Is my prayer life what it should be? Below is an excerpt from 13 Reasons Why Your Prayer Life Is Not What It Should Be by Daniel OConnor. Dear Friends, Know first that I write this because I need to hear it - because my prayer life has become pathetic, and I hope that publicly admonishing the very faults I have succumbed to will be the shot in the arm I need to take my own advice! So if I seem to speak here with a bit of forcefulness, it is because I know that is precisely what I myself need to receive. That being said, perhaps some of you will also find, upon a sincere and Spirit-lead examination of your own life, that you have room to grow by eliminating the following faults. For how many of us really have the prayer life we are called to? Few, I wager. Those who do tend to get an St. before their name. I speak often of the incredible urgency of our times, the unimaginable magnitude of what lies just ahead, and the unprecedented grace and mercy now being poured out if we are only open to it and appropriate it. Well, there is only really one response to such lessons: Pray, pray, pray (and dont neglect to consider the specific and practical details about what hinders that) You either dont know, or dont think about, how important prayer is. You havent bothered to come up with and implement practical ways to turn your daily necessary tasks into prayer. You make no effort to fast and otherwise mortify the flesh, and have become a spiritual cream puff. You let your mind wander to worldly things when you arent actively engaged in a task. You over-emphasize your freedom to choose a prayer regimen that fits you, and de-emphasize the clear and specific calls of Heaven and holy people to all. You dont daily think about the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Hell, Heaven. You have no daily plan of life. You do not strive manfully to stir up fervor in your prayer and truly pray from the heart. You choose to exempt yourself from pursuing the very highest levels of the spiritual life; even though God excludes from this no one who seeks it. You participate in spiritually dangerous behaviors that are - currently unbeknownst to you - causing or exacerbating your struggles with prayer. Your home is a shrine to your family members, comfort, and entertainment, instead of being a shrine to God. The Eucharist is not the source and summit of your life - and your prayer life, especially. Your prayer is not combined with works of mercy. Now do not be anxious if your prayer life seems far from what it ought to be, and if it seems that there are so many insurmountable obstacles in your path. That is discouragement; and it is discouragement itself that is a greater obstacle to holiness than any of the thirteen points I have listed above. Sanctification consists entirely in getting out of the Holy Spirits way; and mysteriously even that is His own work. Therefore trust and be at peace, but do not cease to strive.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Dec 2014 14:12:30 +0000
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