Tag: Prayer

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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

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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

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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

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The Bible in a Year – Day 180 – Giving Time to God

As we conclude the book of Amos, we hear Amos rebuke the people for grudgingly giving their time to God, as in prayer or on the sabbath, and counting the minutes until they could do whatever they wanted. Fr. Mike points out that if we don’t give our hearts and minds to God, we won’t be able to stand heaven, where prayer and praise are everlasting. The readings are 2 Kings 13-14, Amos 7-9, and Psalm 124.

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https://youtu.be/BQytVvj7lQ4