Where To Pray Now?

Our church is closed. Mass is being prayed but the public cannot attend. All the beautiful events that were planned for Advent and Christmas are now shuttered. No Adoration, no rosary, nothing on Sunday except watching Father on youtube. It is profoundly sad. I even thought of writing the bishop to beg him to open the church for limited numbers of individuals to pray in assigned and sanitized seats.

Then I read a letter from a woman to her local Catholic paper. She reminded readers that when a bishop was once asked, years ago, by parishioners, where to pray when the church was closed, he replied, in the street. That is where I am taking my prayers.

When I go on my daily mental health walks, I will try to go past the hospital and if I am not already praying the rosary then I will say an Our Father, 3 Hail Marys, and a Glory Be. I will pray for the sick in ICU, their caregivers, and their families.

When I am in town at the grocery store, I will pray for all the people wandering the streets that are either drugged up, drunk, looking for a fight, or just plain lonely. There are so many now. I have lived here over 30 years and there have never been so many souls in need. When I smile at them that is also a prayer.

When I look across the street at dusk and see my neighbour’s colorful Christmas lights, I will say a prayer of thanksgiving for living in a safe neighbourhood, for the roof over my head, for the gift of sight, and for my neighbour who has given me some joy in this strange season.

When I am on a video chat with my neighbour down the street, whom I can no longer visit in person, I will be grateful that technology can be used for good. I will pray in thanksgiving that we are both getting the social interaction we need.  

And for those that cannot get out to the street, where will they pray? The Holy Father tells us that, “St. Joseph reminds us, that those who appear hidden or in the shadows can play an incomparable role in the history of salvation.” He also says, “each of us can discover in St. Joseph – the man who goes unnoticed, a daily, discreet and hidden presence – an intercessor, a support and a guide in times of trouble.”

Looks like we have our work cut out for us!

My Rosary Story

The first time I prayed the rosary was sometime in the Spring of 2003. I had returned to the Church only a few months before and I was only acquainted with two or three people there and I didn’t know them well enough to ask them to teach me how to pray it. So, I learned how to pray the rosary online. There were many websites with diagrams and the basic prayers, most of which I already knew.

I had two sets of rosary beads. One was a set that my eldest son received when he made his First Holy Communion. They were very long and the chain was very light, almost flimsy, so they were a bit unwieldy for a novice to manage. The other beads were a tiny white plastic set. I literally had to look at each bead as I prayed or I got hopelessly lost. So, armed with my tiny beads and my computer I prayed my first Rosary. It felt very Catholic to me and I liked it.

As I searched different websites I began to see that the rosary was not a prayer reserved for little old Portuguese ladies in black veils (at that time my parish had quite a few of those.) Lots of people, including young ones like me (I was 38 at the time) also prayed it.

I prayed the rosary a few more times. I’d get the order of the mysteries mixed up but I wasn’t too worried about that. As long as I covered all five mysteries for that day that was enough. God wasn’t keeping score.

One afternoon I felt the urge to pray the rosary but realized I had already prayed it in the morning. I didn’t know you could pray it multiple times a day!

The first time I heard the rosary prayed in a group was right after St. Pope John Paul II died. We had a prayer service and I was captivated by all the voices praying in unison. Many people were also on their knees. It was a beautiful and holy experience.

Around that time, aside from a few special occasions, the rosary was only prayed in a group on Tuesday night after Mass. Sometimes I would stay for it and I longed to lead a decade but different people would lead and it seemed each one had “their” mystery and there was to be no deviation from the “schedule.”

In recent years the rosary became a daily occurrence, either before or after most Masses. Finally, I was given the opportunity to lead a decade once in a while. At first it was nerve wracking but as I became more comfortable it became easier. There were even times when I was allowed to lead the entire thing.

In the last 23 days I have prayed the rosary every day as part of preparation to renew my consecration to Mary. Twenty-three more days to go! Using a form of Ignatian spirituality I have received new insights into the mysteries these last few weeks and I may share some of these ideas this month. 

The rosary is such a simple set of prayers yet it is so profound. It illuminates the life of Jesus but also demonstrates how intrinsic Mary is to the plan of our salvation.

If it’s been a while since you “called your mother” I invite you to pick up your beads right now and speak and pray with Mama Mary today. She’ll be so happy to hear your voice.

The Seven Sorrows of Mary

August is the month devoted to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I had every intention to write several posts about the Blessed Mother at that time but like most of my plans, they fell by the wayside. However, I reread some of my recent entries and Mama Mary does show up fairly often in the background. Her typical modus operandi is to pass by almost undetected, to never demand, only to point out, so I am not surprised.

Now September is upon us. Even as the summer winds down, or at least what passed for it up here, and the earth slows to a rest, it can also be a time of new beginnings. School starts again, parish activities resume (the public praying of the Rosary starts again next week!) and as we head indoors perhaps we are cracking open more serious books.

September is also the month dedicated to the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This year that seems more relevant than ever. Maybe you are feeling overwhelmed by everything. I am somewhat insulated from the stress as I have been at home after being laid off for almost 6 months but the isolation can get to me. As I write this, I am sitting in my favorite coffee shop so I can see and hear real live human beings. If I close my eyes, I can pretend I am a famous author writing outlines for my next bestseller, in a Parisian cafe. But I digress…

I’m more familiar with the Rosary and the Divine Mercy Chaplet so I had to do a little research regarding the Seven Sorrows of Mary. The sorrows are as follows; the prophecy of Simeon, the flight into Egypt, the Child Jesus lost in the temple, Mary meets Jesus carrying the cross, Mary at the foot of the cross, Mary receiving the body of Jesus, and Mary witnessing the burial of Jesus. You can read more about the Seven Sorrows by clicking HERE.

The Sorrow that especially resonates with me is the Fifth Sorrow. Mary is at the cross, watching her child suffer. Then Jesus tells John, and by extension, all of us, "Behold your mother.” Mary accepts her mission to become a spiritual mother to everyone at that moment. Mary is also our model as we nurture the divine life in others as their spiritual mother. St. Pope John Paul II wrote in his Letter to Women, that spiritual motherhood has “inestimable value for the development of individuals and the future of society.” It is a beautiful vocation.

There are times when I simply cannot relate to a sinless Virgin Mother with a perfect child, but a woman crying in anguish with swords in her heart, that has been familiar territory. 

Come, Holy Spirit!

My little prayer group met on Saturday. We have been participating in the Life in the Spirit seminars, following a 7 week prayer guide and also a series of videos from Renewal Ministries that are easily found online. After several weeks of preparation, it was time to pray for the release of the gifts of the Holy Spirit with some of our members.  

We began by praying the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary and then talked for a short time about the sensations or emotions they might experience while being prayed over. Some people might feel warm or energized, some people will feel nothing. There is no right way or wrong way to feel.  Everyone was encouraged to be open to whatever the Lord had in store for their particular situation. We then blessed ourselves with holy water, renewed our baptismal promises, and prayed a prayer of commitment. Two of the women in our group are experienced in prayer ministry so they led us in praise and worship, singing, and intercession. It was beautiful, powerful, and yet also gentle.

I found it interesting that when we were singing, we harmonized rather well. Three of the five of us aren’t really gifted in that area but I found it pleasant to listen to and didn’t feel as self-conscious as I normally do when I sing under my breath. I give all credit to the Spirit who was inspiring us!

In the months ahead I look forward to encouraging my friends to open their new gifts from the Holy Spirit, and seeing where the Lord leads them. 

The Little Lunchtime Miracle

 When I wrote about the lady who wanted to alter her clothes it brought back memories of another person who crossed my path that needed help in a small way.

I was at work one day sitting at the reception desk. I was enjoying a quiet moment as both my supervisor and my boss were away at lunch. The conference room across from my station was being used for a meeting but the door was closed.

A few minutes later a man who had been in the conference room came to my desk. I asked if I could help him assuming he needed more coffee but he said he needed a private room to say his midday prayers. I immediately went into a state of hypervigilance. Not because he was Muslim but because he was a man of faith and my coworkers were decidedly not.

Quickly I raced through the possibilities of where I could put him. Not my supervisor’s office – she was a very unsympathetic person and I could hear her shrill reaction if she caught him in there. None of the offices upstairs would work as they all had large windows. I decided to put the man in my boss’s office. If the boss walked in during the prayer time, he might be insensitive to the situation but not hostile.  I then prayed with all my might that nobody would disturb the man.

Amazingly, both my boss and supervisor returned from lunch much later than usual that day, long after the man had completed his devotions and returned to the conference room. This was such a departure from their normal routine I could scarcely believe it.

I love these little moments that God gifts us. They are an opportunity for us to help others and also to build our faith and to learn how to trust in Him.

Infobesity

Infobesity. It’s information overload. We collect so much data that we walk about in a glutted state, so full we can barely move. We become distracted and confused and it becomes more and more difficult to make decisions.

The initial solution is to stop. Stop reading, watching, listening, doing. But nature abhors a vacuum so it wants to be filled. If we don’t fill it with something good, it doesn’t care. It just wants to be filled.

Let Jesus fill your great hunger. Let him water your parched soul. Make yourself an empty vessel so you can be filled more fully with Jesus. Pray obstacles will be removed so healing can begin and freedom be restored.

How To Pray

How many times have you prayed for someone where part of the prayer was for your desired outcome? Lord, I pray for your protection on Floyd but inspire him to go to Mass instead of golfing on Sunday morning. Jesus, please have mercy on Ethel, help her to see her drinking is killing her, amen.  Dear God, please make it possible for Elmer to forgive his sister Beulah before it’s too late.  

These are all good intentions. Piety, sobriety, forgiveness – we should all be striving towards that, right? And prayer is good – I’m talking to God! We are supposed to pray every day so if I pray this prayer 9 days in a row, while wearing the Miraculous medal, and lighting a candle every day then God will have to answer my prayer, right? Yes, indeed God will answer your prayer. He will say yes, no, or not now.  

So, you’re frustrated because your intentions are pure. You’ve read the bible where God says ask, knock, I will give it to you. Yet Floyd just booked a tee time; Ethel has been through detox 3 times and still isn’t dry, and Elmer is now screening his telephone calls. *sigh*

I will share something important about praying for others. We cannot control another’s free choices through prayer. The best prayer is simply to ask God to remove obstacles to belief and to restore your loved one’s freedom to respond to God’s grace. That’s it.

I am sure someone was saying that prayer for me. My pride, brokenness, and foolishness kept me holding onto things that weren’t right. Eventually, grace uncovered my sins and converted my heart and I am so thankful.

Empty Prayers

Eleven years ago, my son was deployed to Afghanistan. He wanted to be a soldier since he was 10 years old so none of this came as a surprise. He was well trained and is very intuitive so I knew he had done everything he could to prepare for his mission.

I’ve often had a sense if something will ultimately turn out or not but I was coming up blank about this situation. I felt hyper-aware and dead at the same time. Someone told me I would get through this because I was a person of faith but I told them that faith is not an anesthetic. I lay awake many nights wondering what my son was doing but trying not to count the days until he was home.  I would be positive one second and down the next. There was simply no middle ground.

In an effort to do something with all these turbulent feelings I started collecting holy cards of saints that had some connection to the military or the safety of soldiers. I planned to pray for their intercession every day. I made a list of all the prayers I would say each day for the 7 months my son was gone - the Rosary, the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, and other devotions and litanies as well. I determined I would attend Mass as often as possible and be as attentive as possible. I think I lasted a week. It was simply too much to sustain under those stressful circumstances. If I prayed at all, the only prayer I could muster up was Lord, please keep my son safe.

Thankfully God knows us well so he sends his Spirit to help us. In Romans 8:26-27 St. Paul writes,

Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

So that was how I prayed for months, with sighs and groans too deep for words. Thankfully I also had the church community and other Christian friends praying. When I could not pray, they did.

These days are also stressful and we are also laying in wait for hidden enemies to show up.  There will be times we feel so depleted and distracted it will be hard to pray. Yet even under these extraordinary circumstances, we have continued to make time to be with our friends. If we can do that then let’s try to meet each day with Jesus at an appointed time and rejoice in our time together – just like we do with our other friends. 💗

Rain

Water everywhere. Rain, rain, rain, every single day. First, it was kind of funny because it just fit in with this annus horribilis of 2020. I’ve tried to put a positive spin on it – green landscapes, hydrated skin, no forest fires, or drought. There was even a 30-day haiku challenge I joined and several of us wrote about our sodden summer. But enough is enough. The rest of the province is wearing shorts and spending time outdoors, it is too hot to go outside back East, but here in northwestern BC, I am checking for moss between my fingers and toes.

Somehow every single weekend for the past 15 weeks the rain has held off for our outdoor prayer meeting but on Aug. 15 it did not. We sat huddled under umbrellas and rain capes. Some of us had blankets or coats draped across our knees. Steadily the rain fell from the sky. We had not prayed for sunshine, only for a dry spell because didn’t want to be greedy. But maybe the rain was a test to see if we would persevere.

The water was a good reminder that we were praying for an outpouring of grace from the Holy Spirit. We do need to be filled on a regular basis because as ‘cracked vessels’ we leak! Someone also noted that a dry sponge doesn’t work well, to be used properly it needs to be soaked. And perhaps we were also learning a lesson. Not in a punitive way but maybe in our discomfort we would still find joy and it would produce endurance, character, and hope. Indeed, we did find joy!

As the meeting wound down it was remarked that someday we will talk about this exceptional summer and our blessed little prayer group. We will remember our joy in spending time with each other and with Jesus. We will mention the weather and how we sat outside - on purpose - to pray in the afternoon showers. We will look back and it will have become part of our story.

A Shower of Roses on Assumption

Today is the Feast of the Assumption of Mary. I love this feast because it celebrates Mary’s body and soul entering into heaven and being reunited with her Son. It’s also a bittersweet day because it’s the anniversary of my mother’s passing.

My mother was far away from the Church when she died although she wasn’t hostile towards it. She was no feminist but she felt in some ways the Church was somewhat old fashioned. She also grew up in a time when a lot of what passed for church teaching was more misunderstanding and even superstition. You know, like if I pray this prayer for 9 days in a row then X will be guaranteed to happen. She told me that as a child she was sure she would go straight to hell if she ate meat on Fridays. She came of age just as Vatican II got underway so there was even more confusion. She loved Pope St. John XXIII and the whole idea of ‘opening windows in the Church’ yet I don’t remember her ever going to Mass except for my grandmother’s funeral. Still, she believed in a good God and she was a very loving, kind, patient, and generous mother to my brother and me.

A few years ago, it was the 20th anniversary of her passing. Every year this anniversary was brutal. Right after my birthday in the middle of July, I would start going into a depression in anticipation of it. I was laying in bed that morning and I was probably crying. In desperation, I prayed for St. Therese’s intercession. I prayed she would send me a rose to let me know if my mother was alright. I asked her to send a very clear sign, something as obvious as a 2 x 4 to the head as I didn’t want to second guess myself. I wasn’t sure it was the right thing to pray for because we are not supposed to ask for signs, we are supposed to have faith, especially when things don’t look very promising. At the same time, Therese had promised that ‘When I die, I will send down a shower of roses from the heavens, I will spend my heaven by doing good on earth.’  So, I got up and I went about my business that morning and tried not to think much more about it.

At noon the mail arrived and right on the top of the pile was an envelope from the Society of the Little Flower featuring 3 red roses and stating that my St. Therese Rosary was enclosed. On the back of the envelope was a picture of St. Therese and a statement that she was known for her love of roses and is often called on to have one sent from her heavenly garden as a sign of hope.  I opened the envelope and pulled out the letter addressed to me. The first line read, ‘There’s nothing like a mother’s love, is there?’ And then I really started to cry! Therese had clearly sent me a rose as a sign of hope.

I had not ordered this rosary or expected any correspondence from this society. I had never even heard of them before. It was actually a letter seeking donations so my name and address had been sold to them by somebody. At the same time, I did not care that this came about in such a worldly way. Events had been put into place in anticipation of this day so that my prayer would be answered and I was grateful. After all, had I not prayed this same prayer every year since my mother died?

Many will chalk up this particular event to coincidence but time and time again God has shown me his love and care exactly when I needed it most. He made us to be tactile beings and will use earthly signs to connect with us and respond to us. 

As for the yearly depression in anticipation of the anniversary of my mother’s passing, that’s gone. I now feel peace on this day. I still miss my earthly mother but my hope is that she is now enjoying Eternity with our Blessed Mother and her Son. Amen! 🌹🌹🌹

Prayer

Prayer. It’s the answer to everything. So why can it be so hard? It’s talking to God, right? I should just be able to pick up where I left off and keep going just like with an old friend. So why do I put it off?

Or I find myself approaching Jesus with a litany of requests. I mean, they’re all good things – employment opportunities, good health, safe travels, that sort of thing. That’s what we’re supposed to pray for, right?

And then there are the friends that don’t go to church but do believe in some benevolent force out there and they think I have some direct line to it. When things go wrong, I am one of the first ones they approach to ask for prayer because…well, you know…I’m religious. When friends ask me to pray, of course, I do. They will tell me my prayers do work because they got the job, or the meeting with the child they gave up for adoption 40 years ago went well (true story) or their health improved. I don’t think anyone has ever told me my prayers don’t work but that’s because ultimately all prayer does work – but not always the way we think it will.

So, what is prayer? It is talking to God. My hope is to talk with him as naturally as I do with my human friends. That means sharing the ordinary things like how my day went, what I thought about, what I read. Praise is also an important part of prayer. It should come before our requests, even before our thanks and contrition.

When it comes to my requests, I know he is always happy to listen. There is no special formula I can pray the guarantees I will get what I ask for in the way that I think it should be. Thank goodness there isn’t because I’ve demonstrated time and again that I do not always know what is best! The best prayer is simply asking that all obstacles will be removed that keeps a person from God. Or to put it more simply, Thy will be done, not my will be done!

As for a direct line to God – if you are baptized then the Trinity lives within you and you do indeed have a direct line to God. But just being sacramentalized isn’t enough. When we receive this great gift of being adopted children of God, we need to open this gift as it isn’t of any use until it’s unwrapped. Then we can enjoy it, use it, and share it. As for the next time your unchurched or spiritual-but-not-religious friends ask you to pray for them, tell them you will but remind them that Jesus would love to hear from them too. 💗