Prayer however, is not a question of what we say or feel, but of love; it is a choice to love and be with the one we love; it is a matter of the heart

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time. October 17th, 2010

Last week we spoke of the four purposes of prayer. To remember those four purposes of prayer we used the word ACTS, standing for Adoration, Contrition, Thanksgiving and Supplication. We spoke about how we are to bring ACTS into our personal prayer, and especially our prayer at the Holy Mass before the Holy Eucharist.

Today we again hear about prayer; Souls who have always been close to the Lord constantly speak to us of the primary importance of prayer in the Christian life. And so, in our Gospel, Jesus speaks to us about the need to pray constantly and to persevere in our prayer in order to maintain our faith and grow in our love for our Heavenly Father.

To make His point, Jesus uses the image of a widow in great need; she persistently bothers the unjust judge who because of her constant supplication finally gives into her request. Jesus makes a contrast here between the judge and our Heavenly Father; if even this unjust Judge will grant the widow’s request because of her perseverance, how much more will Our Father in heaven who loves us grant our requests when we persevere in our prayer to Him. The lesson is of course this, because prayer is that action which put us into direct Contact with the living God we must pray always, without ceasing or becoming weary. But what does it mean to pray always and how do we do it?

To pray always means living in a personal, constant union with God. It doesn’t mean spending all day in church, and it certainly doesn’t mean neglecting our daily duties of life in order to pray. No, praying always is simply fulfilling our daily duties with our mind and heart centered on God and on our love for Him and His love for us. Your work, everything you do, no matter how insignificant is done for love of God and offered to God in love; Your life becomes a living prayer. This begins with a morning offering, offering all our thoughts, words and actions to God with a prayer such as: all for the Sacred and Eucharist heart of Jesus, all through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, all in union with St. Joseph. The key here is that as we offer our daily activities we do so with a desire to show our love for God who loves us beyond our imagining.

You see, prayer can never be about calculating the time we spend, or checking it off our list of things to do. Does a mother ask how often she should love her child or a friend how often he should love a friend? Does a Mother ever see it has a burden to talk to her child, or friend to talk to his friend, the one he loves. St. Augustine says that the essence of prayer is desire. And so, if the desire for God is constant, so also is prayer, but if there is no interior desire, then you can howl as much as you want – to God you are mute.

In the Gospels, Jesus himself gives us the example of praying always. Prayer was the connecting thread of his whole life. His mind was always on His Father, everything He did was done for love of His Father. So intimate was and is this conversation and relationship, that Jesus and his Father are one. Jesus example of prayer tells us something else very important about praying always. We pray to become like God, one with God.

Of Jesus, it is said that he prayed during the day, in the evening, early in the morning, and sometimes he passed the whole night in prayer. We are deceiving ourselves if we think that we can pray from the heart if we do not set aside every day, fixed times for prayer, times when we are free from every other distraction. Part of our ceaseless prayer are those specific schedule times of our day, which should be devoted to contemplation and private prayer; It is during these times that we come to know God’s will for us and are strengthened to perform our daily duties in a way that is pleasing to Our Lord.

Prayer should be the first act of our day and the last of act of our day, along with times in between to pray as well, including before and after meals. Also an essential part of our scheduled daily prayer must be the prayer of the Holy Rosary. The three little shepherds (at Fatima) understood the value of the Rosary as a call to prayer and an easy way of responding to Jesus’ call to us to pray always. Sister Lucia, one of the children of Fatima wrote, “Those who say the Rosary daily are like children who, every day, manage to find a few moments just to be with their father, to keep him company, to show him their gratitude, to do some service for him, to receive his advice and his blessing. It is an exchange of love, the love of the father for the child and the child for the father; it is a mutual giving.

The Rosary leads us to another essential part of how we pray always. In the Rosary, Our Mother leads us by the hand to a deep intimate loving encounter with her Son, Jesus. In the Rosary, we contemplate the mysteries of Jesus through the eyes of His Mother and our Mother; through her we learn to imitate the life of her Son. And so, the Rosary is really a Eucharistic prayer; if it is prayed correctly and with love and devotion it leads us to Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. Love and devotion for the Eucharist are an essential part of praying always.

And so it is essential for our prayer that we set aside, as the Church as always done, a special day dedicated to worship, prayer and study, yes studying our faith is part of prayer. This special day is of course Sunday; it was previously known as the Lord's day, because it was suppose to be a day set aside for the Lord; by the way not just one hour, but the whole day.

All of us know, unfortunately what has happened to Sunday’s in our society. Just one example is sports. Sports while good for diversion and relaxation have often become something that poisons Sunday when they replace our privilege time with God at Holy Mass. Again, the whole day of Sunday should really be set aside for God, especially as families; that is families united together praying and focusing on the things of God to grow closer as family to God.

The early Church did this; Sunday began with Mass, continued with catechism, learning about God, time for resting, recreation and relaxation with God, and then ended with Evening prayer. Every family did this to grow closer to God and one another. By the way, this is why we have Family and Children Holy hour, to bring children and whole families to a privileged time outside of Mass to be with the one we love, Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. I want to begin in the future, after the Holy Hour, to restore the Sung Sunday Evening pray in our Church.

If we are to pray always from the heart, we must do whatever we can so that this day, Sunday, can return to being, as God intended, a day of serene joy that strengthens our communion with God, and through Him, with each other, in the family, and with emphasis, "the parish family." Out of this will flow a renewal of our whole society. We will never straighten out our Society with restoring Sunday as the Lord's day; again the whole day.

It is at particularly at Mass we can ask our Eucharistic Lord to send us His Spirit to help us pray always, for we do not know how to pray as we ought. Prayer is an act of love, and like love it takes great effort. We truly need the Holy Spirit's help. Because we have a fallen human nature we are so weak and so easily become weary, we so often want to take the easy way out when prayer is a struggle, when we don’t feel anything or we don’t seem to get anything out of it. The devil too, gives us senseless reasons the enemy for abandoning our prayer, ‘I have no time’ – when we are constantly wasting it. ‘This not for me.’ ‘My heart is dry…’ and on and on.

Prayer however, is not a question of what we say or feel, but of love; it is a choice to love and be with the one we love; it is a matter of the heart; the whole person. The great effort is worth it. Many of our difficulties and obstacles in prayer will disappear if we just pause throughout our daily activities to consider that we are always in the presence of a God who loves us more than we love ourselves. He is at our side as much as with the ones who heard and spoke to him in today’s Gospel; in fact He is closer. He never leaves us and longs to enter into intimate conversation with us, not just once in while, but always.

What is really the ultimate goal of prayer? It is union with God, to be one with God, united to Him in perfect Love. How many think of prayer like this. The object of Love is to united to the object of our Love, forever. By loving the One who loves us, we become united to Him. Prayer leads us to contemplation of God which means to become more and more one with Him.

This is the goal of the most perfect of all prayers, Holy Mass; the goal is Union with God, to be united with God in perfect love; this is known as divinization--we become like the object of our love. And so, for Holy Mass to be effective in our lives, we must, as members of the Mystical Body of Christ, offer ourselves to the one we Love, God. To love we must surrender ourselves along with Jesus offering to the Father who out of His love for us, gives us everything, even Himself, through the Spirit, in the gift of His Son; all in order that we may one forever in the love and unity of the Triune God.

Let us turn to our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary to help us to pray always.

Lovely Lady dressed in blue -------
Teach me how to pray!
God was just your little boy,
Tell me what to say!

Did you lift Him up, sometimes,
Gently on your knee?
Did you sing to Him the way
Mother does to me?

Did you hold His hand at night?
Did you ever try
Telling stories of the world?
O! And did He cry?

Do you really think He cares
If I tell Him things -------
Little things that happen? And
Do the Angels' wings
Make a noise? And can He hear
Me if I speak low?
Does He understand me now?
Tell me -------for you know.

Lovely Lady dressed in blue -------
Teach me how to pray!
God was just your little boy,
And you know the way.