Lord, grant us peace

 

True prayer is "Thy will be done"

When we pray, we don't convert God to our ways; rather, we are converted to God's ways. We see life with God's eyes, we live life with God's heart.

Pray

Pray ... pray ... pray ... 
Prayer helps us remember that we are not at the center of the world. The world has existed before us and will continue to exist long after we're gone.
Prayer reminds us that, though we may seem small and insignificant, we are a part of something great. Prayer helps us to care and to be concerned about something other than ourselves.
Prayer gives us a solid ground to navigate the uncertainties of life. As we address ourselves to Someone (up there, or deep within, or ever-present in everything), we experience a companionship with Someone (to be grateful to, to bombard with our complaints, to share our struggles and doubts).
Pray.

"Your prayer has been heard"

More than a passive waiting for God to do something, prayer has an active dimension; that of transforming our hearts, so that the object of prayer becomes the passion of our hearts. It is what is in our hearts that move us to action.

Pray!

Pray. Pray much. We can never pray enough.

To gather the pieces and form the puzzle

Prayer is a necessary ingredient, like air, itself, to life. Without prayer, life is a collection of pieces of a jigsaw puzzle without any hope of discovering the picture that they form

A heart like God's

When Jesus asks us to love our enemies, I don't think that He meant that we begin to treat them as our best friends. That wouldn't be possible.
I believe what He means is that we treat people well, we wish people well, even those who do not treat us well. We don't wish people harm, even those who do us a lot of harm.
Instead, we pray for them. We ask that in God they may find what is best for their life. We pray for their sake, not for ours.
And as what happens when we truly pray, God will transform our hearts unto His own heart, a heart of goodness and mercy.

On praying

And when I pray, God always gives something to me, even if it is not the grace I am asking for. When I pray, God makes my heart wider because I learn to embrace intentions other than my own.

God in the most unexpected places

I woke up early, as I usually do, despite the fact that our community wakes up half an hour later during the Christmas holidays. I am already so used to my morning ritual of walking a little and breathing some fresh air before going to the chapel to pray the Office of the Readings.
Well, today something happened. One Sister had to go out early so she asked me right then and there to bring to the kitchen the bread delivered by the baker. That meant a deviation in my schedule, but I agreed to her request, without giving it a second thought. So instead of praying all three Psalms of the Office I just prayed two; yet  there was no feeling of guilt that my prayer was incomplete. I just felt in my heart that God wants me to meet Him in the need of that Sister.
That was a good occasion for me to pray, after all, prayer is to "listen and obey".

Prayer that becomes life

Prayer can be a moment in time, but it can be an attitude in life.
Of course concrete moments of prayer are necessary, as it is necessary to show people that you love them through tangible expressions. What is not good is when you do the gestures but without love in your heart. It can just be a habit or a way to show off.
And so it is with prayer.
There are times when we go through moments of prayer without feeling the desire to pray. Nevertheless, we pray because we know that it is a good and a right thing to do. Sometimes no beautiful thoughts come. At times there is even a secret desire for the moment of prayer to come to its end.
I believe that God also accepts this imperfection in our prayer.
We may not feel any excitement, but we pray because it is a good and a right thing to do.
And so it is with life.
Very few are our euphoric moments.
For many of us, the substance of our being is manifested in our everyday lives, a stage so commonplace that no one takes notice, not even we.
When we make the choices that we make,
when we do the things that we do,
when we say the words that we utter not because of any excitement or outward reward but because it is what is good and right, then our life has become prayer.

Prayer

You never take away from action what you put in on prayer.

Doing God's will is my prayer

To pray is to listen to God, and listening is not just lending one's ears or paying attention.
To listen means to make what you have heard a part of your life, a part of who you are.
To listen to God means to be transformed by Him, so that what He wants becomes what I want. It is not so much renouncing what I want so as to accommodate what God wants, as discovering that deep within me I want what God wants becausee what God wants is nothing else but my true happiness.
Many times it is not easy to understand this because I often begin with the premise that what God wants is contrary to what I want.
I pray that I may understand that God only wants for me true joy and fullness of life.

Like father, like daughter

 In today's first reading (John 3:22-30), the apostle John tells us that whatever it is we ask of God, if it is according to His will, He will grant us.
Sounds tricky.
What is the use of asking God for something when I am sure that He is not going to give it to me if it is not what He wants? Or, Why do I need to still pray for something which is already according to God's plan?
When I focus my attention on prayer as twisting God's arm, indeed prayer doesn't make sense.
However, when I look at prayer from another light, I think this passage from John makes sense.
Prayer is an expression of my being God's child. A son or a daughter is, normally, not afraid nor embarrassed to ask from their parents. It is something natural. In this sense, the more I ask God for something, the more I express my daughter-ship.
And the more I grow in my daughter-ship, the more my interests, my concerns, my tastes become similar to my Father's... and in a sense we become one, one mind and one heart.
And this is prayer's journey - to become more and more like my Heavenly Father.

Pray

To pray is to listen to God. To listen requires time and attention. To listen is some sort of a pre-commandment. In fact, it is a prelude to the ten commandments: "Listen, Israel!"
I remember that I once heard a young father say "in my house everybody talks, nobody listens."
What a pity it is when we only talk and we don't know how to listen! It is listening that transforms talking into conversation.
In today's Gospel (Luke 5:12-16), we hear about Jesus' growing popularity, how many people were listening to Him and wanting to be healed. But in all these, Jesus goes off in deserted places to pray.
Prayer is a great equalizer. It enables us to take a reality check.
Prayer makes us realize that our accomplishments are good but they are not forever.
Prayer makes us remember that our difficulties and sufferings may be great but they are not forever.
Prayer helps us to understand that neither our accomplishments nor our sufferings defines who we are.
Prayer reminds us that, first and foremost, we are beloved children of a Good Father.

A prayer for one who is in pain

If I can only make things better for you, I will do so. But we know that each one of us must make our own journey and write our own life story with the God of love.
I entrust you to Mother Mary. May you rest in her arms where she cradles you as you cry your silent tears. May her hands, seasoned by life's experiences, wipe away the tears in your eyes so that you may see shafts of light, one at a time, until you are able to see and touch again the rainbow that has always been there in the horizon.

Praying

Today's Gospel presents us once again Jesus' parable about the Pharisee and the tax collector who both came to the Temple to pray (Luke 18:9-14).
The Pharisee actually starts His prayer on the right tone but immediately goes awry. He begins by saying, "O God, I thank you". That is a very good thing. Prayer is a time to be grateful, to recognize that everything is God's grace.
But then immediately afterwards he goes on to say "... that I am not like the rest of humanity -greedy, dishonest, adulterous- or even like this tax collector ...". From being a prayer, his discourse turns to a self-righteous condemnation of the rest of the world.
On the other hand, we understand why the tax collector's prayer was pleasing to God: because of his acknowledgment of God as the Other one.
Prayer is placing ourselves before God, the Other one. Jesus taught us to call God our Father, but this doesn't take away the immense difference between us and God.
This difference shouldn't be a cause of despair or inferiority. Rather, it should lead to gratitude because, in reality, when we pray, it is God Himself who crosses the boundaries and distance between us.
It is gratitude and humility that enable me to see God's great act of crossing over.
Only grateful and humble people pray.

Our prayers are a reflection of ourselves

After vespers today one of the Sisters told me that she doesn't understand the concluding prayer. It is in Italian and it says something about asking God to look kindly on our questions, and so on and so forth. I thought she was joking but then when I looked at her again she was really serious. What are the questions that we are asking God to answer?
I will not attempt to answer. But her questioning led me to another thought. In that same concluding prayer we are asking God to look "kindly". But He is a God of kindness, so surely there is no need to remind Him about that!
I remember that when I was a student I had a theology professor who always scrutinized our spontaneous prayers. He always found fault on one or two expressions, saying that it's vague and it doesn't make sense, or that it is redundant, etc. In the end we were almost afraid to formulate spontaneous prayers since we didn't want them to be massacred.
I may sound heretic but I guess that when we pray, it is really an expression of ourselves. Let's get back to that example earlier asking God to look kindly. It is a reminder to me that God is a kind God, that whatever be His response to my prayer, it doesn't diminish His kindness.
More than revealing God to us, prayer reveals us to ourselves.
Is God jealous? I don't think so because I also believe that God is happier when we become true to ourselves because it is in this authenticity that we finally find Him.

To my past pupils

Dear young ladies,

It gives me great joy whenever I log in to my FB account and see your faces, your messages and any news about your life. I cannot believe that just a little over ten years ago you were the simple, carefree and good-hearted teen-agers I had the blessing to teach CLE. Oh my, how you have all grown. Some of you are now married and with your own children. Some have pursued the careers they were only dreaming about ten years ago. Sadly, one (as far as I know) has already gone back to the Father’s house. Many of you are in different parts of the globe.

Pardon me, and I hope you don’t get offended, but beneath the make up, the fancy clothes and the sophisticated expressions, I still see the wide-eyed girls full of curious questions, eager, yet a little fearful to march ahead and carve your own path.

I remember the times when I couldn’t finish the CLE lessons because of your questions, or because of other activities that “steal” the CLE time. You didn’t know it, but I was nervous that we wouldn’t finish the scheduled lessons in time for the periodical exams.

I remember our prayer moments to celebrate each lesson. How we had to push the benches in the chapel in order for you to squat on the floor. I know you liked those prayer moments because it meant “no formal lessons, no recitations”. But I also know that in the end, you enjoyed them because they were moments for you to enter into your heart, to think about your life. I believed in those prayer moments, even if they meant risking that we wouldn’t finish our lessons, because I knew that they were the rare quality moments you could spend with Jesus, and I know that if I didn’t accompany you to encounter Jesus, I would not have given you what is best.

I remember your journals. I know I was very demanding by asking you to write on them very often. But hey, it was more demanding for me, since I wanted to read each of your reflections and respond to them. Your journal entries were very precious to me, as they gave me the chance to know the person within, the person you were sometimes afraid to show in public.

I don’t know what came to me that I decided to write you this letter. It could be Kathrina’s forthcoming wedding. I just want to thank you for the experiences that we have shared together. Just thinking about you fills my heart with joy. You are all part of who I am. Thank you.

No one of us is ever the same. Each day we are called to make choices, big or small. Some choices are easy, some take a lot of courage. Some have long-lasting consequences. Each of our choices contribute in building the person that we are, yes, even the mistakes that we make.

My wish and my prayer for each one of you is to be happy with who you are, yet be open to become better persons. When I say better, I do not mean “become more beautiful, more popular, more successful, have more money”, or whatever it is that is usually equated with success. What I mean is, that you may truly be happy with a joy that nobody can take away. Success, money, material things, friends, even family are not permanent things in life. No matter how hard we work to assure that they last, they never do. Believe me, I have experienced it.

My prayer for you is that you may truly encounter Jesus in your life. Let Him be the rock on which to build your life. The choices that may make you enjoy now may later be your suffering, if they are not compatible with the message of Jesus and with God’s dream for you.

Wherever you are, I hope you keep in touch with each other, especially with your closest friends in high school. They are the ones who truly know you. They are the ones who will remain with you when the going gets rough. Reach out to your former classmates who are maybe awkward to reach out to you. Pray for each other. Prayer enlarges our heart and makes us think of others. It cures us of our selfishness. Remember that a selfish person will never be happy.

Tomorrow is the feast of the Immaculate Conception. In the Salesian world, it is considered as the birth of Don Bosco’s work. I will, for sure, remember you in my prayers in a special way.

May God bless each one of you. May He wipe away the tears of those of you who are suffering at this moment. May you rest in the firm conviction that our God is a loving Father who takes care of our daily needs.

I love you all in the love of Jesus.

Pray always

These days, I have been experiencing a quiet serenity. It is as if there is a "very secure" certainty in my heart that things are going to be better, that happiness is just "a few blocks away".
Should I think this way? Sometimes I tell myself that it is better not to think this way because it might sound as if I am taunting the gods. But on the other hand, I think I owe it to God, to recognize that something is happening. I am very well aware that whatever it is, it is God's grace at work. I wouldn't have arrived at this point if it were only for my own strength and capacities. God never gave up on me. His grace has helped me not to give up on myself.
I do not know how long this "peace" will last, but I make the resolution to pray especially during the good times, so that when times come that I do not feel like praying, or when I am desolate or too tired and hurting to even think of God, my spirit may continue to pray. I really do not know if this makes sense, but it does, for me.

Serenity prayer