Let us pray!

These days need to be days of prayer for us. This might be easier said than done as it is hard to form this practice amidst the busyness of our lives. Yet we know that we are called to it and we need it. Let's pray for one another these days that we make the best of this most holy time of year to pray and spend time with the God who loves us! The following comes from Fr. Dwight Longenecker on prayer:

Here are ten random thoughts on prayer:

*If prayer is a conversation how can we listen to God if we don't keep silence?
*Obedience comes from the root 'obedere' which means 'to listen'
*The first words of the Rule of St Benedict are, "Listen My Son"
*Prayer is not just asking for things but asking questions. Be inquisitive with God.
*As a child asks questions to learn about life, so we ask questions in prayer to learn about the spiritual life
*Prayer opens our life to God's life and our will to God's will
*Prayer is the hardest work
*Prayer is the most intimate act
*To pray is to be fully human. Not homo sapiens but homo orans
*To pray is to understand

George Herbert's poem Prayer

PRAYER the Churches banquet, Angels age,
Gods breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth ;
Engine against th’ Almightie, sinner's towre,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six daies world-transposing in an houre,
A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear ;
Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,
Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,
Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,
The milkie way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bels beyond the stars heard, the souls bloud,
The land of spices, something understood.