For those who struggle with prayer

[FatherJay]

My friends,

I came across this today, and immediately wanted to share it with you. It was written by a Roman Catholic Monk in 1949. I pray it will be of some help:

"Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer has become impossible and your heart has turned to stone.

If you have never had any distractions you don't know how to pray. For the secret of prayer is a hunger for God and for the vision of God, a hunger that lies far deeper than the level of language or affection. And a man whose memory and imagination are persecuting him with a crowd of useless or even evil thoughts and images may sometimes be forced to pray far better, in the depths of his murdered heart, than one whose mind is swimming with clear concepts and brilliant purposes and easy acts of love.

That is why it is useless to get upset when you cannot shake off distractions. In the first place, you must realize that they are often unavoidable in the life of prayer. The necessity of kneeling and suffering submersion under a tidal wave of wild and inane images is one of the standard trials of the contemplative life. If you think you are obliged to stave these things off by using a book and clutching at its sentences the way a drowning man clutches at straws, you have the privilege of doing so, but if you allow your prayer to degenerate into a period of simple spiritual reading you are losing a great deal of fruit. You would profit much more by patiently resisting distractions and learning something of your own helplessness and incapacity. And if your book merely becomes an anaesthetic, far from helping your meditation it has probably ruined it.

....

But in all these things, it is the will to pray that is the essence of prayer, and the desire to find God and to see Him and to love Him is the one thing that matters. If you have desired to know Him and love Him you have already done what was expected of you, and it is much better to desire God without being able to think clearly about Him, than to have marvelous thoughts about Him without desiring to enter into union with His will."

-Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation, 133-136.

Blessings,

Father J

 

[HisEagle]

Thank you so much for sharing. It was an answered prayer for me. It spoke to me at a time when I needed to hear it.

 

[FatherJay]

HisEagle,

Im very happy this helped.

Blessings,

Father J

 

[Ruth~]

Thank you FatherJay.

 

[mbrob]

Thank you, Father Jay. That is very helpful and with great timing.