“We should seek not so much to pray but to become prayer.”—St. Francis of Assisi
Be sure to taste the moment to the full. The Lord always reveals himself to you where you are most fully present. In your prayer, try to present your anxieties, struggles, and fears to him, and let him show you the way to follow him. More important than anything else is to follow the Lord. The rest is secondary. If you follow him, you can follow him as a priest, as a lay minister, as a single person, or as a married person; but what really counts is that he is the center.
As long as “being the Beloved” is little more than a beautiful thought or a lofty idea that hangs above my life to keep me from becoming depressed, nothing really changes. What is required is to become the Beloved in the commonplaces of my daily existence, and bit by bit to close the gap that exists between what I know myself to be and the countless realities of everyday life. Becoming the Beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am thinking of, talking about, and doing from hour to hour.
These words from Thomas Merton spoke to my heart tonight. In a world filled with noise and chaos, this is the silence and refreshment we seek.
To be alone by being part of the universe—fitting in completely to an environment of woods and silence and peace. Everything you do becomes a unity and a prayer. Unity within and without. Unity with all living things—without effort or contention. My silence is part of the whole world’s silence and builds the temple of God without the noise of hammers. — A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk’s True Life, The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 3: 1952-1960 (December 29 and January 28, 1953)
The solitude and beauty of the night sky is breathtaking if you stop and simply look up and be present. May we enter that silence with open hearts. May we be open to hearing the Spirit’s gentle voice as She guides us along the path.
And now, that the sun has set and the Vesper Lights flicker and glow
In the beauty of this moment
In the wonder of Your presence in our midst
Speak Your grace and peace into our lives
Hear me as I lift this humble prayer to you
Dona Nobis Pacem
Grant Us Peace
A wee prayer from the heart of your Padre…
“Merton knew that the true mentor of the soul was nature itself. The fields, sun, mud, clay, wind, forests, sky, earth, and water are all companions for our own inner journeys.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, Earth, Our Original Monastery: Cultivating Wonder and Gratitude through Intimacy with Nature
What guidance and wisdom have you gleaned from the elements of water, wind, earth, and fire?
Verse of the day
O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.
– Psalm 104:24
Voice of the day
[I]f God is the creator of all human beings of all genders, then wouldn’t God be the most gender-full, gender-creative being in the cosmos?
– Chloe Specht, “Actually, ‘They’ Is a Beautiful Pronoun for God”
Prayer of the day
Creator, may we celebrate the possibilities of your design in each of us.
“Love alters the unseen activity within your body and brain. More than any other positive emotion, then, love belongs not to one person, but to pairs or groups of people. It resides within connections. It extends beyond personal boundaries to even energize whole social networks or inspire a crowd to get up and dance.”—Barbara L. Fredrickson, PhD.
Jesus’ response to our worry-filled lives is quite different. He asks us to shift the point of gravity, to relocate the center of our attention, to change our priorities. Jesus wants us to move from the “many things” to the “one necessary thing.” It is important for us to realize that Jesus in no way wants us to leave our many-faceted world. Rather, he wants us to live in it, but firmly rooted in the center of all things. Jesus does not speak about a change of activities, a change of contacts, or even a change of pace. He speaks about a change of heart. This change of heart makes everything different, even while everything appears to remain the same. This is the meaning of “Set your hearts on his kingdom first . . . and all these other things will be given you as well.” What counts is where our hearts are. When we worry, we have our hearts in the wrong place. Jesus asks us to move our hearts to the center, where all other things fall into place.
“Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensable to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community.'”
—Karen Armstrong
Today worrying means to be occupied and preoccupied with many things, while at the same time being bored, resentful, depressed, and very lonely. I am not trying to say that all of us are worried in such an extreme way all the time. Yet there is little doubt in my mind that the experience of being filled yet unfulfilled touches most of us to some degree at some time. In our highly technological and competitive world, it is hard to avoid completely the forces that fill up our inner and outer space and disconnect us from our innermost selves, our fellow human beings, and our God.
One of the most notable characteristics of worrying is that it fragments our lives. The many things to do, to think about, to plan for, the many people to remember to visit, or to talk with, the many causes to attack or defend, all these pull us apart and make us lose our center. Worrying causes us to be “all over the place,” but seldom at home. One way to express the spiritual crisis of our time is to say that most of us have an address but cannot be found there.
