on a spiritual journey without any help from others. Never Alone, by American priest Father Joseph F. Girzone, is a spiritual self-help book which introduces basic ways to approach and to understand Christian Spirituality. Never Alone is a guide to help you, a Christian, to grow into an intimate relationship with our Lord, Jesus Christ; and it helps to direct you toward peace, satisfaction, and serenity. Never Alone helped me to recognize that the essential part of doing religious activity is to do those activities in an active way, thinking and reflecting on the reasons why you are doing something. Therefore, I have learned from Never Alone that I can only grow spiritually when I am doing my activities in an active, prayerful way, not by doing them in a passively unthinking way.
Never Alone is powerful as it not only helped me to grow spiritually, but it also helped me to get in touch with my inner self. Never Alone helped me to recognize the need for God in my own life. For example, Fr. Girzone distinguished between doing religious things and growing spiritually. He explained that: "Many people think that they grow close to God by performing religious practices and doing religious things. That is not spiritual...The spiritual life is something that grows slowly, imperceptibly, way beneath the surface of our lives." In other words, people can do many religious activities like going to masses, doing charity work, or participating in prayer group; and they still cannot find God in their lives. According to Girzone, one reason for that failure is because people do not practice their religious activities with a contrite spirit, a humble heart. They do not walk with God, nor do they let God work for them.
Never Alone will answer questions that you might have in your heart such as how you can understand the mystery of love that God has given to you, how you can get through the dark night of the soul, and how you can overcome your passions. It will help you to know where to start on your spiritual journey.
Father Joseph F. Girzone is an expert in helping people in their spiritual lives. He is a formal diocesan priest, who lives in Altamont, New York. Father Girzone studied theology and was ordained as a priest in Rome. He worked in the Vatican for a numbers of years. He returned to America and worked in many different places in New York City and Pennsylvania before he retired in 1981 and began his new career as a writer. His remarkable ideas brought him millions of readers. In 1995 Father Girzone established the "Joshua Foundation", an organization dedicated to making Jesus better known throughout the world. Among his books are the following: Jesus: His Life and Teaching, Joey, Joshua, Joshua and The City, and the newly released The Parables of Joshua.
Never Alone is an excellent spiritual self-help book. It is written for all people who desire spiritual growth. Father Girzone has done a wonderful job sharing some of his experiences with human friendship and with Jesus as friend. You will find a lot of joy and peace when you read Never Alone.
Priests of the Sacred Heart
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