prayer is...

While we often still think of prayer primarily as asking God for something, prayer, properly understood, is a conversation with God or with the saints. Just as we cannot hold a conversation with another person unless he can hear us, the very act of praying is an implicit recognition of the presence of God or the saints here with us. And in praying, we strengthen that recognition of the presence of God, which draws us closer to Him. That is why the Church recommends that we pray frequently and make prayer an important part of our everyday lives.

Prayer and God's Love

The love of God is the greatest grace which can be given to human beings. Human life achieves its fullness, for in God’s love we find happiness, an end to the restless searching of our heart, and the very essence of life everlasting. No prayer is more certain to be heard than the prayer that God may take us to His own heart, and that we may desire only the riches of His great love.

Still on the "Our Father"

The “Kenosis” (or the incarnation of Jesus) is our great source of inspiration in prayer. There is a global threat on an inevitable scale and in different forms of modernism, cell research; loss of meaning about life and most dominant of these is materialism or consumerism. Christ should be the center.

To quote Cardinal Berulle, a famous seventeenth century mystic, “In stooping without defiling Himself, God the Son raises us; in His union with the Father, He purifies us; in Incarnating Himself, He deifies us…”

When Jesus assumed our nature, He became one with us in all things, except sin.

In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus is teaching us to join with Him in saying: “Our Father.” This prayer is the spirit of the law of love proclaimed by Jesus himself. In Jesus we see that this love is pure and alive in us, and in strength of that love we dare to say to God – audemus dicere – “Our Father.”

posted by everet corvera fr everett corvera, father everett

One thing in particular fills us with utmost confidence is we say “Our Father” in union with Jesus who taught us how to pray. It is such a special privilege for each one of us, when Jesus taught us the perfect words on prayer, we also have the privilege that we were born in spirit and in truth; that Christ Jesus has adopted us as His brothers and sisters, and co-heirs to His glory as Son of the Father.

posted by everet corvera

Everett Corvera believes that the Holy Spirit is our help in prayer. When we are overcome with spiritual dryness, so that the words we speak seem to fall heavy and lifeless, the Holy Spirit prays within us that freshness of praise we cannot control. When people lack faith to wither the prayer on our lips, the Holy Spirit will speak words within us that we cannot command. If we experience this, we then find courage and strength in the realization that the Holy Spirit dwells within us and gives us true meaning to the words, speaking them with us in an adoring rapture of love. As always, for always, when we sincerely pray, no matter how dry our heart, the Spirit of God prays within us.

Each moment we open our hearts, we no longer seek to escape from our very being; and where we formerly experienced an empty space of God’s presence, we now feel the inner joy of His presence. That is how we should feel when we begin the Lord’s Prayer when we say “Our Father.” We would never have the audacity, on our own accord, to address God with such a familiar word “father.” Therefore, do we derive the courage and the right to address God and speak to Him as His sons and daughters?

The Lord's Prayer

We may not really use so many words because we feel that the Our Father is enough; but as repeat the words, God will open our hearts that the warmth of these feelings may steal into the hard and stony places made arid by the sorrows of this life.






posted by priest everett corvera, fr everet corvera

What is prayer?

A very simple and common question yet when ask sometimes we find ourselves empty of description. We find out immediately without thinking that it is by no means easy to answer such a question. When we have said all that we want to say from our minds about prayer, it is inevitably found that we have said a lot about prayer yet little about what prayer is all about.

Commonly heard: “I went to mass, so I prayed.” “I said the rosary, I prayed.” “I finished my novena.” “I made the sign of the cross.” And many others needless to mention. But are we really praying or are we just saying our prayers?

Let me begin this with one simple fact, it is commonly regarded as a spiritual cliché that many people tend to pass by so lightly over and over… ”PRAYER is the opening of the heart to God.”

INTRODUCTION

The life of each individual person is made up of many and various activities. Deep in each person’s heart is the longing, fitfully glimpsed but half realized, if all gathered up these intense pursuit of one final objective is worthy of all toil and sweat and devotion of the human heart. Such can be described a half-part dream; but in reality it is a picture of leveled-up activities, where the trivial jostles the less trivial, and the less trivial jolts the significant matters, and there is no unity of pattern, nor any intense concentrated purpose. The real perspective of values are hazy in parts; what is importantly trivial but most urgent, looms huge and demands a lot of attention while what is largely important but not necessarily urgent, is relegated into the oblivion. THE THING of most importance - is not always what is demanded by the needs of this instance – not in this very moment.

There are momentary events lurking into subconscious disturbance. It cannot be described as it were with anything else but blank. I for one have caught myself many times in the past in zero state disposition. Thinking deeply between noise and silence, turmoil and tranquility yet nothing seems to be in the middle. We may turn from it all yet the confusion of all that traffic sinks to silence, as in a spirit of grace and love, God will speak to us in prayer. If we gaze our eyes to heaven with a swift upward glance of the divine, God’s finite nature will allow us to glimpse, to that sublime fusion of the glowing light that can easily be described as a mystery. In reference to all the saints’ experience this is called a beatific vision. To the hoipoloi it is an experience of being in awe of the divine nature of God. Skeptics may say that this is impossible, yet in prayer, though there is "through a glass in a dark state,” we look upon God and comes as near as he can to that unity of action and purpose for which his heart has a deep and secret longing. Therefore, prayer is one the essential natures of our life – the food we need to feed our being and more importantly our souls so that our deepest longing may journey into everlasting life.