Prayer Advices

Dear Lord, one of the nicest cards I ever got had only four words on it: ‘I simply love you.’ At that time, this was what I most needed to hear. And, Lord, I always need to hear it from you.

I was greatly helped when, a few years ago, Pope Francis wrote in The Joy of the Gospel (n.6), ‘When everything is said and done, we are infinitely loved’. This massive statement about you, God, means that, no matter how I let you down, you delight in me as I am. I am radically loved; you are totally positive about me. Therapists try, more or less successfully, to develop unconditional positive regard for their clients, or else the therapeutic relationship will never take off. This reflects, at the human level, your regard for each of us. The relationship between you and me can take off only in this atmosphere. So let me believe, no matter what negative stories I carry from childhood, that no one can love me as you do, that you never turn away from me in despair or boredom and that nothing can increase or diminish your love for me.

Brian Grogan SJ, I Am Infinitely Loved

This journey of life is filled with such beauty at times. We could all do with slowing down and appreciating that beauty more often. Too often, we allow it to pass us by without recognition. We do sometimes catch it, though. Sometimes, we realise we are in the presence of beauty, and we allow ourselves to freeze time – to stay in that presence. In those moments, we are conscious enough to really experience beauty. While these moments may not come very often, when they do, they are often very emotional. They connect us to a central truth: that no matter what suffering there is in the world (and there is suffering in this world) and in our lives (there is and will be suffering in our lives), there is also beauty. We cannot explain why it is so; we can only accept that it is so.
This acceptance thing is hard to do. However, in accepting suffering, we are also free to accept and savour all the more the beauty we see and experience in the world.
Try praying for others: hold close to your heart in prayer all those who are suffering at this time; hold close to your heart in prayer all those who are sick; hold close to your heart in prayer all those who do not or cannot see beauty in their lives at this moment. 

Jim Deeds & Brendan McManus SJ, Finding God in the Mess

Saying ‘yes’ is a vital part of our relationship with God; it is our freedom to say ‘no’. So many times in my life, I look back on now and see clearly that I said ‘no’ (even if I didn’t understand it as saying ‘no’ to God at the time). Thank God, I can recall some times when I said ‘yes’ too. Saying ‘yes’ to God enables us to be a living presence of love, joy and mercy in this world. Our ‘yes’ always draws us to love and value ourselves, others and the world around us.
In Christian history and tradition, there are numerous people who said ‘yes’: Mary, Jeremiah, Moses and Peter, for example. Their yesses mattered. They may not have known exactly what they were saying ‘yes’ to, but they had the wisdom to know that God was asking and that they should say ‘yes’.
If you’re faced with a difficult yes, remember you’re in good company with those above. Know this too: those who say ‘yes’ are gifted for that yes (so we see Peter, the uneducated fisherman, become a learned scholar and leader of a new movement – a saint). You too will be gifted for your yes. 

Jim Deeds & Brendan McManus SJ, Finding God in the Mess

Our efforts may seem small and futile, but many Gospel episodes reveal the recurring motif that God has an eye for small people and small things. Think of the widow’s mite and the multiplication of the loaves and fish (Mark 12:41–44; 8:1–9). At Cana, dull water is turned into the best of wine (John 2:1–12); at the Last Supper, lowly bread and wine become the body and blood of the Lord (Luke 22:19–20). The life of each person, no matter how hidden, has its influence on all others (Romans 14:7). Any good deed, however small, that is done in love has an eternal quality, because love does not come to an end (1 Corinthians 13:8) and we will reap its reward at harvest time (Galatians 6:9). This grounds hope that our tiny contributions on behalf of our sick planet carry their own symbolic value. Julian of Norwich expresses this hope:

God showed me a little thing, the size of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand. I looked upon it and thought, ‘What may this be?’ And I was answered, ‘It is all that is made.’ I marvelled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for smallness. And I was answered, ‘It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God’. In this little thing I saw three truths: the first is that God made it; the second that God loves it; and the third that God keeps it safe.

Brian Grogan SJ, Creation Walk:The Amazing Story of a Small Blue Planet

Although Mary spoke only a handful of times in the New Testament, her personality and character have spoken to countless believers ever since. And not only to Catholics. Mary draws millions of people to shrines across the world. In addition to well-known shrines such as Guadalupe, Lourdes and Fatima, there are many other Marian shrines around the world which attract believers of other faiths.

Mary’s life was about a yes in reply to a love beyond all her dreams of love. Mary made a decision in response to a gift. She received the gift of an encounter with God who drew so near to her that the human flesh of his only-begotten Son was knitted together in her womb. At the heart of Mary’s life was this love story with God, a love story that ideally can be at the heart of our lives as well.

Like any good mother, Mary gets us in touch with the affective dimension of our lives and frees us up to be receptive to God. The first step to God is not a matter of theory. Neither is it an exercise in willpower alone. More often it’s about opening up the basic flow of our lives so that we are ready to move towards trust, goodness and love. We easily get stuck in tired ways of doing things. But encountering the depth of Mary is a humbling invitation to live out of the depths of ourselves. She helps us to go deeper than our surface selves, and to anchor ourselves in a rootedness that goes back through the generations to Abraham and Sarah, and even predates them. She helps us see what marvels the Almighty has done for us. She enables us to rejoice in God our Saviour.

Thomas G. Casey SJ, Mary in Different Traditions

Mount Tabor is the place where Peter, James and John saw Jesus in the brightness of his glory. They saw the divinity that was hidden by humanity. This day is the dawn of the faith of the apostles in who Jesus is, and his divine life. In his humanity and his total identity, he is the image of God. They recognised him because they knew him as a man. And then they heard the voice which said, ‘This is my beloved son’ (Matthew 17:5).

That voice had spoken before – at the baptism of Jesus. But then it was heard only by Jesus. Now Jesus is being revealed to his disciples as the Son of God. ‘This is my beloved son’. It’s interesting what follows. God then says, ‘listen to him’. Listening to the word of God is one of the most important graces of a Christian. At Mass, we bow to the place of the Word – it is Christ who is speaking in the reading of the Word – as we bow to the bread and wine on the altar. In word and sacrament, Jesus is speaking and present in the Church.

Jesus also spoke of the future, letting the apostles know that this day would be appreciated only when he was raised from the dead. Then they would grasp the full meaning of the Transfiguration and could allow themselves for some time to wonder what ‘rising from the dead’ would mean.

Peter, James and John would remember this day forever. In fact, Peter wrote about it in his first letter. We can open ourselves to this grace of knowing the divinity and humanity of Christ and of believing deep down in our hearts that one day we will be transfigured, so that our mortal bodies will be like his.

Donal Neary SJ, The Sacred Heart Messenger, August 2024

When we are in a good relationship with God, the evil spirit tries to unsettle us by making us anxious, frustrated, dissatisfied and sad. We shouldn’t enter his playing field by engaging with the temptation or arguing with these unhelpful thoughts or promptings. If we do, we’ll probably lose the battle. Instead, we should return calmly into God’s presence. As the Book of Exodus puts it: ‘The Lord will fight for you; you only need to be still’ (Exodus 14:14).
Mary’s example teaches us that genuine joy comes from being united with the source of all true joy: God. The more we’re one with God, the less we are disturbed by anxieties, fears and pains. We don’t need to defend ourselves against these incursions, because God’s presence itself is our defence. Even while Mary was on earth, it was as though she were already in heaven, because she was fully in God’s presence, always adoring the one who filled her with light and with joy. And as her life approached its end, the light that had always shone in her heart became more and more intense. It drew her whole being upwards, as though it wanted to snatch her from the earth and draw her upwards where her spirit already soared, so that she could sing her beautiful Magnificat in gratitude to God forever and ever. 

Thomas Casey SJ, Smile of Joy: Mary of Nazareth

We are watching out for sightings of God all around us, and we try to find the divine life at the heart of reality. Ignatius left no detailed rule about how much prayer his followers should undertake. Instead, he asked that we should keep God always before our eyes. This is contemplation in action. It is a tall order, yet we know what it is like to be doing something, whether pleasant or distasteful, with someone else in our mind. I came across migrants working in the diamond mines of South Africa. They endured long hours in the depths of the earth in order to send money home to their families
Contemplation has been described as ‘a long loving look at the real’. This is how God looks at our world. Then God ‘gets going’ and intervenes on our behalf. In this sense, God is THE ‘contemplative in action’. So, of course, is Jesus. He prays, he works, he suffers, but always in the presence of his Father. He has a discerning heart, which is why he can say, ‘I always do what is pleasing to him’ (John 8:29). As his companions, we try to imitate him. It is no accident that the first Jesuits wanted to be known as ‘companions of Jesus’. 

Brian Grogan SJ, Finding God in All Things

We should keep an eye and an ear open in the liturgy and in our reading of the Bible to pick up the many references to God being ‘with’ us and his other chosen servants, so that we can appreciate their full theological significance. This should encourage us to appreciate the depth and all the implications of the apparently simple universal greeting with which we Christians are so familiar that it glides off our minds regularly without our appreciating it: ‘The Lord be with you’. Hearing this from the priest at Mass should stop us regularly in our tracks: it is not just a blessing; it is always also a challenge. As we see throughout the Bible, it implies a previous particular commission that we have personally received from God. It should remind us that God promises to be always ‘with’ us, as the risen Jesus promised his disciples (Matthew 28:20), regardless of – even because of – our inadequacies, so that God can bring about through us what he is asking of us at this moment in our lives. That’s the point. 

Jack Mahoney SJ, Glimpses of the Gospels

Our inner and outer senses play an important role in living a full human existence. Babies in their first months of life largely ‘learn’ through their senses. Adults have a tendency to rely overly on their intellect when searching for truth. As a consequence, we fail to draw on the enrichment that a keen awareness of the senses offers. For some, the latter can be missing yet not missed. Living life to the full is more likely when one is fully rooted in the everyday world that we find ourselves in, while using both rational and sensory abilities. If we desire to live at greater depth, then attention to our senses is essential. In other words, we need to create moments when we consciously just ‘stand and stare, listen and feel, smell and taste’.
Incidents in our lives are often lived automatically as opposed to consciously. In certain activities and circumstances, that has to be so. For example, when driving the car, we cannot be conscious of every move we make with the brake or steering wheel. However, we do need moments, hopefully several daily, when we deliberately allow ourselves to relish, delight in and wonder at the concrete reality we actually live in. Examples could be the following: noting the sounds around one in a busy street, the view from an office window, the texture and/or flavour of the food we are eating, the inner beauty of the person I am conversing with as well as acknowledging the beauty of who I am. In summary, we need to allow our inner and outer sensing worlds to nourish us through the ordinary moments as well as the more extraordinary ones. Hidden moments can prove to be the gems that make life worthwhile, maybe even ‘wonder-filled’. Catherine McCann, Spirituality and the Senses: Living Life to the Full