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Prayer with the Heart!!!
August 28, 2023
St. Augustine
Dear Family of Mary!
“Dear
children! In this time of grace, I am calling you to prayer with the
heart. May your hearts, little children, be raised in prayer towards
Heaven, so that your heart may feel the God of love who heals you and
loves you with immeasurable love. That is why I am with you, to lead you
on the way of conversion of heart. Thank you for having responded to my
call.” (August 25, 2023)
Today
is the Feast of St. Augustine of Hippo. He is one of the great Doctors
of the Church!! One of his most famous sentences is this: "You move us to delight in praising You; for You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You." (from The Confessions).
Indeed
our hearts are restless, always restless until they find their home in
the Heart of God. We know we are meant for God, but we feel so far away
from Him. That desire that is unquenched causes us great anxiety. And
so Our Lady's words in the message for August 25, 2023 fill us with
hope!! She understands and wants to help us find our way into the Heart
of God which is Heaven!!
Augustine wrote a letter to Proba,
and in it he explains the kind of prayer with the heart that I think Our
Lady is calling us to. It might be helpful to read St. Augustine's
explanation of prayer:
Why in our fear of not praying as we should, do we turn to so many things, to find what we should pray for?
Why
do we not say instead, in the words of the psalm: I have asked one
thing from the Lord, this is what I will seek: to dwell in the Lord’s
house all the days of my life, to see the graciousness of the Lord, and
to visit his temple?
There,
the days do not come and go in succession, and the beginning of one day
does not mean the end of another; all days are one, simultaneously and
without end, and the life lived out in these days has itself no end.
So
that we might obtain this life of happiness, he who is true life itself
taught us to pray, not in many words as though speaking longer could
gain us a hearing. After all, we pray to one who, as the Lord himself
tells us, knows what we need before we ask for it.
Why
he should ask us to pray, when he knows what we need before we ask him,
may perplex us if we do not realize that our Lord and God does not want
to know what we want (for he cannot fail to know it), but wants us
rather to exercise our desire through our prayers, so that we may be
able to receive what he is preparing to give us. His gift is very great
indeed, but our capacity is too small and limited to receive it. That is
why we are told: Enlarge your hearts, do not bear the yoke with
unbelievers.
The
deeper our faith, the stronger our hope, the greater our desire, the
larger will be our capacity to receive that gift, which is very great
indeed. No eye has seen it; it has no color. No ear has heard it; it has
no sound. It has not entered man’s heart; man’s heart must enter into
it.
In
this faith, hope and love we pray always with unwearied desire.
However, at set times and seasons we also pray to God in words, so that
by these signs we may instruct ourselves and mark the progress we have
made in our desire, and spur ourselves on to deepen it.
The
more fervent the desire, the more worthy will be its fruit. When the
Apostle tells us: Pray without ceasing, he means this: Desire
unceasingly that life of happiness which is nothing if not eternal, and
ask it of him who alone is able to give it.
(Augustine of Hippo (354-430): second reading from the Office of Readings for Sunday of Week 29, taken from the saint’s Letter to Proba)
As Our Lady said, "May your hearts, little children, be raised in prayer towards Heaven..." It
is our desire for God, our desire to be with Him forever, that will
prepare our hearts to receive God in eternity! Raising our hearts in
prayer towards Heaven is the exercise of desire!! It will prepare us
well!!
In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
www.marytv.tv
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