Prayer of Saint Therese de Lisieux
Minute Meditation – Prayer in Solidarity
Throughout my life, I have focused on prayer as a symbol of solidarity, because prayer is grounded in the profound interdependence of life. Our prayers of gratitude remind us that no one is self-sufficient. Our gifts and talents emerge from our relationships —the persons and institutions that have supported us, as well as the earth’s bountiful providence—that inspire and undergird any achievement on our part. From this perspective, the self-made person is the most pitiable precisely because they, in their lonely individualism, think they can go it alone without any help from God or their fellow creatures. This sense of self-sufficiency collapses when we face a health crisis, death of a life companion, a professional setback, a pandemic, or the realities of aging and mortality. Prayer links us with all creation. Our gratitude inspires relationship and connection. Recognizing that we are truly one in spirit and flesh with all creation, we are inspired to move from self-interest to global concern. We discover that in an interdependent universe, others have been the answers to our prayers, coming along at the right time to provide comfort and counsel, and that we can be the answer to others’ prayers, sharing the gifts we have received so that others might flourish in body, mind, spirit, and relationships.
—from the book Walking with Francis of Assisi: From Privilege to Activism
by Bruce Epperly
//Franciscan Media//
Daily Meditation – Ask and It Shall Be Given
“In the spiritual life there are two great principles which should never be forgotten: Without grace we can do nothing; with it we can do all things. Sometimes it anticipates our desires; ordinarily, God waits till we ask for it. This is a general law thus expressed by Our Lord: ‘Ask, and it shall be given to you.’ Prayer is, therefore, not only a precept, it is a necessity. God places the treasure of His graces at our disposal, and its key is prayer. You desire more faith, more hope, more love; ‘ask, and it shall be given to you.’ Your good resolutions remain sterile, resulting always in the same failures: ‘ask, and it shall be given to you’. Precepts are numerous, virtue painful, temptation seductive, the enemy ruthless, the will weak: ‘ask, and it shall be given to you.'”— Rev. Dom Vitalis Lehodey p. xv
The Other Serenity Prayer
Meditation of the Day – January 29th
“Prayer, considered as petition, consists entirely in expressing to God some desire in order that He may hear it favorably; a real desire is, therefore, its primary and essential condition; without this, we are merely moving the lips, going through a form of words which is not the expression of our will; and thus our prayer is only an appearance without reality. The way, then, to excite ourselves to pray, to put life and fervor into our prayer, and to make of it a cry which, breaking forth from the depths of the soul, penetrates even to heaven, is to conceive the real desire mentioned above, to excite it, to cherish it; for the fervor of our prayer will be in proportion to the strength of the desire we have to be heard; just as what we have but little at heart we ask for only in a half-hearted way, if even we ask it at all; so what we desire with our whole soul we ask for with words of fire, and plead for it before God with an eloquence that is very real.”— Rev. Dom Lehody, p. 4-5
Morning Offering
“When we pray, the voice of the heart must be heard more than the proceedings from the mouth.”
– St. Bonaventure
Morning Offering
“Prayer is the best preparation for Holy Communion. Prayer is the raising of the mind to God. When we pray we go to meet Christ Who is coming to us. If our Creator and Savior comes from heaven with such great love, it is only fitting that we should go to meet Him. And this is what we do when we spend some time in prayer.”
– St. Bernardine of Siena
Meditation of the Day – January 27, 2021
“Prayer is, as it were, being alone with God. A soul prays only when it is turned toward God, and for so long as it remains so. As soon as it turns away, it stops praying. The preparation for prayer is thus the movement of turning to God and away from all that is not God. That is why we are so right when we define prayer as this movement. Prayer is essentially a ‘raising up’, an elevation. We begin to pray when we detach ourselves from created objects and raise ourselves up to the Creator.”— Dom Augustin Guillerand, p. 91
My Hope is in You
Hold Out Your Hand
“And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you”
(Psalm 39:7).
It might be time to let go. It might be time to empty your hands. It might be time to stop grasping.
Open up your hands. There are things I want to place in them. For I do want you to hold on to some things.
I want you to hold on to hope. This day is full of Me. There is beginning here. There are things for which to be grateful.
I want you to hold on to love. What is more important than you, than your own pursuits? What is before you, who is before you? How can you enter into a situation with my love pouring out? How can you show her, show him, my face?
I want you to hold on to faith. You do not stay in the hard times forever. There is good coming. There is also beauty here, right now. Look for Me and you will find Me. Listen for Me and you will hear my voice, all around.
I want you to hold on to joy. Joy is for you. Joy is for you to feel. Joy is for you to wake up with and experience and demonstrate. Could you imagine practicing spreading joy? It is for you to know.
I want you to hold on to Me. I want you to treasure moments, and I want you to be present with Me. Look ahead, to the future, and ask for wisdom so I may teach you the way to go, whether to spend time here or there.
I want you to hold on to grace, the forgiveness and life I give you. I want you to remember how I came for you and come again. I want you to live in freedom, breathe deeply, rest in what I give.
I want you to hold on to my hand, in everything you do. I want you to hold on to my hope, my love, my faith, my joy, my grace. I want you to hold in your heart the image of you I put before you, the daughter clinging to her Father’s hand.
Gather Ministries
Minute Meditations – January 25th, 2021
What we bring to the pursuit of the God of life is what we will get out of it. The regularity of prayer, the depth of our lectio, the embrace of silence, the space we give
to the search for God, the surrender of our own obsessions with self to the concerns of God for the world—all these will determine the quality of the contemplation we achieve. Prayer becomes the olive press we walk, the chafing wheel we tread which, over and over again, breaks open our hearts to the Word of God. Then, finally, after years of immersion in daily prayer, we begin to be what we have prayed for all those years.
–from the book In God’s Holy Light: Wisdom from the Desert Monastics
by Joan Chittister, OSB