Category: prayer

“Not ashamed to pray”

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

Today’s Sunday-poem is by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

                Divina Commedia (1)

Oft have I seen at some cathedral door
   A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
   Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet
   Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er;
   Far off the noises of the world retreat;
   The loud vociferations of the street
   Become an undistinguishable roar.
So, as I enter here from day to day,
   And leave my burden at this minster gate,
   Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,
The tumult of the time disconsolate
   To inarticulate murmurs dies away,
   While the eternal ages watch and wait.

Remembering all that God has done for us

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

Pope Benedict XVI has been giving a series of talks on prayer recently in his Wednesday audiences.  I am including an excerpt below from August 17 in which he spoke about Mary as a model for us of a woman who truly pondered God in all things.  (If you are interested in hearing a talk that I gave recently on remembering God throughout the day, go to the Talks tab above.  Click on “Other Talks” and then on “A Thousand Times a Day.”)  Continue reading “Remembering all that God has done for us” →

“It is ours to be gazed upon . . .”

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“This is a story told of a mother and her little daughter in Trinidad.  They are the poor of the earth, and the mother takes great care each evening to launder the one well-worn dress that her daughter wears to school day after day.  Each morning, as the little girl leaves the front door to set off for class, her mother asks her to stop and turn toward her for a moment.  ‘Just stand there.  I love to look at you.’

“Contemplation is a way of looking, a way of seeing.  The more I see, the more I love.  And the more I love, the more I see.  Seeing by loving; loving by seeing.  But the one caught up in contemplation knows that it is not only I who look and gaze and behold; it is the Other, whose name above all naming is Love, who gazes upon me.  A beloved child hears the word of a mother: ‘Just stand there.  I love to look at you.’  It is ours to be gazed upon . . . even while gazing.”  (Michael Downey, The Heart of Hope)

Three necessary prayers

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

I have been reading Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge, and one sentence has been following me around for days.  One of the characters has a conversation with a man who is seen as a bit of an eccentric by others, one of those holy men whom others find it hard to understand.  The conversation goes like this: “There are three necessary prayers and they have three words each.  They are these, ‘Lord have mercy.  Thee I adore.  Into Thy hands.’  Not difficult to remember.  If in times of distress you hold to these you will do well.’  Then he lifted his hat and turned round again.  I stood at the door and watched him go.  He had a queer wavering sort of walk.  He did not look back.”

As I said, I have been pondering those three prayers–hopefully as our Mother would–and they feed my soul.    I hope you find time to ponder them as well.  (Have you been able to find a place to make little retreats during the day?)

False images

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

What is the greatest obstacle to prayer?  In my opinion, it is our ideas of who God is (or isn’t).  We so easily limit Him or distort His image.  At least, this is one of my primary battles. It is all too easy to impose our own ideas or our own experiences of our earthly fathers upon our image of God.  That, in fact, is idolatry.  The Catholic Catechism says: “God our Father transcends the categories of the created world.  To impose our own ideas in this area ‘upon him’ would be to fabricate idols to adore or pull down.  To pray to the Father is to enter into his mystery as he is and as the Son has revealed him to us.” (CCC 2779)

In what ways do you distort God and make Him into your own image?

Making helplessness a prayer

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

Another dip into my journal, regarding prayer:

If prayer is the acknowledgement of one’s own helplessness and the awaiting of everything from God, then prayer is the existential calling of spiritual poverty and inner emptiness of a person so that the Holy Spirit may fill him with His presence and strength.  As one’s faith develops, prayer becomes purer and more ardent.  (Fr. Tadusz Dajczer, Gift of Faith)

When you face your helplessness today, do your best to stop and make it a prayer, a turning to God in the very midst of your helplessness, and then await everything from God.

 

“But I do not know how to love the Lord any more!”

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Dipping into my past journals, I am finding many quotes on prayer.  Here’s one by Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene:

It [the soul] should learn to be content to remain in the presence of the Lord, attending to Him simply with a regard full of love.  It should remain there to keep Him company, satisfied to speak some words of love to Him from time to time.  Little by little it will become accustomed to make its prayer in this way.  Then it will become aware of being in contact with Him in a way, in essence, that is better than the former.

“But I do not know how to love the Lord any more!”

Do not believe it!  It is true, you do not love more sensibly than you did at first, when  your heart was moved at the thought of God’s love for you.  But remember that the Love of supernatural charity is not a sensible love, it is a love of the will, which it is not necessary to feel.  It consists only in an interior decision of the will, with which the soul gives God preference above all creatures and wants to consecrate itself wholly to His service.  This love is there in you, and this is true love, the love that leads to the sense of God.

More than that, St. John of the Cross believes that with the crisis of aridity there begins to be born int he soul that which he calls infused love, that love with which the soul not only thrusts its will towards God, protesting that it wants to love Him, that that happens to be in a certain way secretly drawn to God.  In such a state the soul’s love greatly increases and it progresses rapidly in the ways of the spirit.  While from one side it is pushed on, for the other side it is drawn, it travels quickly!

“The only way to pray is to pray . . .”

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

From a letter by Dom Chapman on prayer:

My dear . . .

As to advice, I can only tell you what I think.

I recommend you pray, because it is good for everybody, and our Lord tells us to pray.  As to method, do what you can do, and what suits you.  It seems obvious that most spiritual reading and meditation fails to help you; and the simplest kind of prayer is the best.  So use that.

But prayer, in the sense of union with God, is the most crucifying thing there is.  One must do it for God’s sake; but one will not get any satisfaction out of it, in the sense of feeling “I am good at prayer”, “I have an infallible method”.  That would be disastrous, since what we want to learn is precisely our own weakness, powerlessness, unworthiness.  Nor ought one to expect “a sense of the reality of the supernatural” of which you speak.  And one should wish for no prayer, except precisely the prayer that God gives us–probably very distracted and unsatisfactory in every way!

On the other hand, the only way to pray is to pray; and the way to pray well is to pray much.  If one has no time for this, then one must at least pray regularly.  But the less one prays, the worse it goes.  And if circumstances do not permit even regularity, then one must put up with the fact that when one does try to pray, one can’t pray–and our prayer will probably consist of telling this to God.

. . .

“I have loved thee”

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I have been thinking about starting a kind of series for you all: some musings on prayer, some thoughts, some gleanings, probably in random order.  I pulled an article out of my files this morning by Jessica Powers, OCD, entitled “Who Hath First Loved Us.”  Those five words are the key and the basis for prayer.  Prayer is nothing but a response to Him “who hath first loved us.”  And so we must start by steeping ourselves in His love, by consciously opening ourselves up to His love, by paying attention to that desire at the core of our being for His love.  For that desire is, in and of itself, a response to His love touching our lives.  “Quest is the condition of the wayfarer, of the lover.  The mind points out the search, and the heart goes seeking; it reaches out toward the lovable known.  This is the fundamental attitude of the Christian.”

The condition of search . . . presupposes another condition that the words of the Mystical Doctor [St. John of the Cross] always imply.  It is the condition of being sought.  God is there in the shadows; He has been seeking the soul, inviting it, calling it to Himself with the cry of infinite and incomprehensible love.  He says to ever soul: “I have loved thee by name; thou art Mine.”  And this is no sudden movement on the part of God!  It is a search that had no beginning.  “I have loved thee,” He says, “with an everlasting love.”

Just sit with that last sentence for a minute . . . a long minute . . . and let it speak deeply to your heart.  That is prayer.