The Heart of the Matter

Lesson # 6 - On Prayer

6      As we move along in our study of prayer, the best prayer is the prayer Jesus taught: the Our Father. A few years ago one of our R.C.I.A. members shared how he came to seek out what being Catholic would look like. He was from no religious background.  Somewhere he had come across the Our Father and decided to simply pray this prayer - over and over.  Many times, every day he prayed the Lord's Prayer and slowly it brought him to a deep relationship with God; and by that point he had come to the R.C.I. A. to find out as much as he could about this God with whom he now had a powerful relationship.

St. Theresa of Avila, the great "doctor" (or teacher) of the Church taught that one only really needs to know the Our Father and Hail Mary in order to grow to spiritual maturity.

So, let's now take an in depth look at each line of the Our Father.  In this posting let's just look at the first two words: Our Father. 

"OUR" - When we pray as a a Christian we never appear before God with out bringing everyone else. Yes, there are many times in our personal prayer that we think our special time of prayer is "between me and God" but the bigger picture is that we are bringing with us the whole fabric of humanity of which each of us is only a small part.  Therefore, when Jesus taught us this prayer He invited us to speak to God as a representative of all of humanity.  This initial word of the Lord's Prayer colors the rest of this prayer and hopefully over time enlarges our concern to be a concern for the whole human family.

As Americans we have a cultural bent in favor of individualism. "I" tend to be concerned about "me" and "mine".  Even when we attend Mass our cultural emphasis can lead "me" to think of Mass as either helping "me" in "my" one hour with God, or "my" not getting anything out of it.  When the emphasis is on "me", we are missing that big picture that this initial word of the Lord's Prayer is inviting us to. 

When I approach Mass as my being part of a worldwide body (the Body of Christ) gathering for "our" encounter with the living God, then we enter into God's mixing with His Church to enliven us to collectively be His presence in the world as His people who are Eucharist-fed and brimming over with His holy Word. 

FATHER - Jesus invites us to address God as Father. The actual word He used was "Abba." Even today in the Holy Land you can hear a young Arab or Jew calling out to his father by calling him Abba, maybe as we might call our own father, Dad, Daddy, or Poppa.  By Jesus' choice of this word, He is inviting us into a trusting, personal relationship with God who will take care of us just as a poppa would take care of his own children.

The God Jesus is inviting us to know is not a power, or a force, or an energy.  God is a poppa. That means we can trust in our Abba, we can turn to Him when we are frightened, or when we are in trouble, or when we don't know what to do. Our Abba will take care of us. He might make things tough for us so we can grow up and be more mature, but He will never leave us alone. 

Some years ago there was a movement to stop calling God "Father." Some seemed to prefer calling God: Creator, or simply God.  Anything to avoid the use of the gender based word that Jesus gave us for the First Person of the Holy Trinity. Surely for those whose personal experience with their own father was tortured, one can see how calling God "Father" could be a problem.  In fact, because our religion uses a lot of familial terminology, Catholics whose families are dysfunctional can have a dysfunctional spiritual life as well. But the cure for this spiritual problem is not to make the rest of the Church lose this key insight into God as Father that Jesus reveals to us. 

The catechetical moment here is to allow the familial terminology to assist all families, dysfunctional and healthy, to aspire to a higher way of being as typified by our calling God our Father and Jesus as our Brother and Mary as our Mother and the whole Church as well, Holy Mother Church.

 

 

Lesson # 5 On Prayer

The Lord Jesus taught us in the Gospels about the goodness of the Father.  In fact He taught us to address God as Father, as One in Whom we can put our complete trust because the Father is Goodness Itself.  And Jesus teaches us to approach the Father earnestly and frequently in prayer. 

All of this brings to mind a question: to whom do we address our prayer?  It seems sometimes we address the Father, and at other times we address the Son, and yet other times we address the Holy Spirit.  The classical understanding of the Church in this matter is that our prayer goes to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit.  Better yet: the Father draws us to Himself through the Son, in the Holy Spirit.  If you notice, during Mass almost all the prayers are addressed in this Trinitarian way. 

Keep in mind that we do not believe in three Gods, but in one God.  Since Jesus is the human fullness of God in the flesh, we humans are invited to approach God through Jesus.  Since He was fully human, Jesus connects with us and we with Him.  Our direction, though, is towards union with the Father which happens as we learn to pray in the Holy Spirit.

Some people simplify the matter by addressing ourselves simply to “God” or “Lord.”  Fine.  But just remember, the deeper we go into prayer, the more we are drawn into the very mystery of who God really is.  And slowly we become more drawn into the inner life of God who is a community of Three Persons in Oneness.  Maybe this is too much for now, but at least it shows us the direction prayer brings us to: complete union with God in the Mystery of Who God really is.

By having this understanding in the back of our minds about prayer leading to the depths of the Mystery of Who God is, we can become freed from “prayer as naval gazing.”   Prayer is not about “me.”  If we spend time in what we think is prayer and just mull over “me and mine,” then we need to refocus and be more intent on coming to know the Lord more deeply, increasingly free from seeing oneself as the center of the world and seeing the Lord as the true center.  Yes, we bring to the Lord our concerns and our loved ones, but we allow ourselves to be brought into the bigger picture of the drama of God’s interaction with the human race. 

Lastly, be aware that neglect of prayer brings us to an indifference to prayer, so we need to pray unceasingly.  A Christian who does not pray regularly will care very little about the Trinity and the Inner Life of God and about being invited to enter therein.  A non-praying Christian will care very little about the Mass, or will “just not get it;” and will spend a lot of time mulling over things with unanswerable questions.

[Suggested Reading: “Through Him, With Him, In Him” by Ruth Burrows, 1987 Dimension Books]   

Lesson # 4 On Prayer

As we continue our study of prayer, there is a book I highly recommend to you: A Friendship Like No Other, with the subtitle, Experiencing God's Amazing Embrace, By William A. Barry, S.J.  (Loyola Press, 2008)  This book has three parts.  Part One is entitled, Experiencing God's Desire for Friendship, and looks at the qualities of human friendship and then coming to know Jesus as friend.  Part Two is entitled, Understanding Ourselves and God, and looks at how could God want my friendship; and where does friendship fit in with salvation; and what about God's anger and justice?  And Part Three is entitled, Experiencing God, which helps us know if we really are experiencing God.  This book follows an earlier book by Father Barry: Seek My Face, Prayer as Personal Relationship in Scripture.  This book helps us see how the centuries of learned experience on prayer comes from the Scriptures.

As for helping us think of prayer in terms of friendship with God, here is a story that has been around the internet for I don't know how long, but it rings very true and just might get us interested in learning more about prayer.  It's called:

Mom's Empty Chair

A woman's daughter had asked the local minister 
to come and pray with her mother. 
When the minister arrived, 
he found the woman lying in bed with her head 
propped up on two pillows. 
An empty chair sat beside her bed. 
The minister assumed that the woman 
had been informed of his visit... 
'I guess you were expecting me, he said. 
‘No, who are you?' said the mother. 
The minister told her his name and then remarked, 
'I saw the empty chair and I figured you knew 
I was going to show up.’ 
'Oh yeah, the chair,' said the bedridden woman 
'Would you mind closing the door?' 
Puzzled, the minister shut the door. 
‘I have never told anyone this, 
not even my daughter,' said the woman. 
‘But all of my life I have never 
known how to pray. 
At church I used to hear the pastor talk about prayer, 
but it went right over my head...' 
I abandoned any attempt at prayer,' 
the old woman continued, ' 
until one day four years ago, my best friend said to me, 
'Prayer is just a simple matter 
of having a conversation with Jesus. 
Here is what I suggest... 
‘Sit down in a chair; 
place an empty chair in front of you, 
and in faith see Jesus on the chair. 
It's not spooky because he promised, 
'I will be with you always'. 
'Then just speak to him in the same way 
you're doing with me right now...' 
'So, I tried it and I've liked it so much 
that I do it a couple of hours every day. 
I'm careful though. If my daughter saw me talking 
to an empty chair, she'd either have a nervous breakdown 
or send me off to the funny farm.' 
The minister was deeply moved by the story and 
encouraged the old woman to continue on the journey. 
Then he prayed with her, anointed her with oil, 
and returned to the church. 
Two nights later the daughter called 
to tell the minister that her mama 
had died that afternoon. 
Did she die in peace?' he asked. 
Yes, when I left the house about two o'clock, 
she called me over to her bedside, 
told me she loved me and kissed me on the cheek. 
When I got back from the store an hour later, 
I found her. 
But there was something strange about her death. 
Apparently, just before Mom died, 
she leaned over and rested her head on the chair 
beside the bed. What do you make of that?' 
The minister wiped a tear from his eye and said, 
'I wish we could all go like that.' 

Lesson # 3 On Prayer

For our third lesson on prayer, lest we get into too much theory too soon, let’s now take a look at a beginner’s way of praying.  When we are young we learn to memorize certain prayers, like the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Glory Be, the Hail Holy Queen, and so on.  These prayers will stand the test of time and will serve anyone well whenever more advanced forms of prayer (like meditation and contemplation) turn into a dry spell.  

 

I remember a time when I was in my first year of seminary.  My confessor was an elderly Sulpician priest.  He was a very holy man and had served as an exorcist in Hawaii years earlier.  In one of my confessions he gave me a memorized prayer to pray as my penance, the Act of Hope.  I responded by saying that I would prefer to just talk with God. To this he told me that memorized prayers are very important, “especially for later in life when you find yourself sick.  When we are sick we do not feel like praying.  That’s a perfect time to pray the memorized prayers.”

 

So, by all means teach your children to memorize their prayers.  And pray them with your children.  Kneeling down next to bed at night is a perfect time to teach them the importance of praying.  Pray with them, don’t just listen to them praying.  Then after the memorized prayers, give them extra time for what they might want to pray for: help with a test, “Bless Mommy and Daddy,” etc.

 

Saying grace before meals is also an important time to pray.  It teaches them, and us adults, to be grateful for the blessings we have.  Some families make up their own prayers at table time.  This allows spontaneity and creativity in verbalizing what they are truly grateful for, besides the meal they are about to enjoy.  If you do spontaneous prayers, guide your children to talk with God, not just say, “I am grateful for thus and so.”  Gently guide them to address God, “Lord, I thank You for thus and so.”  Teaching children when they are young to enter into that “I-Thou” relationship with God helps them to know God and talk with God directly.  Of course, the old stand-by, Grace Before Meals,” is also time tested:  “Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

 

Starting the day with prayer is also important because it puts us in a state of beginning our day with the Lord.  There’s a great prayer to pray and memorize: the Morning Offering.  For many people it is not easy to begin the day with prayer, but it is really important to do so because it puts the whole day in the context of giving an offering to God.  If your house is chaos in the morning, then try saying the Morning Offering out loud as you drive your kids to school or as you drive to work.  Let your car be your chapel, at least for a few minutes.  Here are two examples of a Morning Offering:

 

Almighty God, I thank you for your past blessings.
Today I offer myself - whatever I do, say, or think -
to your loving care.
Continue to bless me, Lord.
I make this morning offering in union
with the divine intentions of Jesus Christ
who offers himself daily in the holy sacrifice of the Mass,
and in union with Mary, his Virgin Mother and our Mother,
who was always the faithful handmaid of the Lord.  Amen.

Or:
 
O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer you

my prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day

for all the intentions of Your Sacred Heart,

in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world,

in reparation for my sins,

and for the intentions of our Holy Father this month. Amen.

Lesson # 2 On Prayer

As we begin

in earnest

our study of prayer,

let’s begin

by looking at

what Christian prayer

is not.

Christian prayer is not time set aside for worrying.  Nor is it naval gazing.  Nor really is it just thinking about me and my loved ones, though it sometimes does include that.  Nor is Christian prayer the same kind of prayer as, say, those who seek to empty their minds of all thoughts.  

            Christian prayer is “the raising of one’s mind and heart to God or requesting the good things of God.”  In other words, Christian prayer is a conversation with, or an awareness of, the Divine Person we are relating to: the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit; or the Blessed Mother, or one of the angels or saints. 

            It is possible to use our minds without using our hearts in prayer in, for instance, giving voice to the repetition of words without engaging our hidden center of who we are.  An example would be someone who has come to Mass and voices the responses but is so distracted that this person never becomes conscious of God.  Prayer, to be Christian prayer, must engage both the mind and the heart; that is, our thinking process and our decision process.  

Emotions may or may not accompany good prayer.  Too often people who try to pray give up too soon because they don’t feel anything while they spend time praying.  If we were to feel always uplifted and enjoying our prayer, and if we demanded that these feelings accompany our willingness to give our precious time to God in prayer, then we have gone into prayer seeking self instead of seeking the All Holy One.  Sometimes, indeed perhaps most of the time, God allows us to feel rather desperate and groaning in our prayer so as to entice us to desire him all the more.  Great mystics of the Church have told of having spent years being faithful to daily prayer, but abiding in a state in that feels like the absence of God rather than basking in the glow of His presence.  This is how the Lord frequently works with one who desires ever greater union with God.  If one remains faithful to this prayer, even if it be as dry as dust, then this is when God brings about the greatest change in our outlook.  Why?  Because we have entered prayer not for a self-seeking reason, but for the reason of being there for the Lord to do whatever He will with us.  

Humility needs must be central to a good prayer life.  Only when we acknowledge that ‘we do not know how to pray as we ought,’ (Romans 8:26) are we ready to receive freely the gift of prayer.  Yes, prayer is a gift; and we need to beg the Lord for this gift.  As St. Augustine taught 1600 years ago, “Man is a beggar before God.”

[The best succinct source of teaching on Christian Prayer is found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part Four, Second Edition.]

Lesson on Prayer # 1

Over the course of this year I want to do some adult religious education and spiritual formation through this vehicle. The topic I have chosen is to share with you the riches of the Catholic tradition on prayer. Since the Catholic Church is a world wide body that stretches back for 2000 years, our history has much to teach us about living in stressful times. Throughout all of that long history there have been members of the Church who have prayed and survived through all the struggles that can come upon people. For the first 300 years the Roman Empire persecuted people who died for the faith we share. Then Christianity became the official religion of the empire and the Church had to adjust to sudden, massive numbers coming into the Church. How would the faith be kept pure with so many pagan influences coming in from the new converts? 

When the Roman Empire began to weaken and collapse, the Church stepped in to provide services the state had previously taken care of: safety, health care, education, and so on. Thus it has been throughout two millennia. Through one traumatic era to another, our fellow believers carefully passed on the faith we have received down to our very day. This faith of ours has been passed down through persecutions, revolutions, wars, famines, genocides, the dark ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the entrance of the age of doubt and despair and terror. 

Then came the 20th century when the Catholic Church experienced the martyrdom of more of her people than all the martyrs of the previous centuries of the Church put together.

How has this Church of ours survived? It even survived Napoleon who told his aide that it was his plan to destroy the Church. (Napoleon even imprisoned the pope for a few years.) That aide was a bishop who told him that if the Church had survived 1800 years (at that time) with the clergy's doing all they could to destroy the Church, but unsuccessfully, then Napoleon would not destroy it either! 

How has the Church survived? Because the Lord told Peter, and through him told us, that the gates of hell would not prevail against this Church; and that Peter was to hold the keys to the kingdom of God. 

So we have the Lord's promise. But we also have 2000 years' history of every generation's learning how to pray to Christ our Lord and God. When people become a people of prayer, specifically Christian prayer, then the world is transformed. 

In this space in the coming months I want to confirm you in your prayer, encourage you to be more faithful to it, and to give you some very solid suggestions on how to improve your prayer life. All of us are very busy people, but all of us can become mystics even as we go about our daily lives. Indeed some of you already are mystics.

 

Whether or not we become mystics, all of us are called to be in an intense personal relationship with the Lord Jesus. This is what makes us His disciples. One cannot be a true disciple of Christ if one does not pray. 

We can do everything we can think of to convey information and the teachings of the Church. But they only make sense if we also learn how to pray, how to be in a loving, trusting relationship 
with the Lord. I hope and pray that these occasional writings are helpful to you in leading your families to the True and Final Object of our lives: union with God in Christ Jesus. 

Downtime for a bit

Dear Reader, thank you for checking in every now and then, so just know that i will be on retreat and will resume posting in mid June. 

At 1:00 AM

At 1:00 AM Saturday morning, 12/13/08, our beloved Joan Fiore,our parish business manager, will be removed from life support systems and be allowed to die. 

When her heart stops, her healthy organs will become a gift of life for others who would die without such transplants. 

May the angels lead you into Paradise, Joan.

Viaticum

Viaticum is a Latin term meaning, literally, "go with you."  It is part of the Last Rites and refers to the Body of Christ, the host, given to a dying person, so that the Eucharistic Lord may "go with" the dying person through the experience of death.  After the dying person goes to confession (if possible and if desired) and is anointed with the Oil of the Sick (in the Sacrament of the Sick), Holy Communion is given. 

Giving Holy Communion to a dying person is a profound experience always, but today it was especially moving.  Steve was very near death, with shallow breathing only intermittently.  He did not seem conscious as his wife and I prayed the Lord's Prayer.  When I said to Steve that I was giving him Holy Communion, he did not seem able to respond.  So, I took a little piece of the host and inserted it into his mouth.  Suddenly he responded by tasting and relishing the Lord in such a way that his wife and I both knew that he realized he was receiving Holy Communion.  He returned immediately to his unconscious appearance and shallow breathing.  I was stunned and said to him, "Well, you sure know Who it is that is with you now, so go in peace."  Then the rest of his extended family gathered around and we had the "Commendation of the Dying," which is a set of very beautiful prayers the Church gives us for this moment, including this one:

Go forth, Christian soul, from this world
in the name of God the almighty Father,
who created you,
in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God,
who suffered for you,
in the name of the Holy Spirit,
who was poured out upon you.

Go forth, faithful Christian!

May you live in peace this day,
may your home be with God in Zion,
with Mary, the virgin Mother of God,
with Joseph, and all the angels and saints. . . .

May you return to [your Creator]
who formed you from the dust of the earth.
May holy Mary, the angels, and all the saints
come to meet you as you go forth from this life. . . .
May you see your Redeemer face to face.

Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One

Just before the Second World War a Polish nun (St. Faustina) experienced personal revelations from the Lord about this being the time of mercy from the Lord before the time of judgment would come.  With the increase of evildoing in the 20th century here was a message about the need to ask for, and imitate, the Divine Mercy that God offers us in Jesus Christ.

One prayer of the Divine Mercy Chaplet is a favorite of mine: "Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us and on the whole world."  It helps us grow into praying for the world, not just our own network of needs and relationships.

At Masses this weekend I mentioned that I would put in the space directions on how to pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy.  Click here for those instructions. 

Here are some promises that St. Faustina heard the Lord give in her mystical moments with the Lord:

687 Say unceasingly the Divine Mercy Chaplet that I have taught you. Whoever will recite it will receive great mercy at the hour of death. Priests will recommend it to sinners as their last hope of salvation. Even if there were a sinner most hardened, if he were to recite this chaplet only once, he would receive grace from My infinite mercy. I desire to grant unimaginable graces to those souls who trust in My mercy.

1541 My daughter, encourage souls to say the Divine Mercy Chaplet which I have given to you. It pleases Me to grant everything they ask of Me by saying the chaplet. When hardened sinners say it, I will fill their souls with peace, and the hour of their death will be a happy one.

1541 Write that when they say this Divine Mercy Chaplet in the presence of the dying, I will stand between My Father and the dying person, not as the just Judge but as a merciful Saviour.

1731 Through the chaplet you will obtain everything, if what you ask for is compatible with My Will.