 (c)Mary TV 2011 Time for prayer! |
| May 30, 2012
Dear Family of Mary!
"Dear children! Also today I call you to conversion and to holiness. God desires to give you joy and peace through prayer but you, little children, are still far away - attached to the earth and to earthly things. Therefore, I call you anew: open your heart and your sight towards God and the things of God - and joy and peace will come to reign in your hearts. Thank you for having responded to my call." (May 25, 2012)
"God desires to give you joy and peace through prayer but you, little children, are still far away..." Our Lady is always honest with us. She doesn't butter us up, or flatter us. She merely speaks the truth. And she will not let up on that truth, no matter how many years she has to speak it. Haven't we heard this admonition before? But, I, for one, know that she is right. I have been neglecting my prayer life lately. I admit it. I have been letting my busy life get in the way. It is a good thing that Mother Mary is persistent. I really need this correction.
Because of this message I have returned to a book that might help me move back into personal prayer with more commitment. It is Time for God, by Fr. Jacques Philippe. It is filled with good advice. Here is another excerpt which discusses the impediments to prayer that we may experience:
The Trap of False Sincerity
In an age as keen on freedom and authenticity as our own, an argument that comes up fairly often and may prevent people from being faithful to mental prayer goes like this:
"Prayer is terrific, but I only pray when I feel an inner need....To start praying when I don't feel like it would be artificial, forced, even a sort of insincerity or hypocrisy...I pray when I feel a spontaneous desire for it..."
The answer is that if we wait until we feel the spontaneous desire for prayer, we may end up waiting until the end of our days. That desire for prayer is very beautiful, and also unreliable. There is another motive for going to meet God in mental prayer that is equally meaningful and far deeper and more constant: he invites us to. The Gospel tells us to "pray always" (Lk 18;1). We should be guided by faith and not by our subjective mood.
The idea of freedom and authenticity expressed in the line of thought described above greatly suits people's tastes today; and it is very unsound. Real freedom does not mean being ruled by one's impulses from one moment to the next. Just the opposite. Being free means not being a slave to one's moods' it means being guided in a course of action by the fundamental choices one has made, choices one does not repudiate in the face of new circumstances.
Truth, not superficial inclination, is the guide to the authentic use of freedom. We must be humble enough to recognize how fickle we are. Someone who is wonderful today strikes us as unbearable tomorrow, thanks to a change in the weather or our mood. What we couldn't live without on Monday leaves us cold Tuesday. This kind of decision-making makes us the prisoners of our whims.
Nor should we deceive ourselves about authenticity. Which is the most genuine, authentic love - the kind that changes from day to day according to mood, or the stable, faithful kind that never goes back on itself?
Faithfulness to mental prayer is a school of freedom. It is a school of truth in love, because it teaches us, little by little, no longer to place our relationship with God on the shaky, unstable basis of our own impressions, moods, or feelings, but on the solid foundation of faith - God's faithfulness, which is as firm as a rock. "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, and forever" (Heb 13:8), for "His mercy is from generation to generation" (Lk 1:50). If we persevere, our relationships with other people, which are likewise superficial and changeable, will become more stable, more faithful, deeper, and hence happier." (Jacques Philippe. Time for God. p. 30-32)
Fr. Philippe hits it on the head for me. If I rely on my feelings to move me to pray, I will not pray every day as Our Lady would like. My feelings are tied too much to earthly things, to how tired I am, what happened at work, how my family is acting, etc. My feelings are earth bound, too much of the time. How can I rely on them to open me to God? No, my prayer life will have to be grounded in another soil, that of heaven. I need to pray because God calls me to prayer, God invites me to be with Him, God wants to spend time with me. That is why I should pray.
Let's pray for each other to answer God's invitation to prayer more earnestly in the days ahead. What a wonderful opportunity we have! To spend time with God!
In Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Cathy Nolan ©Mary TV 2012
PS. Time for God, by Jacques Philippe, is available at www.scepterpublishers.com |
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