Sunday<\/p>\n
**Excerpts this week from Catholic Bl Archbishop Fulton Sheen<\/p>\n
If a boy studies, he will know; if he strikes a match, it will ignite. In the spiritual order we have the words of Our Lord: “Ask, and the gift will come; seek, and you shall find; knock and the door shall be opened to you.” (Matt. 7:7.) But there must be the preparation for God’s help through the asking, and the seeking, and the knocking. Millions of favors are hanging from Heaven on silken cords – prayer is the sword that will cut them. “See where I stand at the door, knocking; if anyone listens to my voice and opens the door, I will come in to visit him, and take my supper with him, and he shall sup with Me.” (Apoc. 3:20.)<\/p>\n
Prayer:\u00a0 Holy Saints, pray for us and intercede before God on our behalf. Amen.\u00a0 \u00a0 (Today is All Saints Day)<\/p>\n
Monday Many blessings and favors come to those individuals and families which put themselves wholeheartedly in the area of God’s love\u00a0 -their lives are in sharp contrast to those who exclude themselves from that area of love. In the raising of a family, if the economic is made a primary concern and the Providence of God secondary, it is not to be expected that there will be the same showering of gifts and care on God’s part as in a family where Providence comes first.<\/p>\n Prayer:\u00a0 Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord, And let perpetual light shine upon them; May they rest in peace.\u00a0 \u00a0(Today is All Souls Day)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Tuesday 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.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Wednesday Prayer:\u00a0\u00a0 Create in me a clean heart of God and renew a right spirit within me.\u00a0 Cast me not from thy presence nor take thy Holy Spirit from me.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation and by thy governing spirit establish me. Prayer, then, is not just the informing of God of our needs, for He already knows them. “You have a Father in Heaven Who knows that you need them all.” (Matt. 6: 32.) Rather, the purpose of prayer is to give Him the opportunity to bestow the gifts He will give us when we are ready to accept them.<\/strong> [Ibid.<\/em>] It is not the eye which makes the light of the sun surround us; it is not the lung which makes the air envelop us. The light of the sun is there if we do not close our eyes to it, and the air is there for our lungs if we do not hold our breath. God’s blessings are there – if we do not rebel against His Will to give.<\/p>\n God does not show Himself equally to all creatures. This does not mean that He has favorites, that He decides to help some and to abandon others, but the difference occurs because it is impossible for Him to manifest Himself to certain hearts under the conditions they set up. The sunlight plays no favorites, but its reflection is very different on a lake and on a swamp.<\/p>\n Prayer:\u00a0 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. Friday 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.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Saturday Prayer:\u00a0 O Mary Help of Christians grant me\u00a0 to have a spirit of chastity, humility meekness, love and temperance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sunday **Excerpts this week from Catholic Bl Archbishop Fulton Sheen If a boy studies, he will know; if he strikes a match, it will ignite. In the spiritual order we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-orthodox-daily-devotional","has_no_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16353"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16354,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16353\/revisions\/16354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n[many] …assume that when we pray we ring God’s doorbell and ask for a favor. Actually, it is He Who rings our bell.<\/strong> [Ibid.<\/em>] “I stand at the door, knocking.” God could do much more for any soul if its will were more conformable – the weakness is always on the receiving end. Broadcasting stations wish to send programs into the home, but the programs do not become available unless a listener tunes in to them.<\/p>\n
\nThe parents who trust God can tap a source of power and happiness which the other family does not make available. As human friends give us more in proportion as we trust them, and less in proportion to our mistrust, so it is with the Divine Friend. Those who make it possible for God to give more through their trust in Him receive more. In those families where the economic is a primary goal and where prayers are still said, it is very likely that the prayer will be like that of the prodigal: “Give me …” In the other family, where Providence is primary, the prayer is more likely to be that of the prodigal after his conversion, when he said to the father: “Make me. …” In proportion as we pray to be more faithful and loving sons of God, there will be a corresponding bestowal of those gifts which a Heavenly Father can give to His children – whom He loved so much He died for them.<\/p>\n
\nThe essence of prayer is not the effort to make God give us something – as this is not the basis of sound human friendships\u00a0 -but there is a legitimate prayer of petition. God has two kinds of gifts: first, there are those which He sends us whether we pray for them or not; and the second kind are those which are given on condition that we pray. The first gifts resemble those things which a child receives in a family – food, clothing, shelter, care, and watchfulness. These gifts come to every child, whether the child asks for them or not. But there are other gifts, which are conditioned upon the desire of the child. A father may be eager to have a son go to college, but if the boy refuses to study or becomes a delinquent, the gift which the father intended for him can never be bestowed. It is not because the father has retracted his gift, but rather because the son has made the gift impossible. Of the first kind of gifts Our Blessed Lord spoke when He said: “His rain falls on the just and equally on the unjust.” (Matt. 5:45.) He spoke of the second kind of gifts when He said: “Ask, and the gift will come.”<\/p>\n
\nThursday<\/p>\n
\nV. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God.
\nR. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
\n*Salve Regina<\/p>\n
\nA person’s prayer often keeps step with his moral life. The closer our behavior corresponds with the Divine Will, the easier it is to pray; the more our conduct is out of joint with Divinity, the harder it is to pray. Just as it is hard to look in the face of someone whom we have
\ngrievously wronged, so it is hard to lift our minds and hearts to God if we are in rebellion against Him. This is not because God is unwilling to hear sinners. He does hear them, and He has a special predilection for them, for as He said: “I have come to call sinners, not the just.” (Mark 2: 17.) “There will be more rejoicing over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine souls that are justified and have no need of repentance.” (Luke 15:7.) But these sinners were the ones who corresponded with His Will and abandoned their rebellion against it. Where the sinner has no desire to be lifted from his evil habits. then the essential condition for prayer is wanting.<\/p>\n
\nEveryone knows enough about God to pray to Him, even those who say that they doubt His existence.\u00a0If they were lost in the woods, they would have no assurance whatever of anyone nearby who might help them find their way – but they would shout, nevertheless, in the hope that someone would hear. In like manner, the sceptic finds, in catastrophe and in crisis, that though he thought himself incapable of prayer, he nonetheless prays. But those who use prayer only as a last resort do not know God very well – they hold Him at arm’s length most of the time, refusing Him the intimacy of every day. The little knowledge of God that such people possess does not become fruitful or functional, because they never act upon that knowledge: the Lord ordered that the unproductive talent be taken away. Unless a musician acts upon the knowledge that he already has of music, he will not grow either in knowledge or in love of it. In this sense, our conduct, behavior, and moral life become the determinants of our relations with God. When our behavior is Godless, licentious, selfish, egotistic, and cruel, then prayer is an extraneous thing – a mere attempt at magic, an attempt to make God serve our wishes in contradiction to the moral laws He has laid down.<\/p>\n