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The most powerful principal of prayer is that God desires us; Prayer is a response to a presence who has entered our reality. Distractions, an enemy of prayer. Recovering the prophetic consciousness. The highest fruit of prayer to be someone who is so transparent to God, that God reveals His acts in our lives…the person has become prayer.
We have lost are fear of going astray and being unfaithful within. We must be aware of the spirits, personal or impersonal, that can get into us. We can get tangled up in many different influences in prayer. That is why it so important to have a director, a guide, to help us navigate in this journey and to test those spirits. Jesus is the model of prayer. “He learns to pray from His mother”. The witness of the community. His prayer springs from a secret source and He wishes to share it with us. All prayer is foretaste of heaven.
Jesus is the primary teacher of prayer. How can we pray “always”? How do we become “prayer”? Jesus was so conscious that all things flows from the Father, and teaches a rise in gratitude to the source of “all things”…and He teaches us how to pray to the Father. Praying in the name of Jesus and the “receiving” of God in our hearts.
Continued reflections on the last things said by Jesus on the Cross. Mary as teacher of prayer…the wellspring of interiority, because she held all the mysteries in her heart. “I Thirst”….God’s longing for us. Allowing God to pray in us. “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me”…is it more that we have abandoned God? Sin looks like crucifixion. The final words.
"How did I ever live without prayer?” A sustained communion with Christ is the beginning of heaven. “Ask..seek…knock”. Are you knocking to receive a relationship or are you knocking to get more stuff? Are you seeking to surrender and entrust or are you seeking to satisfy more of a passing desire or mood? Even in our coming to prayer Jesus wants to purify our motive for doing so. The challenge of entering into deep prayer which leads to the great maturity of prayer.
How we receive prayer. The reception of grace and the great gift of memory. “Ask…seek…knock “. Through prayer, heaven begins. Prayer is a battle…it isn’t easy. Western culture is a “culture of distraction”. We need to receive the coming of God when it enlights upon us.
The will to pray. To listen, to search, to see Him…to become prayer ourselves. You know are progressing by the fruit of your life. The parish as the “school of prayer” The pastor as teacher of prayer, the spiritual father. The disordered demands we may place on the priest. What is the remedy?
The “wellsprings” where Christ awaits us. Responding at the moment when the subtle interior movements of the Holy Spirit calls to us. The Word of God becomes a place of encounter. The danger of Scripture becoming all academic. People are converted when the Word approaches them as living. The liturgy is also a place of encounter. The heart as an “altar” in the liturgy.