Some Additional Reflections on Prayer

Seven Thoughts on Prayer:

o   Deep Silence

o   Looking

o   Talking to God & Ourselves

o   Putting Our Heads into Our Hearts

o   Putting Our Hearts into Our Hands

o   “Do you love me” – Jesus & St. Peter

o   Why do you Pray?

Concept of Abba, a loving and respected Father - in the Our Father:

·      Luke’s Gospel - 11:2-4

·      Matthew’s Gospel – 6:9-13

 

"God speaks in the silence of the heart, and we listen.

And then we speak to God from the fullness of our heart, and God listens. And this listening and this speaking is what prayer is meant to be.” 

[Mother Teresa]

  St. Francis deSales wrote, “Each Christian needs half an hour of prayer each day except when we are busy then we need an hour.”

Thomas Merton’s Prayer:

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.” (Thoughts in Solitude, p. 81)

Bishop Barron

“The goal of the Biblical initiation rituals is to convey this simple truth: your life is not about you. It is about God and God’s purposes for you.”

Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
enjoying one moment at a time;
accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it;
trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever in the next. Amen    (Reinhold Niebuhr)

Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace, Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy; O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.” Prayer should be the center of our life, take some time today to reflect on your prayer life and how you can improve it. May God Be Praised!