Waiting until God is heard

As my prayer became more attentive and inward, I had less and less to say. I finally became completely silent… This is how it is. To pray does not mean to listen to oneself speaking. Prayer involves becoming silent, and being silent, and waiting until God is heard.

-- Søren Kierkegaard

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To clasp the hands

To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.

~ Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, Guideposts, 3/05

If the only prayer

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, ‘thank you’, that would suffice.

--Meister Eckhart

I only feel myself resting

I only feel myself resting in God's arms, to state it a bit pathetically. Whether it is here at my most dear and safe desk or in a month or so in a bare room in the Jewish ghetto or perhaps in a working camp under SS surveillance, I will always feel myself resting in God's arms, I guess.

Yes, my Lord, I remain very faithful to you, through thick and thin. (...) The only human thing that still remains in these times is: to kneel before you, o God.

There are moments when I feel like a little bird, covered by a big protecting hand. (July 28 1942)

--An Interrupted Life
Etty Hillesum
Killed at Auschwitz, 1943

Prayer is the light of the soul

There is nothing more worthwhile than to pray to God and to converse with him, for prayer unites us with God as his companions. As our bodily eyes are illuminated by seeing the light, so in contemplating God our soul is illuminated by him. Of course the prayer I have in mind is no matter of routine, it is deliberate and earnest. It is not tied down to a fixed timetable; rather it is a state which endures by night and day.

Our soul should be directed in God, not merely when we suddenly think of prayer, but even when we are concerned with something else. If we are looking after the poor, if we are busy in some other way, or if we are doing any type of good work, we should season our actions with the desire and the remembrance of God. Through this salt of the love of God we can all become a sweet dish for the Lord. If we are generous in giving time to prayer, we will experience its benefits throughout our life.

Prayer is the light of the soul, giving us true knowledge of God. It is a link mediating between God and man. By prayer the soul is borne up to heaven and in a marvelous way embraces the Lord. This meeting is like that of an infant crying on its mother, and seeking the best of milk. The soul longs for its own needs and what it receives is better than anything to be seen in the world.

Prayer is a precious way of communicating with God, it gladdens the soul and gives repose to its affections. You should not think of prayer as being a matter of words. It is a desire for God, an indescribable devotion, not of human origin, but the gift of God's grace. As Saint Paul says: we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.

Anyone who receives from the Lord the gift of this type of prayer possesses a richness that is not to be taken from him, a heavenly food filling up the soul. Once he has tasted this food, he is set alight by an eternal desire for the Lord, the fiercest of fires lighting up his soul.

To set about this prayer, paint the house of your soul with modesty and lowliness and make it splendid with the light of justice. Adorn it with the beaten gold of good works and, for walls and stones, embellish it assiduously with faith and generosity. Above all, place prayer on top of this house as its roof so that the complete building may be ready for the Lord. Thus he will be received in a splendid royal house and by grace his image will already be settled in your soul.

--St. John Chrysostom

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Fall in love, stay in love, it will decide everything

Nothing is more practical than
finding God, that is, than falling in love
in a quite absolute, final way.

What you are in love with,
what seizes your imagination,
will affect everything.
It will decide
what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you will do with your evenings,
how you will spend your weekends,
what you read, who you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.

Fall in love, stay in love,
and it will decide everything.

--Pedro Arrupe, S.J.

There is no one but us

A blur of romance clings to the notions of "publicans," "sinners," "the poor," the "people in the marketplace," "our neighbors," as though of course God should reveal himself, if at all, to these simple people, these Sunday school watercolor figures, who are so purely themselves in their tattered robes, who are single in themselves, while we now are various, complex, and full at heart. We are busy. So, I see now, were they.

Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in his holy place? There is no one but us. There is no one to send, nor a clean hand, not a pure heart on the face of the earth, nor in the earth, but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the option that we have come at an awkward time, that our innocent fathers are all dead...and our children busy and troubled, and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready... But there is no one but us. There never has been.

--Annie Dillard, "Holy The Firm"

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Perhaps you are not able

Perhaps you are not able to pray silently. Many people are poor at this. Here is an easy way to get started. There are several ways in which you can place yourself in God's presence.

Consider how God is present in all things and in all places. Wherever the birds fly, they are constantly in the air; wherever we go, God is always there. Instead of merely assenting to this, it is necessary to make the realization of its truth live for us. Since we can't see God physically present, we need to activate our consciousness. Before praying we need to remind ourselves of God's actual presence. A good way to do this is with Bible verses. If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. Remember that God is not only where you are, he is actually in your heart, in the core of your spirit. "For in him we live and move and have our being." ... When you know God is present, your soul will bow down before his majesty and ask for help. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.

--St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life

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It Is Jesus

It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness;

He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you;

He is the beauty to which you are so attracted;

it is He who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise;

it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life;

it is He who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.

It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.

Pope John Paul II
World Youth Day 2000

HT to Happy Catholic