Eco-Connect'20
[Prayer the power of self-belief]
Everyday we engage ourselves in what we have now come to call prayer... We pray, we get in touch with the Divine.
This has to lead one to something... You don't enter into prayer without knowing what has taken you there-in in the first place.
Prayer is to transform one in spirit and make one into a person in the person of Christ.
That now means one entering into conversion, metanoia that deep change of heart in which one dies on a certain level of self in order to find the self alive and free and on a more spiritual level.
That is why we say, if you are not yet to ready to be converted don't pray, and if you pray at all be careful of what you are praying for.
The love of God as taught of holy men and women more so the monks and nun require two things: Love in the heart (effects mentÃs) and productive virtue (effectus operis). Virtue and love are great components of spiritual experience.
Virtue consists in a certain way of life: fasting, vigils, manual work, reading, prayer, poverty. This calls one to enter into 3 types of meditatiin: memory of the past, then awareness of the present things, concerns of the future. (cfr. Thomas Merton, on Contemplative Prayer, p.89).
As we pray, we are called upon to control out thoughts and our desires, we must acquire interior freedom. Here we are called upon by st. Paul as he says
"We have to be pure-minded, enlightened, forgiving and gracious to others, we have to rely on the Holy Spirit on unaffected love, on the truth of our message, on the power of God..." (2 Cor 6:6-10).
During prayer, we suspend earthiky preoccupations and direct our focus to the Father. We shall always enter into a struggle for divine peace and spiritual love, in contemplation.
This calls one to think of what he or she is doing and this can only be helped from the grace and without ever renewed self-discipline. This may call upon one to fast to achieve this personal meditation.
We have to think of what we are doing, and reasons for our action must spring from the depths of our freedom and be enlivened by the transforming power of Christian love.
Our ability to sacrifice ourselves in a mature and generous spirit may well prove to be one of the best test of our interior prayer, for prayer and sacrifice go together.
Where there is no sacrifice, there will eventually turn out to be no prayer, and vice versa. When sacrifice is an infantileself-display, or maudlin self - pitying introspection.
Serious and humble prayer, united with mature love, will unconsciously and spontaneously manifest itsrl in habitual spirit of casrifice and concern for others that is unfailingly generous, through perhaps we may not be ware of the fact. Such union of prayer and sacrifice is easier to evaluate in others than in ourselves and when we become aware of this we longer try to gauge our own progress in the matter.
© Don J.B Nyamunga
Girimori Catholic Parish - Kericho
Www.nyamusus.blogspot.com
[Prayer the power of self-belief]
Everyday we engage ourselves in what we have now come to call prayer... We pray, we get in touch with the Divine.
This has to lead one to something... You don't enter into prayer without knowing what has taken you there-in in the first place.
Prayer is to transform one in spirit and make one into a person in the person of Christ.
That now means one entering into conversion, metanoia that deep change of heart in which one dies on a certain level of self in order to find the self alive and free and on a more spiritual level.
That is why we say, if you are not yet to ready to be converted don't pray, and if you pray at all be careful of what you are praying for.
The love of God as taught of holy men and women more so the monks and nun require two things: Love in the heart (effects mentÃs) and productive virtue (effectus operis). Virtue and love are great components of spiritual experience.
Virtue consists in a certain way of life: fasting, vigils, manual work, reading, prayer, poverty. This calls one to enter into 3 types of meditatiin: memory of the past, then awareness of the present things, concerns of the future. (cfr. Thomas Merton, on Contemplative Prayer, p.89).
As we pray, we are called upon to control out thoughts and our desires, we must acquire interior freedom. Here we are called upon by st. Paul as he says
"We have to be pure-minded, enlightened, forgiving and gracious to others, we have to rely on the Holy Spirit on unaffected love, on the truth of our message, on the power of God..." (2 Cor 6:6-10).
During prayer, we suspend earthiky preoccupations and direct our focus to the Father. We shall always enter into a struggle for divine peace and spiritual love, in contemplation.
This calls one to think of what he or she is doing and this can only be helped from the grace and without ever renewed self-discipline. This may call upon one to fast to achieve this personal meditation.
We have to think of what we are doing, and reasons for our action must spring from the depths of our freedom and be enlivened by the transforming power of Christian love.
Our ability to sacrifice ourselves in a mature and generous spirit may well prove to be one of the best test of our interior prayer, for prayer and sacrifice go together.
Where there is no sacrifice, there will eventually turn out to be no prayer, and vice versa. When sacrifice is an infantileself-display, or maudlin self - pitying introspection.
Serious and humble prayer, united with mature love, will unconsciously and spontaneously manifest itsrl in habitual spirit of casrifice and concern for others that is unfailingly generous, through perhaps we may not be ware of the fact. Such union of prayer and sacrifice is easier to evaluate in others than in ourselves and when we become aware of this we longer try to gauge our own progress in the matter.
© Don J.B Nyamunga
Girimori Catholic Parish - Kericho
Www.nyamusus.blogspot.com
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