Popular Prayers RSSFri, 21 May 2021 11:22:35 GMTTurning to MaryAs we age, we can turn to Mary, the mother of Jesus, the mother of the Church, to grow in affection for her and to learn from her, as rely upon her for help.  Her Magnificat is a marvelous prayer for our journey.  She can teach us to say, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord,” in whatever way in our lives those words will be full of grace.  And, as St. Ignatius prayed to her, we can ask her, “Mary, place me with your Son.”  So much anxiety and fear, so much doubt and anger can be softened and healed with Mary’s help.With Mary’s assistance, let us pray for the graces we need in the journey ahead of us, and let us pray for each other, especially for those who are struggling the most through the last years of their lives.My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,my spirit rejoices in God my Saviorfor he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.From this day all generations will call me blessed:the Almighty has done great things for me,and holy is his Name.He has mercy on those who fear himin every generation.He has shown the strength of his arm,he has scattered the proud in their conceit.He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,and has lifted up the lowly.He has filled the hungry with good things,and the rich he has sent away empty.He has come to the help of his servant Israelfor he has remembered his promise of mercy,the promise he made to our fathers,to Abraham and his children for ever.-The Magnificat – the ICEL translation

]]>Fri, 21 May 2021 11:22:35 GMTAn Even Better MarriageFrom Newlywed to Long-TimerThose of us who are married all want happy marriages.  Some of us have angry, troubled marriages.  Some of us have ok marriages, but maybe we have drifted into boredom or lack of interest in each other.  Others of us have good marriages but we want them to be better.There are things we can do in ordinary life that will affect our relationships with our spouses – for the better.  Please note that this discussion is not about an abusive situation where the safety of a spouse is at risk.  Sometimes we have to leave an abusive situation – and certainly we need outside help to deal with it.This reflection is about an ordinary marriage with the everyday ups and downs.  Sometimes we find ourselves looking at more downs than ups.  How can we give a new life and even new joy to our relationships?  Don’t look for marriage to be 50-50.  A good marriage is not about keeping score.  If I always try to do more than my share, to love more deeply…the main question is not “Does he/she make me happy?” The question to look at is “Do I make him/her happy?”Love my spouse at her/his most un-loveable self.  This comes down to loving my spouse the way God loves me: without judgment and without holding back.  Here is the challenge: when he is barking at me about something, when she is snapping back and pouting, at the moment we are most searching for retribution, that is the time God is inviting us to ask ourselves, “What does my spouse need from me right now?  How can I love my spouse better in this harsh moment of insecurity?”It is harder to love a spouse who is behaving badly and we feel we are the wronged party, but the love God has for us is never based on how we are behaving.  We are simply loved. A brief mental prayer asking God for support, patience and love can give us strength to love despite our loved one’s tantrum.Choose your fights.  Minor squabbles are a part of life and we can move on from them.  But they can pick away at our ... Read more

]]>Fri, 21 May 2021 11:09:38 GMTThe current spread of the novel Coronavirus is quite disturbing. There is a sense of the unknown. How bad will this get? Will it affect me? How will it further change our way of life? Just as we try to calm down and remind ourselves not to worry beyond the facts, the next day's news reveals something more shocking. Fear is a very unsettling emotion. It can paralyze us and take away our abilities to remain balanced and reasonable and to discern the right choices before us.On one level it is critical that we follow good sound advice from the medical community and do what we can to prevent ourselves from getting the virus or from spreading it to others. But, on a far deeper level, we need to turn to prayer, to our relationship with God, to find comfort and peace that we need the most. This is a time to place ourselves in our Lord's hands and to ask for the grace to trust.We certainly can pray that the epidemic will come to an end soon, and that people who contract the virus will receive the care they need. And, we can pray for those who are suffering, for the most vulnerable all over the world, and we can pray with those who are grieving the loss of loved ones.

]]>Fri, 21 May 2021 10:52:51 GMTPraying As We AgePrayer is essentially about nurturing our relationship with God.  We can have a relationship with each of the persons of the Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  We can also have a relationship with the saints.  As we grow older, all of our relationships in life tend to change.  And, experience has shown that our relationship with God goes through some changes as we age.  What are those changes and how can we prepare for them and experience them with grace?Change happens the longer a relationship lastsWe all know that relationships have a flow.  There are ups and downs.  There are times of greater or less intimacy.  We spend lots of time together and then we can get very busy and spend less time.  Communication changes as we grow in comfort and grow in the skills necessary to reveal ourselves to another and to express our feelings more deeply.  Sometimes, there are great ruptures in a relationship, with perhaps a period of distance, followed by reconciliation and a renewed connection.  Good, healthy, loving, self-sacrificing relationships grow in lover more deeply as the years go by.  Signs of affection can become simpler and more bonding.  There has been a strong growth in a sense of “us-together” which is beyond “me and you.”  In long-lasting relationships, there can be a growing comfort, just being in each other’s presence.Our relationship with God has these same patternsFundamentally our relationship with God is a gift.  We don’t create it, earn it or maintain it on our own.  However, our relationship with God has many of these same elements.  To the degree that we continue to nurture in that relationship, with personal interaction – moving beyond formal prayers, written by others – we can grow in intimacy with God.  Formal prayers, as well as devotions, rituals and liturgy, are key ways to nurture a prayer life, for us as individuals and as a community.  However, Pope Francis makes an important distinction between “saying prayers” and prayin... Read more

]]>Fri, 21 May 2021 11:33:05 GMTMost loving God, Creator of us all, we turn to you to care for your people in need. We thank you for your presence among us and the peace you offer us. Send us your Spirit to fill us with courage and hope, so that we might be your instruments of love and assistance for others in need. Through this crisis, may we come together, as people of faith in a crisis so often do by your grace, and may we come out of it more united and more determined to care for those most in need. Thank you for your fidelity and the graces we need these days.

]]>Fri, 21 May 2021 10:46:26 GMTPreparing to age, spirituallyJust as physical exercise can help us stay fit longer and prepare for the physical effects of aging, so, too, spiritual exercising can help us prepare for the transition in our relationship with God and with others, on a spiritual level.  Whether we are 50 or 70, we can prepare for what is to come.By reflecting upon the blessings and challenges of aging, we can assess at this time what our desires are, as we age.We can say to ourselves, “I want to grow in my ability to be open to what is to come in the future, by beginning to pray for the grace to surrender to the Lord more and more at this time of my life, so that I’ll be more comfortable with living out those graces in the future.”We might acknowledge, “I’m recognizing that I can be fairly impatient and inflexible these days.  I don’t want to get worse, when I get older.  I want to begin asking the Lord for the grace to let go more and to place my life in God’s hands, with each challenging experience of my day, of my life.”Very specific desires are very helpful:  “I’ve been simply feeling more and more selfish these days.  I really don’t have terrible burdens to carry, but I have been feeling a lot of self-pity.  I can’t imagine what an older, more struggling version of me will look like in the future.  I really need to take a concrete turn here.  I need to make a list of what I have to be grateful for and start practicing new behaviors for when I slip into those patterns.”A growing desire might be expressed in the form of a prayer:  “Lord, I have put off growing in simple intimacy with you.  I have lots of excuses, most of them legitimate.  My life has been busy.  I haven’t always stayed close to you or let you be close to me in my daily life.  I don’t want to wait until I have a heart attack, or find out I have cancer, dementia or some other illness or disability, before I try growing closer to you.  Let me have the graces I need to develop and feel a closeness and growing dependence... Read more

]]>Fri, 21 May 2021 11:18:24 GMTPrayer for Peace Be generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity. Be fair in thy judgment, and guarded in thy speech. Be a lamp unto those who walk in darkness, and a home to the stranger. May your peace be on  President Trump and his family! Give him wisdom, knowledge and understanding and his family future for the country.

]]>Fri, 21 May 2021 15:06:10 GMTJudging Others? Or Ourselves?We often see things very clearly. We can look at the famous illusion and we know, we insist – we can argue clearly – that we see a young woman. Or an old one.The truth is that we don’t always see the whole picture.  We think our vision is clear.  We can unmistakably spot the flaws in other people.  We can see that their behavior is sinful, their parenting styles awful or their faith life is tepid. We know that these people are not having to work as hard as we did to get some of the same benefits.But we don’t always see the other side of the picture.  We might not focus on the struggles in other people’s lives. We don’t appreciate the suffering that so many live with and the family situations that are agonizing for them.  It can be too easy for us to simply dismiss people by what we see – and move on with a feeling of satisfaction, grateful that our lives are better than theirs.If asked why we judge others so harshly, our protests ring loudly:“I’m not judging them, just observing what I see!”“Didn’t Jesus want us to do that?”“Aren’t we supposed to be troubled by sinful things other people do?”“If I notice something wrong in someone’s behavior, shouldn’t I be disturbed by it?”To really see the whole picture for what it is, we have to remember the words of Jesus: We have to remove the huge plank of wood from our own eyes before we can point out the splinter in someone else’s eye. There is an inconsistency in each of our hearts, being blind to the fact that we are unreliable sinners while at the same time we are critical of someone else for being an unreliable sinner.So why do we spend so much time judging those around us?  Why do we aim so much energy, anger, frustration and impatience at others?  It can be a good exercise in life to take a look at what is underneath our own behavior when we are critical of others. Where to begin?  With a simple prayer.Loving Brother Jesus, I ask you to come into my heart for the next few minutes and open m... Read more

]]>Fri, 21 May 2021 11:13:22 GMTWhat if I have trouble getting better?All of us have said it, or thought it, one time or another. "I don't seem to get better." We pray. We go to church. We aren't terrible people. But, we feel that the basic things in my life which keep me from being happy, seem to stay the same. We find ourselves going to Confession - perhaps monthly, perhaps before Christmas and before Easter - and we say, "I seem to always be confessing the same things." Or, we don't go to Confession any more, because we seem to confess the same things.We have fallen into bad habits. We feel bad about being so impatient or judgmental. We don't like it that we gossip or hurt people we don't like, behind their backs. We don't like how we might drink too much, from time to time, no matter how many times we've said we didn't want to do that again. We are disappointed and a bit embarrassed that we return to sexual fantasies too much. We can be mad at the media around us, and at what's available on the web, but we go there and it keeps being a place we allow ourselves to be drawn back to, over and over.We can all make a list of the ruts we are in. We can get very specific about the patterns which define our contribution to why some of our relationships aren't very good or why we don't do very well with tensions or conflicts at work. And, if we got very reflective about it, we can make an even bigger list of what we "fail to do" - the things we know we should do but never get around to doing. It becomes very difficult to care for the poor I don't see or have any occasion to notice.Paul said it in his letter to the Romans, chapter 15:19, "I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want."Wanting to changeSo, what do we do? What is the path to real conversion, real change? We know that seeking grace from the Sacrament of Reconciliation can be very powerful. God's mercy can not only forgive us but also heal us. When experience unconditional love deeply enough, we can find the desire to change,... Read more

]]>Fri, 21 May 2021 11:36:35 GMTDeveloping some new practices which might serve us well in the futureSome of the new practices we can develop are fitting for maintaining a connected, relational prayer life, as we grow older.  We can begin by reflecting on a plan which will serve us, depending upon where our relationship is now and where we would like it to be in the future.For example, we might want to decide that there are several ways we want to write out very simple prayers of trust and surrender, expressions of serenity and faith, which we can begin to make a part of our ongoing connection with God.  As we put together these various, personal ways of saying, “Lord, let my life be in your hands,” we can then begin the practice of saying these prayers at particular times in our day – when we get going in the morning, at meal times, and perhaps when we encounter a challenging moment.  Developing these patterns will be a great benefit for us, when it becomes more difficult to develop new patterns later.Another thing we can do is to begin to get comfortable with gesture.  For example, we could speak to our Lord, either at home or while we are sitting quietly in church before Mass or a worship service, with our hands open on our lap.  That simple sign of an open heart, a relationship of trust, can “carry” the time of communion with our Lord, when words might later fail us.  And, at some time in the future, when we are facing great struggle or severe pain, we will be so blessed to have developed a habit of opening our hands when we are in communion with our Lord.  At those very difficult times, that simple gesture can seal the communion we need at that time, when we might not have any energy or strength and might be without words, even without thinking.St. Paul encourages us to think about the things of heaven, rather than the things of earth.  (Colossians 3:2)  As we get older, this advice becomes more important.  Though there can be troubles and sometimes many very worldly circumstances which take ... Read more

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