Sunday

Exerpts this week from St Fulton Sheen’s ‘Lift Up Your Heart’ 1950

He said: “If the world hates you, be sure that it hated Me before it learned to hate you. If you belonged to the world, the world would know you for its own and love you; it is because you do not belong to the world, because I have singled you out from the midst of the world, that the world hates you.” (John 15:18-19.) Against Colossalism, He warned in the parable of the man who built bigger and bigger barns, only to have an Angel tell him that that very night his soul would be required of him. Our Lord cautioned against hyperactivity when He told Martha that she was busy about too many things. The night He suffered His Agony, He rebuked Peter for substituting action for prayer, when, instead of watching a silent hour, he drew his sword. We have been amply warned – yet it is possible that those who today claim to be God’s servants are sometimes so busy in their projects for the Kingdom of God that they forget the Kingdom of God itself.

Prayer:   For as many have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ…Alleluia

Monday
. The very fact that anyone becomes disquieted when noise and excitement cease proves that he is in flight from his true self. Gregariousness, the passionate need to lose oneself in a crowd, the urge to identify oneself with the tempo of New York and Hollywood, is a strong proof that one is seeking distraction from the inner self, where true joy alone is found.

One of the most powerful means of overcoming the externalization of life is to find support in prayer and meditation. But as soon as prayer is suggested, there are those who will immediately retort: “Praying does no good.” This statement has an element of truth in certain cases: not theological truth, but psychological. When it is said by those who are unwilling to curb their promiscuous habits or to tame their carnality, then the statement, “It does no good to pray,” is true – but only of themselves. Their prayers are ineffective, not because God refuses to hear them, but because they refuse to fulfill the first condition of prayer, namely a longing to revise their natures to accordance with God’s laws.

Prayer:  St. Therese, the Little Flower, please pick me a rose from the Heavenly Garden and send it to me with a message of love. Ask God to grant me the favor I thee implore, and tell Him I will love Him each day more and more. Amen.

 

Tuesday

To have any effectiveness, a prayer for help must express an honest desire to be changed, and that desire must be without reservation or conditions on our part. If we pray to be delivered from alcoholism, and yet refuse to stop drinking, that fact is an acknowledgment that we did not really pray. In like manner, the man who prays to be delivered from sexual perversions and excesses – and that very day deliberately exposes himself to such pleasures – has destroyed the efficacy of the prayer by a reservation. All prayer implies an act of the will, a desire for growth, a willingness to sacrifice on our own part; for prayer is not passive, but is a very active collaboration between the soul and God. If the will is inoperative, our prayers are merely a list of the things we would like God to give us, without ever asking us to pay the price they cost in effort and a willingness to change. Prayer is dynamic, but only when we cooperate with God through surrender. The man who decides to pray for release from the slavery of carnal pleasures must be prepared, in every part of his being, to utilize the strength which God will give him and to work unreservedly for a complete freedom from the sin. In dealing with other men it is possible to have one’s cake and eat it, but with God that is impossible.

Prayer:  Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the  faithful and kindle in them the fire Thy love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth.

 

Wednesday

Sometimes – even when the will is operative – a prayer seems worthless because we approach God with a divided will. We want Him, but we want something else incompatible with Him. We are demanding that the laws of the universe be lifted, so that He will give us the reward of perfect trust in Him, while we continue to place half our trust in other things. In such a case, we keep one hand behind our back; we hold on to something that would compensate us if God should fail. We prepare a substitute satisfaction to fall back on if He does not come through – such as a comfortable bank account, when one is praying for guidance from Divine Providence. Human friendships are often broken for want of a complete and total confidence; and Divine Friendship does not bestow all of its gifts, either, when complete trust in Him is wanting. Faith precedes the answered prayer.

Prayer:   Create in me a clean heart of God and renew a right spirit within me.  Cast me not from thy presence nor take thy Holy Spirit from me.    Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation and by thy governing spirit establish me.

Thursday

It is not difficult to understand why many people do not pray, at all. As a workman can become so interested in what he is doing as not to hear the noonday whistle, so the egotist can become so self-infatuated as to be unconscious of anything outside of himself. The suggestion that there is a reality beyond him, a power and an energy that can transform and elevate him, strikes him as absurd. Just as there are tone-deaf men who are dead to music and color-blind men who are dead to art, so the egotists are Deity-blind, that is, dead to the vision of God. They say they cannot pray, and they are right, they cannot. Their self-centeredness has paralyzed them. There is also some truth in their statement that they “do not need prayer,” because they do not want to be any better than they are – their purpose is to remain unchanged, and this stultification can be accomplished by themselves alone. Animals do not need prayer, either, for none of them has a capacity for self-transcendence, which man has. A man is the only creature in the world who can become more than he is, if he freely wills to grow.

Prayer:  Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope! To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears! Turn, then, O most gracious Advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this, our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.
V. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God.
R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
*Salve Regina

Friday

It is not difficult to understand why many people do not pray, at all. As a workman can become so interested in what he is doing as not to hear the noonday whistle, so the egotist can become so self-infatuated as to be unconscious of anything outside of himself. The suggestion that there is a reality beyond him, a power and an energy that can transform and elevate him, strikes him as absurd. Just as there are tone-deaf men who are dead to music and color-blind men who are dead to art, so the egotists are Deity-blind, that is, dead to the vision of God. They say they cannot pray, and they are right, they cannot. Their self-centeredness has paralyzed them. There is also some truth in their statement that they “do not need prayer,” because they do not want to be any better than they are – their purpose is to remain unchanged, and this stultification can be accomplished by themselves alone. Animals do not need prayer, either, for none of them has a capacity for self-transcendence, which man has. A man is the only creature in the world who can become more than he is, if he freely wills to grow.

Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our death.

 

Saturday

Some object that, inasmuch as God’s Will will always be done, it can make no difference whether we pray; this is like saying: “My friend will either get better or worse; what good will it do to send for a doctor and give him medicine?” In the physical order medical power takes into account the physical factors within a sick body; in the spiritual order God’s Will makes allowance for our desire to do better. It is true that in answering a prayer, God will not do what He did not will, merely because we asked Him; but He will do that which without our prayer He would not do. God will not make the sun shine through a dirty window – but the sun will shine through the window if it is clean. God will not do what we can very well do for ourselves; He will not make a harvest grow without our planting the seed. It is a conditional universe in which man lives – to bring about an effect we wish, we must proceed along the road to it through its cause.

Prayer:  O Mary Help of Christians grant me  to have a spirit of chastity, humility meekness, love and temperance.