In the "New Covenant" made by our Creator God with humanity (Jeremiah 31:31-34) every person can know God from within - because the Holy Spirit is revealing our Creator to all who are willing to know the Lord and trust in Him. We can still help each other along the way; so may you be pleased to find here a variety of helps to the life of faith in God through Jesus Christ. G.S.
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GOD
SPEAKS TO US FIRST
This fundamental truth makes it possible for us to pray to God. God has been concerned for each of us long before we became concerned for ourselves.
God desires communication with us, speaks to us continually,
Ø through Jesus Christ, His Word;
Ø through the Church, the extension of Christ in the world (because we
are joined together in Christ, God speaks to us through other people);
Ø through visible creation around us, which forms the physical context
of our lives. (Creation took place in the Son, and it is another form of God's
self-revelation);
Ø through the events of our lives;
Ø through Holy Scripture, a real form of the Divine presence. This is
the mode of communication we are most concerned with in prayer.
GOD INVITES US TO LISTEN
Our response to God's initial move is to listen to what God is saying. This is the basic attitude of prayer.
What you do immediately before prayer is very important. Normally, it is something you do not rush into. Spend a few moments quieting yourself and relaxing, settling yourself into a prayerful and comfortable position.
In listening to anyone, you try to tune out everything except what the person is saying to you.
In prayer this can be done best in silence and solitude. Select a favorite passage from Holy Scripture, 5 to 10 verses. Put a marker in the page. Try to find a quiet place where you can be alone and uninhibited in your response to God's presence. Try to quiet yourself interiorly. Jesus would often go up to a mountain alone to pray with the Father.
In any age of noise, activity and tensions like our own, it is not always easy or necessary to forget our cares and commitments, the noise and excitement of our environment. Never feel constrained to blot out all distractions. Anxiety in this regard could get between ourselves and God.
Rather, realize that the Word did become flesh and speaks to us in the noise and confusion of our day. Sometimes in preparing for prayer, relax and listen to the sounds around you, God's presence is as real as they are.
Be conscious of your sensations and living experiences of feeling, thinking, hoping, loving, wondering, desiring, etc. Then, conscious of God's unselfish, loving presence within you, address God simply and admit: "Yes, you do love life and feeling into me. You do love a share of your personal life into me. You are present to me. You live in me. Yes, You do."
God is present as a person, in you through the Spirit, who speaks to you now in Scripture, and who prays in you and for you.
Ask God the grace to listen to what the Spirit says. Begin reading Scripture slowly and attentively. Do not hurry to cover much material/ If it recounts an event of Christ's life, be there in the mystery of it. Share with the persons involved, a blind man being cured. Share their attitude. Respond to what Jesus is saying. Some words or phrases carry special meaning to you. Savor those words turning them over in your heart.
You may want to speak or recite a Psalm or other prayer from Scripture. Really mean what you are saying.
Ø you feel a new way of being with
Christ, who becomes for you in a new way
Ø you experience God's love
Ø you feel lifted in spirit
Ø you are moved to do something
good,
Ø you are peaceful
Ø you are happy and content just to
be in God's presence.
This is the time to ..... pause.
This is God speaking directly to you in the words of Scripture. Do not hurry to
move on. Wait until you are no longer moved by the experience.
Do not get discouraged if nothing seems to be happening. Sometimes God lets us
feel dry and empty in order to let us realize it is not in our power to
communicate with God or to experience consolation. God is sometimes very close
to us in seeming absence (Ps 139:7-8), is for us entirely in a selfless way,
accepting us as we are, with all our limitations -- even with our seeming
inability to pray. A humble attitude of listening is a sign of love for God,
and a real prayer form the heart.
Spend time in your prayer just being conscious of God's presence in and around
you. IF you want to, speak with God about the things you are interested in or
wish to thank God for, your joys, sorrows, aspirations, etc....
SUMMARY 5 P's
Ø Passage from Scripture
Ø Place
Ø Posture
Ø Presence of God
Ø Passage from Scripture
Read
aloud or whisper in a rhythm with your breathing - a phrase at a time -
with pauses and repetitions when and where you feel like it. Do not be anxious,
do not try to look for implications or lessons or profound thoughts or
conclusions or resolutions, etc. Be content to be like a child who climbs into
its father's lap and listens to his words and hist story. When you finish,
remind yourself that God continues to live in you during the rest of the day.
-Armand M Nigro, S.J. & John F Christensen, S.J.
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RESSOURCES EN FRANÇAIS - If you are comfortable in French, here is a web link which could bring you to some interesting resources. Once you go there, you can go to the Bible, teachings, and Scripture commentaries – very helpful and nourishing for the spirit! Allez voir: Catholiens
ENGLISH RESOURCES: For your own reading of the Bible, the most recommended places to start are the Gospels of Matthew (written for Jews) and Luke (written for Greeks). In late Fall you can start with the first few chapters that relate to the advent of Jesus' birth, or in late winter or early Spring you can start with the events leading to Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection. You can also start at the beginning and go from there. If you have a bible like the Jerusalem Bible, you can follow the excellent references in the margins to lines in the Old Testament that are directly connected. You can go to those lines and see how Jesus was conscious of the texts in the Jewish Scriptures which were about Him because they were prophecies about the coming of the Messiah promised by God.
You can find the Bible in several translations online – here is a link to the interesting one used at Mass in Canada for Catholics NRSV Catholic.
OTHER RESOURCES:
(1) Study Light tools: Catholic Bible Commentary
(2) St. Paul Center: Sunday Bible Reflections
(3) Dr. Scott Hahn: Study Tools
(4) Agape Bible Study: Sacred Scripture Study Guide & Bible Study Menu
Another way to pick Scripture texts for prayer in a meaningful way is to take some of the texts that touched you at Sunday Mass (you can get the Sunday Missal with the readings for the year) and look them up in the Bible. Then you can see what comes before and after the text that was selected for the Mass. You may find something you want to read more closely. The bigger context often helps understand the part that was selected.
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One simple way to pray with Sacred Scripture, the Word of God
Using an online Bible, a paper Bible, or Scripture texts in the Living With Christ:
1. There you are with the text on your lap.
2. You say, out loud if you're alone, otherwise inside your spirit: "OK Lord, here we are - you and me and your words which you inspired so long ago. I'm going to read them over slowly a few times. Please let your Holy Spirit - who inspired them to begin with in the hearts and imaginations of those men and women - to inspire in me the understanding and connections you want to give me. I'm open, I put my trust in you, and I’m ready.
3. Just sit there a moment in quiet, and let the "waters" of your spirit become a bit more still. Your eyes might wander out the window, your imagination might wander off somewhere.... until you notice your spirit get peaceful. At that point, everything might feel ever so natural - that's great - or the peace may be so deep that you may be impressed by it all - that's great too. Either way, or even if you feel differently, it's fine. What matters is a bit more peace than when you start - your mind might be racing, your heart might be excited, worked up, or concerned, but your deep inner spirit will at least have a sense "Hey, I want to be here, and I'm glad I'm here. I want to get into this." That's all you need because God is always ready to do his part.
This 3rd step is simply about relaxing a bit before diving into the text; so don’t worry about feeling anything, but simply try to relax and trust in God to guide you. In time, the effects of your prayer time in your spirit will develop some kind of pattern or familiarity, and you will begin to notice that the sum total of the effects is bigger than what you yourself are doing - it's like 2 + 2 = 15! The little steps you're taking result in a bigger effect than you would expect. The difference is God's work in your spirit. He works gently and quietly, deep down in the deep waters stirring in your soul. It's his domain. He's at home there, and when we trust Him, we give Him permission to do all He wants for us.
4. Then you're ready to start reading your Gospel verses. Slowly. Once. Twice. Three times. Like licking an ice cream cone.... over and over and over.... At some point you really get full of the "taste" of it, and your mind and heart begin to make connections - with life, your youth, other people, your hopes, your fears, all kinds of stuff. It's your stuff. It might seem to be other people's stuff, but it's really about your part of it, because you're the one who's doing this, and it's you that the Lord wants to be with in this moment. Just go with the flow.
5. If connections happen, feel free to let your spirit talk to the Lord about it, very spontaneously. "Hey, that was really nice! Thank You!" or "Ouch! That was a very painful experience - the memory still hurts! I really felt alone there; so, where were You?" etc. etc. Did you know that the Old Testament book of Psalms is a collection of 150 prayers what basically got composed exactly like this - with the composer praying and reacting to God out of what they were experiencing at the time? Some of them actually are about being upset with God - imagine - and it's now an inspired part of God's Word! He really likes us to open our heart to Him with complete honesty.
6. Since praying with the Scriptures is supposed to be a dialogue, if you do get to the point of making remarks to the Lord, in your spirit, then it's a good and polite thing to give Him a chance to answer you somehow. Nobody likes being with someone who talks but doesn’t listen. Centuries of men and women praying like this hundreds of times has shown us that God is a great personage but He's got lots of time. He usually isn't in a hurry.
So we must be willing to wait for Him to give us whatever impressions He wants to give – in our mind, heart, soul, imagination, memory, even in the body sometimes (warmth, peace, thrill, love, etc.) – or He may awaken our own feelings that we buried when we couldn't deal with them. Now we are able to deal with them because we're not alone.
Since we began by letting ourselves be in God's presence, then He really is with us, and we can let Him guide our spirit along the path of the memory, or whatever is happening, and this little "walk" will bring something new: more peace, or resolution, or healing, or simply the realization that it's time for me to do something which has been put off long enough. When anything like that happens, just acknowledge it, and put it aside for now, and continue with your prayer experience. Later, when you get up, you can pick up that thought again, ask God to guide you, and in freedom decide what to do about it, when, how, and so on. This segment is about giving God a chance to respond to us.
7. In time you can learn to notice God’s response and you just react in an honest way. Thank you. No way Jose! I'm not ready for that now; maybe tomorrow. Thanks for bringing it up, but please remind me again when You think I'm really ready. For now, let's put it on the back burner and let it simmer for a while. OK? And so on like that…
8. None of this may happen and you will probably get the impression that nothing is happening at all. Resist such hasty conclusions. Remember, we're a hasty bunch, always in a hurry, but the Creator of the Universe isn't. He knows us better than we know ourselves. It's really about learning, in time, to put our trust in Him. If we notice some benefits, that's a bonus. You can't notice a tree growing taller, but when you come back a year or ten years later, you can see the difference. It's a bit like that in terms of our spirit. We don’t see ourselves grow.
9. Everybody who prays often struggles with “distractions” or “temptations” or “wandering thoughts or images” or any number of other unexpected “developments” or “intrusions” during their prayer time. This is normal and it also is simply the discovery of what our minds, hearts, and spirits are really like. Like the atmosphere and oceans we have “a lot of currents” flowing all the time but generally don’t notice because we tend to “surf on top” and ignore the rest. When you drive you can notice the scenery passing by but you keep your eyes on the road. It is like that with prayer. Just acknowledge the “scenery” passing by and remain focused on “visiting with God”.
10. We cannot avoid facing the “enemy of mankind” – the bad desires or impulses in ourselves, the bad influences all around us, and interference by the devil and other bad angels. In time we come to recognize “the enemy” which tries to discourage and distract us from getting closer to God, paying attention to God, obeying God, and coming to love God. You can learn more about “the discernment of spirits” from Fr. Timothy Gallagher ovm.
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Well, hopefully this will give you a doorway into the Word of God, and remember – it doesn't have to be painful – you're allowed to enjoy this! So have fun! I join you in prayer for peace in the love of God, for you and your family. As you make use of the gift of faith God offers, you can expect the joy of finding that God is good and even “tastes good”.
The more we put our trust in the Lord, the more deeply we enter into a personal relationship with the Father, with Jesus his Son, and with the Holy Spirit. Making more room for God in our thoughts, our heart, our Marriage and family life, and even in our work and play, brings a peace and joy that the world knows little about.
Living our life in God and with God dwelling in us brings us the peace and anticipation of Advent and Christmas and the sorrow and joy of Lent and Easter. Christian faith is about waiting, sorrow at our human condition, repentance, preparation, and joyful anticipation of joining with other Christians in gathering around our Christian celebration of Jesus' birth, his passion – death – resurrection and abiding presence among us and within us. May the quiet stillness of your heart be filled with the joyful news of the Lord's visitation, because He is “the God who comes”…
Ø in your life, in your family, in your work and play, in your efforts and in your rest,
Ø in your close friendships and casual acquaintances, in your comings and goings,
Ø in your chance encounters and your deliberate meetings, in your adventures and in your returns,
…and may your whole life become more and more a place of Christmas Peace and Easter Joy in the Love of God!
Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Poustinik
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In the "New Covenant" made by our Creator God with humanity (Jeremiah 31:31-34) every person can know God from within - because the Holy Spirit is revealing our Creator to all who are willing to know the Lord and trust in Him. We can still help each other along the way; so may you be pleased to find here a variety of helps to the life of faith in God through Jesus Christ. G.S.
© 2006-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal QC
© 2006-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC
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