Prayer - For Christ also suffered for sins once ... that he might lead you to God. 1 Peter 3:18

Jesus came and accomplished all He did on earth, including His death, in order to lead us to God.  As He says in the following passage,

John 14
 1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. 2 In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be. 4 Where [I] am going you know the way.” 5Thomas said to him, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?”  6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (NABRE - New American Bible Revised Edition)

Jesus says that He has gone to prepare a place for us in the His Father's house
 and that we know the way.  He is the way.  So we need to follow Him to find our way to the Father's house.  And how did Jesus stay in touch and in tune with His Father while on earth?  Through prayer.  In the Gospels we find Him praying frequently.  Some passages just say He went off to pray while other passages record His prayers to His Father.

Reading 2 from last Sunday says of Jesus in Hebrews 5.

⁷ Who in the days of his flesh, with a strong cry and tears, offering up prayers and supplications to him that was able to save him from death, was heard for his reverence.

⁸ And whereas indeed he was the Son of God, he learned obedience by the things which he suffered:

⁹ And being consummated, he became, to all that obey him, the cause of eternal salvation.

Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition (DRA)

 

Jesus went to His Abba, His Father in prayer and that is what He wants us to do.

 

And that is what was missing in my life and what I couldn't make myself do with any regularity.  And I was running around looking for a daddy who could help me face the scary things of life, trying to fill the void with all kinds of substitutes, even though I believed in God and was a Bible-believing evangelical Christian.  And the main reason I was doing this is because prayer is our relationship with the God, the Holy Trinity.  As it says in the opening paragraph 2558 of Part Four Christian Prayer in the Catechism of the Catholic Church,

“Great is the mystery of the faith!” The Church professes this mystery in the Apostles’ Creed (Part One) and celebrates it in the sacramental liturgy (Part Two). so that the life of the faithful may be conformed to Christ in the Holy Spirit to the glory of God the Father (Part Three). This mystery, then, requires that the faithful believe in it, that they celebrate it, and that they live from it in a vital and personal relationship with the living and true God. This relationship is prayer.

 

And I have found and am finding this to be true in my journey with and to God.  And God has provided the way into a life of prayer, which is the relationship with Him.  God becomes real, rather than ethereal and theoretical, through prayer.  And I needed prayers that kept me in prayer and opened me up to God and Him up to me.  Jesus gave his disciples and us the Lord's Prayer, or the Our Father in Catholic lingo as one example of basic prayer.

More later...  May God bless you and draw you ever deeper into His heart of love.

For Christ also suffered for sins once ... that he might lead you to God. 1 Peter 3:18

That is the point of the whole gospel.  A restored relationship with God through His Son, Jesus Christ.  We are naturally estranged from God and ignorant of His great love for us and desire for relationship with us.  We often think or have thought of Him as our enemy even though we are continuously and restlessly searching for something that will fill our longing, thirsting, hungry souls.

The partial verse above was part of the New Testament reading for this 1st Sunday in Advent.  I am a lector (reader) at my parish and this was my assigned reading.  So I have been living with the passage for the past week.  The full reading is 1 Peter 3:18-22.

How do we come to God?  Well, the verse above says that Jesus will lead us to Him.  That is why He came and became one of us.  Jesus told Thomas in John 14:6, "I am the way and the truth and the life."  We come to God by trusting in Jesus and following Him.  And there are various access points, means or channels of grace that Jesus has provided for us to enable us to do just that and connect with Him, the Son, as well as the Father and the Holy Spirit.

The access point I wish to write about at this time is prayer and what I have learned in my journey.  Stay tuned.

The Roadmap

Here is an edited excerpt from a response I posted on a forum that I participate in.

I am a convert to the Catholic Church after being an evangelical Protestant for 36 years.  I was a lay Bible teacher and preacher for many of those years.  I was received into the Church in 2010.  One of the reasons I became a Catholic was I was looking for a "roadmap" into the heart of God, the Holy Trinity.  And I found the roadmap in the Catholic Church.  I was looking for results in the form of a growing relationship with the living God and I am finding it happening in me by grace as I follow the roadmap provided by and in the Catholic Church as intended by her founder, Jesus Christ, who loves us and gives Himself for us.  Now the journey is a life-long one but now I have the map to keep me close to Jesus along the way.

So what is this map?  Well, you are already discovering some of it, the Mass, instruction and encouragement via EWTN and books (including the Bible), sharing with the people on this forum.  But there is more, so much more, the rest of the Sacraments, the sacramentals such as prayer cards, paintings, statues, holy water, prayer books, the communion of the saints and more.

Where I really needed help was in the area of prayer.  I knew a lot about God through knowing the Bible but I really didn't know how to pray well or for very long.  My spiritual imagination was stunted.  I was distracted easily.  Much of my prayer was unformed and uninformed.

But the disciples had to ask Jesus to teach them to pray and He didn’t seem to think it was a dumb question and so He gave them the “Our Father” ("The Lord’s Prayer" in Protestant circles).  Prayer is vital and essential to our spiritual well-being.

In paragraph 2558 of the Catechism, it says, “Great is the mystery of the faith!” The Church professes this mystery in the Apostles’ Creed (Part One) and celebrates it in the sacramental liturgy (Part Two). so that the life of the faithful may be conformed to Christ in the Holy Spirit to the glory of God the Father (Part Three). This mystery, then, requires that the faithful believe in it, that they celebrate it, and that they live from it in a vital and personal relationship with the living and true God. This relationship is prayer.

My search led me to the Catholic Church and I have not been disappointed.  In the prayers of the Church, I found a roadmap to a rich prayer life which has centered on the rosary but also includes many other prayers as well. 

Meditations on the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary

The Five Sorrowful Mysteries are my favorites of the Twenty Mysteries of the Rosary.  I think it is because they make sense of the suffering we encounter in our life in this world.  Love all of the Mysteries but they are my anchor.  The Sorrowful Mysteries are as follows.

1)  The Anguish of Jesus in the Garden
This mystery is a very special one to me.  There was one point in my career when I was in my mid 30s with a wife and 4 kids when my anxiety with work was so great that I didn't feel I could face another 30 years of it.  I was sitting on the bathroom floor at 2 am, contemplating suicide, feeling very alone.  And Jesus spoke to me and said, "I know how you feel."  Surprised I responded, "You do?!"  And He said, "Yes, remember in the Garden of Gethsemane when I was in such anguish (anxiety, fear) that I sweat great drops like blood?"  And amazed, I said, "Oh yeah, wow, I guess You really do know how I feel."  And hope returned to me and I am still here walking with Jesus.  I was no longer alone.  Jesus knows how we feel and we can come to Him with our anger and fears and struggles.

When I am praying this mystery, I bring my anxiety and distress along with those of others and offer them up to Jesus and I ask that He will be with us and help us with them.

2)  The Scourging of Jesus at the Pillar
Lately, it has been being impressed upon me that this mystery includes Jesus taking our anger at God upon Himself.  All of us are angry at and resentful of God at different points in our lives.  He often simply doesn't do things our way!  And so I picture the soldiers symbolically but literally whipping him in our fury.  And we whip Him still when we vent our anger on "one of the least of these, His brethren".

But there is also hope in this mystery, I think.  Because Jesus became the focal point in our anger at God and He took that anger upon Himself, paradoxically, it brings healing and reconciliation with God to us.  By His stripes we are healed as it says in Isaiah 53:5.  It also means that Jesus knows how we feel when we are enduring the rage of others towards us.

When I am praying this mystery, I pray for all who may be the recipients of such anger that Jesus would be with us and help us to respond in patient love as He did.

3)  The Crowning of Jesus with Thorns
Matthew 27 NABRE
²⁷ Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus inside the praetorium and gathered the whole cohort around him. ²⁸ They stripped off his clothes and threw a scarlet military cloak about him. ²⁹ Weaving a crown out of thorns, they placed it on his head, and a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” ³⁰ They spat upon him and took the reed and kept striking him on the head. ³¹ And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the cloak, dressed him in his own clothes, and led him off to crucify him.

The next step after punishing God in our anger, now that we have Him in our power (so we think), in our sadistic leisure, we can turn to mockery.  This mockery did not end even when Jesus was on the cross.  And we participate in this mockery in our treatment of others when we trample their dignity and when we scoff at the Gospel.  As Stuart Townend says in his hymn, How Deep The Father's Love For Us, "Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers."

But even when we are the ones being mocked, Jesus is there with us.  And I pray for all who are being mocked and belittled.

4)  The Carrying of His Cross by Jesus
In this mystery, we see Jesus being made to carry the means of His own execution through the streets of Jerusalem, a rough heavy beam, even though he has already been flogged and crowned with thorns.  The streets are lined with people, some mocking, some grieving, some rejoicing.  Some reach out to Him to wipe His face and comfort Him.  In the Stations of the Cross, there are St. Veronica and Mary, His mother.

When I am meditating on this long endurance, this long struggle of Jesus, I am often led to pray for those I know who are struggling with long serious illnesses or difficult situations, their crosses.  I ask Jesus to give them faith, hope and love to see them through the storm and to bring them through to the other side.

When we entrust ourselves into His care and offer up our suffering to Him, trusting in His goodness and compassion and that He knows what it is like, then He can turn those times into something beautiful.

5)  The Crucifixion of Jesus on the Cross

I used to wonder what Jesus was talking about in John 6 but now I know it was the Eucharist, Holy Communion.

John 6

⁴¹ The Jews then murmured at him, because he said, “I am the bread which came down from heaven.” ⁴² They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” ⁴³ Jesus answered them, “Do not murmur among yourselves. ⁴⁴ No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. ⁴⁵ It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Every one who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. ⁴⁶ Not that any one has seen the Father except him who is from God; he has seen the Father. ⁴⁷ Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. ⁴⁸ I am the bread of life. ⁴⁹ Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. ⁵⁰ This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die. ⁵¹ I am the living bread^[c] which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
⁵² The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”^{[d] 53} So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; ⁵⁴ he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. ⁵⁵ For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. ⁵⁶ He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. ⁵⁷ As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. ⁵⁸ This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live for ever.” ⁵⁹ This he said in the synagogue, as he taught at Caper′na-um.  RSVCE

For many years, since I didn't believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, I wasn't sure what Jesus was talking about here.  But once I came to accept that Jesus was talking about the Eucharist here then other passages started to make sense as well. 

Such are the miracle at Cana in John 2 where we see Jesus changing water into wine (transubstantiation) in response to His mother bringing the problem of the wedding party running out of wine.  It also makes sense of His comment to her, "My hour has not yet come."  The time of His offering himself up on the cross and shedding His blood which the wine signifies and becomes.

And John 16:16
¹⁶ “A little while, and you will see me no more; again a little while, and you will see me.”, when Jesus tells them that He is going away but that it is to their advantage because He will send them the Holy Spirit and they will see Him again.

And in Luke 22

¹⁴ And when the hour came, he sat at table, and the apostles with him. ¹⁵ And he said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer; ¹⁶ for I tell you I shall not eat it^[b] until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” ¹⁷ And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he said, “Take this, and divide it among yourselves; ¹⁸ for I tell you that from now on I shall not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” ¹⁹ And he took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” ²⁰ And likewise the cup after supper, saying, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.^{[c] 21} But behold the hand of him who betrays me is with me on the table. ²² For the Son of man goes as it has been determined; but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed!” ²³ And they began to question one another, which of them it was that would do this.

More later.

Relics - items associated with people filled with the power of the Holy Spirit whether they are alive or deceased.

One of the things that strikes you when you start learning the various aspects of the Catholic Faith is how physical it is.  There is an emphasis on God working through physical items and actions that is largely missing from most Protestant circles.  The emphasis in many Protestant circles tends to be on the spiritual and intellectual side of the faith.  The Catholic Faith includes those aspects of the Christian faith as well.

One such physical area that God works through are relics of the saints such as articles which belonged to them or bones of the saints, etc.  One's initial reaction is often "Where is that in the Bible?!!" 

Interestingly enough it was an evangelical Protestant/Charismatic pastor who gave me the first Scripture reference as I was on my journey towards the Catholic Church.

He was talking about "thin" places, where the residual power of the Holy Spirit remains on or with items.  He acknowledged that miracles had happened in connection with relics throughout the history of Israel and the Church.  The biblical reference he gave in his message was 2 Kings 13:20-21.  In this passage, a dead man about to be buried come back to life after his body comes into contact with the bones of Elisha the prophet.  Here is the passage from the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition of the Bible.
2 Kings 13
20 So Elisha died, and they buried him. Now bands of Moabites used to invade the land in the spring of the year.  21 And as a man was being buried, lo, a marauding band was seen and the man was cast into the grave of Elisha; and as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood on his feet.

There is also at least one New Testament example in Acts 19:11-12.
Acts 19
11 And God did extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul,  12 so that handkerchiefs or aprons were carried away from his body to the sick, and diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them.  RSVCE

So in the first case, the miracle was associated with the bones of a holy person and in the second case, it was items which had touched the body of a holy person who was alive at the time of contact.  There may be more examples.  I just haven't researched them yet.  That pastor may have mentioned this passage as well in his message and probably did.  I just don't remember for sure.

All for now.

A change in me I noticed while singing This is the Air I Breathe this week

The praise and worship song, This is the Air I Breathe, has been sung a lot recently in both the Catholic Church I am registered with and involved in and the church my wife and I attend together early on Sunday mornings. 

I loved the song as a Protestant because singing it and other similar songs was about as close as I could get to feeling in touch with Jesus.  And the haunting chorus goes "And I am desperate for You.  And I am lost without You."  I loved the chorus because it expressed the cry and longing of my heart for Jesus.  They were not just the words of someone else but my words, too.

While they were distributing the Eucharist at the Saturday night Mass where I was serving as an altar server, the choir was leading us in singing this song and I realized that I was no longer lost without Jesus and desperate for Him.  He has led me to the Catholic Church where I have found Him in His Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist, in the other sacraments, in the sacramentals, in the art, in the Blessed Virgin Mary and in the communion of the saints, in the prayers of the Church which have set my prayers free and in many other channels of His grace through His Church.  I have Jesus and I have ways to stay close to Him.  Thanks be to God!

I still love the song as a Catholic because I remember those days of desperation and longing.  And God used my desperation and longing to keep me searching.  And now He is the air I breathe.  Didn't I have Jesus as a Protestant and wasn't He present?  Yes, He was but now I have Him more fully.