No time to pray? Then pray more. There’s a reason it’s an essential part of Christian life. That’s Father Mark-Mary’s advice, and he’s in good company, in fact he’s in saintly company. He recounts a story when Fr. Benedict Groeschel told St. Mother Teresa that he didn’t have time for a daily holy hour, and Mother Teresa told him then he should make two holy hours a day. She understood that prayer isn’t just a nice thing, prayer is a necessary thing. This advice points to the reality that if we have a busy day, we need to pray more—not less. We want to build great things for the Lord, but they must be built on a solid foundation of prayer and communication with God. In their daily journey to become more holy, this lesson has become vital to Father Mark-Mary and the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal.
Minute Meditation – Prayer is a Power We Have
Prayer is not only a need that each of us has; it is also a power. Jesus has told us that whatever we ask in his name, God will give us. And because prayer is a power, it is also a responsibility and challenge. It is a responsibility because through prayer we can join with Christ in redeeming the world. If we pray only for ourselves or about ourselves, we have not yet learned to pray, for prayer is outward- reaching and all-embracing. A good barometer of where we are in our union with God is whether or not our prayer reaches out to all people. If my prayer centers mainly on myself, then that is where I am. The true prayer accepts Christ’s challenge to join with him in opening his or her arms to all. And as one’s prayer becomes more cosmic and other-centered, so does one’s thinking and attitudes.
— from the book Song of the Sparrow: New Poems and Meditations by Murray Bodo, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
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
//Franciscan Media//
Minute Meditation – Finding God in Our Experience
More valuable than any proof for the existence of God demonstrated in books is a personal experience of God. People of prayer and interiority know God mainly through God’s working in their lives. They have known God in the prayers that were answered, in problems and in difficulties overcome that only the power of God’s Spirit can explain, and above all in the charity of their lives that transcends human patience and love and reaches a level of selflessness that faith alone makes possible. The witness of a selfless God-centered life, therefore, is the greatest proof of the existence of God. People find God in people who have already found God and live in that love.
— from the book Song of the Sparrow: New Poems and Meditations by Murray Bodo, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
Minute Meditation – Deep Work Can be Prayer
When you are in a flow state or doing deep work, you have given yourself fully to what you are doing. You’re not checking email or texts or your social media feeds. You’re not browsing streaming services for new content. You’re not snagging the best deal on Amazon. You’re simply doing one thing, whether that is performing a piano concerto, writing a fine paragraph, helping your third-grader with her math, or getting the ignition timing properly set. You have, to borrow a phrase from Thomas Merton, forgotten yourself on purpose. Like Mary, you are truly and fully attentive to the one thing needful, rather than busy with the ten thousand things, like Martha. If approached with intention, such states can indeed be forms of prayer: deep, open attentiveness to the present moment, in which our own egos are emptied out so we have room to be filled with the divine.
— from the book Making Room: Soul-Deep Satisfaction through Simple Living
by Kyle Kramer
//Franciscan Media//
Minute Meditation – Prayer Takes Us Beyond Ourselves
Prayer begins through our recognition of ourselves as creatures, finite and yet aware of something greater. It is an impulse that takes us outside of ourselves, inspired by the expectation of some deeper meaning or the longing for an infinite existence. Prayer doesn’t issue from a sense of resignation about our condition but rather from a sense of hope: There must be something more. Through the act of prayer, a person attempts to reach beyond the boundaries of space and time and touch something transcendent, some ultimate Other who is responsible for everything that exists. Prayer expresses an all-pervasive longing for happiness, not in terms of emotional satisfaction but in terms of personal fulfillment. The impulse that grounds the act of prayer is an unconditional and sensitive openness to that which transcends all the ins and outs of everyday life. Prayer addresses the basic questions of human existence.
— from the book Inspired: The Powerful Presence of the Holy Spirit
by Fr. Gary Caster
//Franciscan Media//
Minute Meditation – Good Work is Like a Prayer
It is in work that we find the test of our relationship to the creation because work is the question of how we will use the creation. For Wendell Berry, work done well brings us into a wholeness and cooperation with the creation in which we can find health. Bad work destroys the connections that make life possible. For Berry good work is like a prayer—it is an act of both gratitude and return. Good work accepts the gifts of creation and uses those gifts to further their givenness. There are seeds that lie for decades in the soil, waiting for the right conditions before springing to life. Good work is that which creates the conditions for such life to burst forth from the whole of the creation.
— from the book Wendell Berry and the Given Life
by Ragan Sutterfield
//Franciscan Media//
Meditation of the Day – Allow the Rays of His Love and Grace to Bathe Your Soul
“In our self-centered culture and classic American emphasis on work, we often feel we have to accomplish something during our times of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. We rate our experience by how ‘good’ our prayer was, how heartfelt our devotion was, or how focused we could remain. Yet prayer and contemplation are fundamentally God’s work, in which we are invited to participate. We need only to give Him the opening, and He will do the rest. By coming to adoration, we are handing Him the keys to our hearts, allowing the rays of His love and grace to bathe our souls in the light of His Presence, as the rays of the sun bathe our bodies in light. If we can take the time to pull away from the busyness and distractions of life and just sit at His feet, He will lead us.”— Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration, p. 33
//The Catholic Company//
Morning Offering – Arm Yourself with Prayer
“Arm yourself with prayer rather than a sword; wear humility rather than fine clothes.”
— St. Dominic