The Catechism in a Year – Day 352 – Summar of The Battle of Prayer

Fr. Mike reviews this section of the Catechism, summarizing the battle of prayer and the prayer of the hour of Jesus. We are reminded that prayer is active, and we must engage in grace. The Catechism goes on to state that, “We pray as we live because we live as we pray.” In this, we see that God meets us where we are and wants us to pray always. Finally, Jesus’ prayer to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane exemplifies humility, filial trust, honesty, and perseverance; modeling how we are to pray to the Father. Today’s readings are paragraphs 2752-2758.

Click on link: https://youtu.be/6gk1EiXtO4o?si=AtDNmEiwOebIQRDB


The Catechism in a Year – Day 348 – The Battle of Prayer

Prayer is “grace and grit,” as Fr. Mike phrases it. In this section, one of Fr. Mike’s favorites in the Catechism, we hear that “we pray as we live because we live as we pray.” This living and praying is a battle in which we must confront our failures and accept the Holy Spirit’s grace and aid. Prayer requires humility, trust, and perseverance on our part. In this struggle, we must battle against distraction, ourselves, dryness, and temptation. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 2725-2731.

Click on link: https://youtu.be/r2ct47YdVvU?si=b_pWBW93wkDrkWAW


Minute Meditation – Perseverance in Prayer

It seems to me that nothing is ever achieved without a certain daily doggedness that comes from a conviction about what you are working for and toward. Nowhere is this more evident than in prayer, for the daily fruit of prayer is at best a vague sense of peace, but more often that not, it is merely a sense of having tried. However, from time to time there is the breakthrough of God that is worth the daily drudgery and is only possible because of the daily perseverance that preceded it. Not that you merit a breakthrough because you persevered, but a certain attitude of receptiveness and patience, of humility and longing grows imperceptibly but surely in the heart of anyone who prays regularly in season and out. And the cumulative experience of your prayer reinforces the conviction that prayer, after all, is communion with the God you cannot see, so that in the end you are secure in having “known” God. 

—from the book Song of the Sparrow: New Poems and Meditations by Murray Bodo, OFM

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