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Lord, Teach Us to Pray 7-24-2022

Wednesday, July 13th, 2022

I’ve had a very rough week this week and I have found myself
spending extra time in prayer. The Gospel this Sunday triggered some
things about prayer that I had not thought about for a while, and I would
briefly like to share them with you.
The first thing is that it is important that when we pray we must be
honest and completely open with God; we must use real words that
express how we feel and what is going on in our lives. Our relationship
with God should be one place where we can let it all hang out – no safe
and appropriate roles to play – no masks to hide behind.

The second thing I was reminded about through the Gospel was
that when I say I am too busy to pray (which I do at times), I may really
be saying I am afraid to pray. Also, if I am so busy with what I want
from God, I may miss what God really has to give me.
*Person in hospital – his brother has just died – yells & screams at
the Cross – God is big enough to handle it.*
The third thing is, if we are to take prayer seriously we must dispel
from our minds the notion that it is some kind of magic. Prayer is not an
“Aladdin’s Lamp” which, if properly rubbed, will grant our every wish.
A student, rather lazily inclined, noticed that a classmate always
recited her Spanish lessons well. One day he asked her, “How is it that
you always recite your lessons so perfectly?”
“Before I study,” she told him, “I always pray that I may remember my
lessons and repeat them well.”
“Do you?” asked the boy, somewhat surprised. “So that’s her secret
method,” he thought. “Well, then, I’ll pray too.”
That night he prayed up a storm, recalling as many prayers as he could
remember. However, the next day he could not even repeat one phrase
of the lesson. Quite perplexed he looked for his friend, and, finding her,
confronted her for being deceitful.
“I prayed,” he told her, “but I could not repeat a single phrase from
yesterday’s homework.”
“Perhaps,” she told him, “you took no pains to learn the lesson!”
“Of course not,” said the boy. “I didn’t study at all. I had no reason to
study. You told me to pray that I might remember the lesson.”
“There’s your problem,” she said, “I told you I prayed before, not
instead of, studying.”
I close with a final thought on prayer: A friend of mine used to
drop by his Church every evening around 5 PM, for an hour of
meditation before supper. Every evening he noticed the same old man
sitting in one of the back pews. The man was always there when he
arrived and still there when he left. It began to haunt him.
One evening curiosity got the better of him and he approached the man,
greeted him, and hoped he wasn’t praying: “I have seen you here for
several months now, and I really admire your constant devotion. But I
was wondering . . . I notice that you are always just sitting here quietly,
never using a prayer book, Bible, or rosary . . . still obviously praying…I
just wondered, when you pray to God, what do you say; what do you
talk about . . . ?
The old man looked up at my friend calmly and gently: “I don’t talk to
God; God talks to me.”
A lot of people think prayer (or meditation or religion or spirituality) is
supposed to be like Alka Seltzers in a glass of water: non-stop, bubbly,
effervescent, supernatural excitement. Wrong! Sometimes, maybe. But
most of the time prayer is like any love relationship: it involves a lot of
giving and listening. It’s like learning to talk: first, you have to listen, in
the sure peace of God’s presence.




Three Minutes a Day 7-17-2022

Wednesday, July 13th, 2022

One night a father came to a parent-teacher conference in a
Chicago high school. During a talk with one of his son’s teachers, the
father broke down and began to cry. After he regained his composure,
the father apologized, saying, “My son no longer lives with me.” “But I
still love him, and I want to know how he’s doing in school.” The father
then told the teacher how his wife and four children left him that
afternoon. He was a building contractor and sometimes worked 16 hours
a day. Naturally, he saw a little of his family, and they slowly grew
farther and farther apart. Then the father said something sad. He said: “I
wanted to buy my wife and kids all those things I had dreamed of giving
them.” “But in the process I got so involved in working that I forgot
about what they needed most; a father who was around at nights to give
them love and support.”
This story and our gospel today illustrates the same point. We can
get so involved in what we are doing that we forget why we are doing it.
We can get so involved in living that we forget the purpose of living. We
can get so involved in pursuing the things money can buy that we forget
about the things money can’t buy. It’s this kind of mistake that Martha
made in today’s gospel. She got so involved in cooking a meal for Jesus
that she forgot why Jesus had come. He didn’t come for a free meal. He
came to be with friends. You and I live in a very fast-paced world. It’s so
easy to lose our balance. It’s so easy to lose our perspective; it’s so easy
to get our priorities mixed up. It’s so easy to lose sight of what we are
doing and why we are doing it.
During the World War II, a young soldier was stationed on the
island of Saipan in the South Pacific. He said that during this time he
and his friends used to go for swims in a secluded spot, just off the steep
cliffs of the island. It was a lovely place surrounded by rocks. When they
arrived, the water was so clear they could see fish ten feet below the
surface. After they had swam for an hour, however the water became so
clouded with sand, churned up from the bottom, that they couldn’t see a
foot below the surface. But the next day when they returned for another
swim the sand had settled. The water was crystal clear again. Our mind
is like that water. It too can get so clouded up from the turmoil of
everyday living that it’s hard for us to see clearly. We lose sight of
everything; our perspective gets clouded; our priorities get confused; our
balance gets destroyed. What we need to do when this happens is to
pause and let the murky waters of the mind become clear again.
We need to do what Mary did in today’s gospel. We need to sit at
the feet of Jesus in quiet prayer. We need to let him teach us what is
important and what is not. How do we do this? Practically, let me share
with you a simple method of prayer. Each night before falling asleep, we
take three minutes to do three things. During the first minute, we pause
and do a mental replay of our day. We pick out the day’s high point,
something we are happy about, like getting a letter from an old friend.
Then, we speak to Jesus about it very sincerely. Finally, we conclude by
giving thanks to Jesus for the letter and the friend. During the second
minute, we do a second mental replay or our day. Only this time we pick
out the low point in it, something we’re sorry about, like yelling at a
parent, a spouse, or a child. We speak to Jesus about this weakness and
ask him to forgive us and to heal us. Finally, during the third minute, we
look ahead to tomorrow, to a critical point. We think of some difficult
thing we must do, like talking to a parent, a spouse, or a child about a
problem that has arisen. We speak to Jesus about it and ask his light and
his strength in handling it. No matter how busy we are, three (3) minutes
a day can put us in touch with life and in touch with Jesus.
I close with a prayer for us busy people; Lord, Keep us from
getting so involved in life that we forget why you gave us life. Keep us
from getting so involved in living that we forget the purpose of living.
Keep us from getting so involved in pursuing the things money can buy
that we forget about the things money can’t buy.

If You Love Enough 1-16-2022

Friday, January 14th, 2022

I had the privilege to be part of some weekends called Engaged
Encounters. On these weekends two married couples would share a great
deal about their married life with about thirty engaged couples. I listened
and learned a lot from these married couples. I was impressed with how
hard they worked at staying married.
On this weekend when we read about the marriage feast at Cana, I
would like to share with you two brief stories about two married couples
that also really touched me.
She fought bravely and valiantly, he always at her side. But after
eight years, cancer took her life. After the funeral, he was cleaning out
the drawer near her bed and found a piece of paper she had written. It
was a sort of love note. It looked a little like a schoolgirl’s daydream
note about the boy in the next row. Except that this note was written by
the mother of seven children, a woman who had been battling for her life
until the end. It was also a wonderful prescription for holding a marriage
together. This is how her note to her husband began. Loved. Cared. Worried. Helped me when I was sick. Forgave me a lot of things. Stood
by me. Always complimentary. Provided everything I ever needed.
Warmth. Humor. Kindness. Thoughtfulness. Always there when I
needed you. And the last thing she wrote sums up all the other. Good
friend. He folded the paper and placed it in his wallet. Sometime later he
was talking to a friend about her. He showed him the paper. The friend,
a much younger man, was deeply moved by the note. The friend asked,
“How do you stick by someone through 38 years of marriage, let alone
the sickness too?” “How do I know I’d have what it takes to stand by a
wife if she got sick?” And he replied simply and quietly. “You will.” “If
you love enough, you will.”
A strong self-reliant ranch owner, who did not very often express
his emotions outwardly, had to rush his wife to the hospital. A ruptured
appendix. The ensuing operation was successful, but the woman’s’
condition deteriorated. Despite the blood transfusions and intensive care,
she continued to lose strength. The doctors were puzzled because by all
medical standards she should have been recovering. They finally were convinced of the reason for her deterioration. She was not trying to get well. The surgeon, an old family friend, went to her and said. “I would
think you would want to be strong for John.” She replied weakly. “John
is so strong he doesn’t need anybody.” When the doctor told the husband
what she had said, he immediately went into his wife’s room, took her
hand in his and said. “You’ve got to get well!” Without opening her eyes,
she asked, “Why?” He said, “because I need you.” The nurse who was
monitoring the blood transfusion said she noticed an immediate change
in the pulse beat and the blood pressure. Then the patient opened her
eyes and said, “John, that’s the first time you ever said that to me.” Two
weeks later she was home. The doctor commenting on the case said it
wasn’t the blood transfusion, but what went with it that made the
difference between life and death for that woman.
In closing, I would like to ask any married couple present here to
stand. I would like to thank you for the hard work you put into your
Sacrament of Marriage and I would like to offer you a special prayer of
Blessing for you both. God, you have called woman and man to become
“one flesh.” What a great sign of your love for us. Send your spirit, O
God, upon those today who passionately proclaim their love for each other. May they always remember that the energy and power source of
their relationship lies in fidelity and commitment to you. May they
inspire all of us to pledge ourselves more deeply to our own promises,
and our own vows to live in love. May these two lovers dance to the
music of Christ. Amen.