Day 352: Summary of The Battle of Prayer (2752-2758)

• It’s Day 352!!

• MCNUGGET DAY!!

• We are going to talk about the battle of prayer

• We are going to look at some of the obstacles to prayer and some of the erroneous notions of prayer

• We will be reminded of the way that God is calling us to engage and respond with faith, love, hope, trust, and perseverance

• Let’s pray!!

Prayer by Fr. Mike: “Father in Heaven, we give you praise and glory. Thank you so much. Thank you for bringing us to this day. Thank you for bringing us almost the entire way through this Catechism. Lord God, as we continue to walk, as we continue to learn, to listen, and to respond to your voice, to you call, and your will in our lives, we ask that you please help us to have courage, courage to let this time not just be a time of information transfer, but a time of transformation, not just a time of data collection, but a time of conversion. Lord God, help us to put into practice the lessons and the teachings that you have imparted to us. Help us to live these. Help us to live the life of a disciple, the life of a beloved son or daughter, the life of a friend of the Bridegroom. Lord God, help us to live this life by the Power of your Holy Spirit. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen”

• So there we have it!!

• Paragraph 2752 says, “Prayer presupposes an effort, a fight against ourselves and the wiles of the Tempter. The battle of prayer is inseparable from the necessary ‘spiritual battle’ to act habitually according to the Spirit of Christ: we pray as we live, because we live as we pray.”

• We get so easily distracted and put off course

• Even when we have our priorities straight

• We have such concupiscence

• We have such weakened wills

• We have such a darkening of our intellect

• At any given moment, we can be blown off course

• We have to fight to stay on course

• Saints who went into prayer would park themselves in front of our Lord in the Eucharist

• Hours felt like minutes

• For Fr. Mike, that’s not how it was when he first started with a holy hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament

• He thought he was doing something wrong

• There were all these distractions and dryness in prayer

• Prayer is very active

• You are engaged with grace

• Prayer is not like soaking in a hot tub

• Prayer is more like swimming

• The water in the pool is grace 

• In order to move, you have to engage with that water or grace

• A lot of times, you can tread water pretty easily if you are really good at floating and kick a little bit

• It’s not a lot of effort, but you are engaging with the water

• If you want to move, you have to engage that water even more and work

• That is what prayer is 

• If there was no water, there is no swimming 

• SO JUST KEEP SWIMMING!!! Finding Nemo - Just Keep Swimming

• There is no prayer if there is no grace

• We have to interact with the grace God gives us

• Sometimes we can be calm like in contemplative prayer which can be compared to treading water with minimal effort

• It’s a gift and it’s easy

• Sometimes we have to kick and swim and feel like we are wrestling in this prayer

• Sometimes we do rest in the pool and it’s warm and calm and relaxing but we still have to engage with the water

• We are resting in the Lord’s but we are engaged with His presence and His grace

• Sometimes it’s like swimming laps when we pray the Rosary or the Liturgy of the Hours

• If we do not want to act habitually according to the Spirit of CHrist, we cannot expect to pray habitually in His name

• We have to let our hearts be converted

• That is one of the necessary requirements of prayer

• God meets us in our weakness

• We don’t have to be perfect before we start praying

• We don’t have to have our whole lives sorted out before we start praying

• That would be like saying we are going to wait until we are not sick anymore before we go to see the doctor

• No, we go to see the doctor when we are sick

• We don’t have to wait until we are holy to start praying

• It doesn’t work that way

• God just wants your heart

• God also desires our conversion

• We can’t think that we can approach the Lord in humility, trust, and love if we do not actually try to walk in His name, in humility, trust, and love

• We need to strive to do these things

• Even if we don’t do them perfectly, we need to strive to do them

• Paragraph 2753 says, “In the battle of prayer we must confront erroneous conceptions of prayer, various currents of thought, and our own experience of failure. We must respond with humility, trust, and perseverance to these temptations which cast doubt on the usefulness or even the possibility of prayer.”

• The three critical ingredients that are necessary in our hearts are HUMILITY, TRUST, AND PERSEVERANCE

• THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY!!

• Humility = “Ok, God. You are God and I am not. I am coming back to you as a beggar. I am coming back to you as someone who needs you. I need what you are offering. I am not coming to you as the boss. I am not coming to you as the one who has the answers. I am coming to you as the one who needs you.”

• Trust = “God, I trust you.”

• Perseverance = “God, I am going to keep coming back to you.”

• THIS IS SO IMPORTANT!!

• Paragraph 2756 says, “Filial trust is put to the test when we feel that our prayer is not always heard. The Gospel invites us to ask ourselves about the conformity of our prayer to the desire of the Spirit.”

• If we do not trust God, we even accept God’s blessings with suspicion, cynicism, or even hesitation

• Have you ever heard of the phrase, “waiting for the other shoe to drop”?

• You’re waiting for bad news to come

• When we don’t trust the Lord, that is how we are

• Even in the midst of blessings and good seasons in life

• We wait for God to forget about us

• That goes directly against how He reveals Himself

• If we have trust, not only will we receive God’s blessings with gratitude… 

• Then we can even receive our crosses…

• We can even receive dryness and distraction… 

• We can even receive suffering…

• We can even receive death

• We know that God is a good Dad

• Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane is the model for all of our prayer

• Why?

• Jesus said, “Father, let this cup pass from me. Yet not my will, but your will be done.”

• In the first part of that prayer, Jesus talks with God as Father, as Dad, as Abba

• Not as a tyrant that He cannot trust

• In the second part of that prayer, Jesus is honest when He says, “Let this cup pass from me. I don’t want this.”

• We need to be honest in our prayer

• We know we are talking to the Father, Abba

• Then be honest

• In the third part of that prayer, Jesus trusts the Father when He says, “Yet not my will, but your will be done.”

• If our prayer can look like that, where we remind ourselves who we are talking to, our Dad in Heaven, and we can be honest, and then we have trustful surrender, we will be more and more like the Son of God who prayed like that in the last hours of His life

• We talk to God as our Dad

• We are honest with Him

• And then we trust Him

• That is what God wants us to do

• He wants us to pray like He prays

• Fr. Mike is praying FOR YOU!!

• Please pray for Fr. Mike and for each other!!

• I cannot WAIT…