Friday of the First Week of Lent
“For greater things you were born.” (Ven. Mother Luisita)
FRIDAY, March 11th Mt. 5:20-26 Verse Before the Gospel: “Cast away from you all the crimes you have committed, says the Lord, and make for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit.”
Today, Fr. Ed shows us how to set our hearts on fire!
PRAYER SETS OUR HEARTS AFLAME WITH LOVE OF GOD By Fr. Ed Broom, OMV
There is a three-dimensional technique to live out Lent fruitfully and efficaciously: go up, go in, and go out!!! Go up to God—through a deep prayer life! Go in to ourselves through penance and conversion from sin! Finally, go out to others by almsgiving or active charity. “Whatsoever you do to others, you do to me”—the Lord Jesus Christ!
It is absolutely impossible to find any saint who did not only understand the value and importance of prayer, but also the dire urgency to put prayer into practice.
In sum, irrespective of time, place, culture, intellectual back-ground (or lack of it), social milieu—all of the saints know that without a deep, dynamic, and fervent prayer life they would be spiritual losers and moral disasters. If you like, what oxygen is to the lungs, so is prayer to the soul—the spiritual lungs! No air—suffocation! Likewise, no prayer—spiritual asphyxiation.
Prayer is essential for all people in all places, as well as any season or time of the year. However, it must be asserted: Lent is a most propitious time for deepening our prayer life and giving quality time to implement the practice of prayer in our lives.
So as to encourage and motivate us to live a most fruitful Lent by means of growth in prayer, we will offer a wide variety of saints and how they explain their own prayer experience in a few concise but penetrating strokes of the pen!
THE SAINTS ON THE POWERFUL PRESENCE OF PRAYER
1. “You go to pray to become a bonfire, a living flame, giving light and heat.” (Saint Josemaria Escriva). Jesus said that He came to cast fire on the earth and that He is not at peace until that fire be enkindled. Prayer indeed transforms us into fiery and explosive Spiritual furnaces. May our deep prayer lives set the hearts of the cold and indifferent on fire!
2. “Mental prayer is nothing else but being on terms of friendship with God, frequently conversing in secret with Him.” (Saint Teresa of Avila). Jesus called His Apostles friends and He desires most ardently your friendship and mine. Indeed, He is the Friend who will never fail us!
3. “Prayer is powerful beyond limits when we turn to the Immaculata who is Queen even of God’s heart.” (Saint Maximilian Kolbe) Praying to God through the Immaculate Heart of Mary is such a powerful prayer! Indeed, Jesus’ first miracle came about through the powerful intercession of Mary who said: “Do whatever He tells you.”
4. “Do not worry over things that generate preoccupation and anxiety. One thing only is necessary: to lift up your spirit and love God. (Saint Padre Pio) If we want to conquer the temptation to worry, the true spirit of prayer can conquer all worries, preoccupations and fears.
5. “Do not worry over things that generate preoccupation and anxiety. One thing only is necessary: to lift up your spirit and love God.” (Saint Jane Frances Chantal) If we can gently but firmly unite our sufferings to the sufferings of Jesus on the cross in our personal prayer, then the mountains can be moved. Prayer, Patience in Suffering equals power before the throne of God.
6. The prayer of the sick person is his patience and his acceptance of his sickness for the love of Jesus Christ. Make sickness itself a prayer; for there is none more powerful, save martyrdom.” (Saint Frances de Sales) Suffering can make us better or bitter. If united with prayer, undoubtedly suffering makes a better, more holy, and more like Jesus in His Passion.
7. “Prayer is the place of refuge for every worry, a foundation for cheerfulness, a source of constant happiness, a protection against sadness.” (Saint John Chrysostom). In charity we owe it to others to avoid a glum appearance and to radiate joy. How? Cultivate a deep prayer life!
8. “Give me a person of prayer, and such a one will be able to accomplish anything.” (Saint Vincent de Paul) Great and noble enterprises can only be accomplished by giving all one’s efforts and works to God who indeed is omnipotent. Nothing is beyond the realm of God’s power!
9. “When you pass before a chapel and do not have time to stop for a while, tell your Guardian Angel to carry out your errand to Our Lord in the tabernacle. He will accomplish it and then still have time to catch up with you.” (Saint Bernadette Soubirous) We should never forget to walk and talk and converse often with our Guardian Angel. He will bolster up our prayer on the wings of God’s messengers!
10. “He who prays most, receives most.” (Saint Alphonsus Liguori) Many, many blessings we never receive—on a human and supernatural plane—for one reason: we do not ask/beg God for these gifts and blessings. Saint Augustine states: “We are all beggars before God.”
11. “Pray and work.” (Saint Benedict) Have no confusion: prayer is not our work! We must both pray and work. If our prayer is our work this translates into the heresy of Activism.
12. “The simple path.” (Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta) 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. Goodness and virtue are linked together, but all through the superglue of prayer!
13. “Do nothing at all unless you begin with prayer.” (Saint Ephraem the Syrian) If we start our day with the Morning Offering giving all to Jesus through Mary, then the day will be imbued by God’s presence and blessing!
14. “A soul arms itself by prayer for all kinds of combat.” (Saint Faustina Kowalska). To follow Christ is to enter into spiritual combat. Our most powerful armor is that of prayer. No prayer, we enter into combat without the smallest weapon and the battle undoubtedly is lost!
15. “Just as a mother holds her child’s face in her hands to cover it with kisses, so does God hold us.” (Saint John Vianney)
Hopefully all of us will take seriously the universal call to holiness; we are all called to become saints. The shortest, quickest, most efficacious path to holiness is by striving on a daily basis to grow in our prayer life. May Our Lady, the angels and the saints, by their prayers encourage us to undertake the most noble enterprise and pursuit of a deep prayer life. Our harvest ground will be rich in this life as well as the life to come!
