First, let me wish you a blessed finish to Advent and a merry Christmas! The Rossini family is busy baking cookies, writing our Christmas letter, and wrapping presents. Not to mention the prayer and spiritual reading we’ve been doing as a family every night for weeks. To keep ourselves from getting bored, Dan and I …
In my last post, we saw that the first step in establishing a habit of prayer is making prayer a priority. Today I’d like to go a little further, helping you make prayer your top priority. We all know the story of Mary and Martha. Jesus and his apostles came to visit the sisters in …
The Catechism tells us that “prayer is a battle,” and, “The ‘spiritual battle’ of the Christian’s new life is inseparable from the battle of prayer” (no. 2725). We do not expect battles to be easy or consoling. We expect them to be dangerous and difficult. Of course, prayer is sometimes consoling, and it leads to …
Meditation is the second expression of prayer taught in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It usually follows and surpasses vocal prayer. It prepares us for the gift of contemplation. As we saw last time, Christian meditation is different from non-Christian meditation. Christian meditation engages the heart and the mind to aid in communion with …
We have been talking about deepening our personal prayer life. When we pray our simple vocal prayers well, we begin to feel a tug towards something deeper, a more heartfelt conversation with God. We desire to address him in our own words, in a more personal and particular way. Traditionally, this prayer from the heart …
Remember the analogy from previous posts of prayer as a race? A runner who does not know where the finish line lies is unlikely to win the race. Similarly, a Christian who does not understand the goal of prayer is not likely to attain it. Prayer is meant to draw us into an intimate communion …