Fr. Thomas M. Pastorius February 26, 2017 Spiritual ponderings
Here are some final thoughts on prayer.
7. Devotions One of my favorite role models growing up was an old lady in my parish named Dorothy. Dorothy stood out to me as a kid because every day she would pray the Stations of the Cross. Watching her pray the Stations of the Cross each day was my first lesson in Catholic Devotions. As I grew up, I would learn to pray the Rosary, the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, and Mother of Perpetual help prayers. These prayers have a way of drawing me to a calm place where I can recall how God has always been therefore me. Like watching a rerun on television or listening to a favorite song, these devotions invoke in me memories, feelings, and much more of how God loves me.
8. Discernment St. Ignatius of Loyola in his writings points out that we have three enemies in our spiritual life. The first is ourselves because we are tainted by original sin. Sometimes we feel a need to rebel against God like Adam and Eve did for one reason or another. We need to remember though that this is never a good choice because we are not turning away from a divine dictator but rather we are refusing divine love. The second enemy of the spiritual life is our culture/society/world. The world presents us a path that it says will lead us to happiness and Jesus presents us a different path to happiness. The two paths lead in different directions. If we follow the world’s path we will eventually end up a lone and perpetually frustrated because we have turned away Love. Finally the third enemy of the spiritual life is the devil. The devil, who finds himself miserable for having rejected God’s will, has decided to try to make us miserable also.
It is therefore important to take the time therefore to discern the messages that we receive in prayer to make sure it is from God or not. A simple tool for discernment that I use is a set of principles. The first principle is that God never condones sin. The second principle is that God never tears us down and finally God never abandons us. If any of my spiritual thoughts breaks the three principles above I know that it is not from God.
9. Unanswered Prayers St. Paul’s in his First Letter to the Corinthian gives us a beautiful description of what “love” is:
Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, (love) is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8a.)
And St. John tell us “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Therefore everything St. Paul’s says about love we can say about God and this is the reason why sometimes our prayers to God goes unanswered. God cannot do anything that will harm us because He is love. It is better to say that God answered our prayers in the negative than to say our prayers went unanswered because “no” is an answer. This gives us a freedom in our prayer because God will not harm us by giving us something we ask for that is ultimately harmful for us.
10. Goal of Prayer Always remember that goal of Prayer is to help you strengthen your relationship with God. Our God desires to have a healthy and consistent relationship with you. He does not need this relationship but He does desire it. God will do His part in being therefore you and giving you what you need. He will however never force Himself upon you and so He humbles Himself to be present in a way that still requires you to have faith.
One of the best ways that you can develop your prayer life is by joining an accountability group or getting a spiritual director and take time each month to ask yourself the following three questions: 1) where have you seen God this past month? 2) what have you learned about God this past month? And 3) what are you going to do for God this upcoming month. This is great way to keep your focus on the goal of prayer because you know you will have to answer these questions each month. I had also heard that Mother Teresa each night before going to bed would thank God for five things and ask pardon for five things. She said she did this because it made it easier to see God active throughout her day. She focused on five wrong things because she said it reminded her that she still needed God no matter what others told her.