Daily Reflection – Prayer is Successful When . . .
Minute Meditation – Prayer and Action
There surely is a world of difference between the prayer of action and that of silence or word. Here it is not by listening and responding, not by diving down into silence, but by acting, by doing, that I communicate with God. Whatever I can do lovingly can become prayer of action. Nor is it necessary that I explicitly think of God while working or playing. Sometimes this would hardly be possible. While proofreading a manuscript, I better keep my mind on the text, not on God. If my mind is torn between the two, the typos will slip through like little fish through a torn net. God will be present precisely in the loving attention I give to the work entrusted to me. By giving myself fully and lovingly to that work, I give myself fully to God. This happens not only in work but also in play, say, in bird-watching or in watching a good movie. God must be enjoying it in me, when I am enjoying it in God. Is not this communion the essence of praying?
— from the book The Way of Silence: Engaging the Sacred in Daily Life by Brother David Steindl-Rast
Daily Reflection – Behind All of Our Prayer Requests . . .
Daily Reflection – To Really Know Someone, You Must Spend Time With Them
Daily Reflection – Building Prayer Into Your Relationship
Daily Reflection – The Power of Prayer
Morning Offering – Prayer is a Surge of the Heart
“For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.”
— St. Therese of Lisieux
//Catholic Company//
Meditation of the Day – Prayer is the Duty of Every Moment
“Prayer is the duty of every moment. We ought always to pray, said our Lord. And what He said, He did; therein lay His great power. Action accompanied His words and corresponded with them. We must pray always in order to be on our guard. Our life, both of body and soul, our natural and supernatural life, is like a fragile flower. We live surrounded by enemies. Ever since man rejected the Light that was meant to show him the way, everything has become for us an obstacle and a danger; we live in the shadow of death.”— Dom Augustin Guillerand, p. 9
//Catholic Company//
Morning Offering – The Fruit of Silence is Prayer
“The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service, the fruit of service is peace.”— St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta
//Catholic Company//
Minute Meditation – Working with Creation
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 Wendeell 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//