Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent
“For greater things you were born.” (Ven. Mother Luisita)
FRIDAY, April 8th Jn. 10: 31-42 Verse before the Gospel: “Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life; you have the words of everlasting life.”
Three traditional practices in our daily walk with Christ are Prayer, Fasting, and Almsgiving. These are intensified in Advent, but even more so in Lent, when we meditate on the suffering, Passion, and death of Our Lord and Savior! Yesterday we meditated on the Value of Suffering by Fr. Ed. Suffering is a form of fasting—it is surrendering our will to the Will of God, as Jesus did in all things.
Isaiah 53: 4-6
Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
Today, we will turn to Prayer…
PRAYER SETS OUR HEARTS AFLAME WITH LOVE OF GOD by Fr. Ed Broom.
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 that 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 knew 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, our spiritual lungs! No air—suffocation! Likewise, No prayer—spiritual asphyxiation.
Prayer is essential for all people, in all times and places, and in any season 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 daily 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. (Lk 12:49) 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”. 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)
If we pray to God through the Heart of Mary, such a prayer is powerful indeed. Jesus’ first miracle came about through the powerful intercession of Mary who said: “Do whatever He tells you.” (Jn 2:5)
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. “Jesus, I trust in you.”
5. “Suffering borne in the will quietly and patiently is a continual, very powerful prayer before 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 and Suffering are powerful 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 us 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 offering in prayer 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 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 prayers—sent as they are on the wings of God’s messenger!
10. “He who prays most, receives most.” (Saint Alphonsus Liguori)
There are many, many blessings that 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 sums it up: “We are all beggars before God.”
11. “Pray and work.” (Saint Benedict)
Have no confusion about this: prayer is not our work! We must both pray and work. If our prayer is our work, this is translated into the heresy of Activism.
12. The Simple Path… “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.” (Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta)
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 our day will be imbued with 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 weapon is that of prayer. Little or no prayer, we enter into combat without a weapon and the battle will undoubtedly be 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)
What could encourage us more than this image of God’s intimate love for each one of us!
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, with the angels and the saints, by their prayers encourage us to undertake the most noble enterprise and pursuit of a deep prayer life. In this way, our harvest ground will be rich in this life, as well as in the life to come!
