Tuesday, February 5, 2013
GILDING A BYZANTINE MURAL ON CANVAS
It's either a feast or a famine but I am fascinated by this icon-painting onto canvas. I've heard it's not uncommon in Greece where the painting is done on canvas in the studio and then pasted to the wall of a church. Not as permanent and more easily damaged but cheaper for the client and more convenient for the artist. Oil gilding canvas is something new to me (don't think water gilding would work) but the effect looks good. What would our churches look like if they were covered with pictures of the mysteries of our faith? Why are white walls or brick work so common now? Is that another effect of the Reformation?
A MONK OF LE BARROUX ON THE VOWS AND CONVERSION
This is well put. The path of the vows is a path of conversion of heart and a setting free to pursue union with God. It is freely chosen so that one can be free to love God and one's neighbour with a truly free love. That is the goal, to love as God loves; to let God love through our love. First one must become free. As John of the Cross put it one must go by the path of 'nada', nothing. Nothing but God.
Friday, February 1, 2013
ST. BRIGID AND THE IDOLATORS
Beannachtaí Lá Fhéile Bríde! (or Lá ‘le Bríde) -see the interesting post over at the Irish Language blog.
I am not a fan of 'Celtic Spirituality' unless it is Celtic Christian (as in Catholic) spirituality. Those were orthodox people and Brigid no less than the rest of them. The above cross is one of those traditionally associated with her. The story is that she wove it while tending her pagan father is his last illness, a man who had cost her no end of grief. So this simple straw cross is a symbol of the power that the Christian faith brought to Ireland: the grace of Christ which enables to forgive and truly love our neighbour. Perhaps that is why Christianity took such deep roots so quickly in Ireland. Perhaps our ancestors had already come to realise the shallowness and impotence of paganism. Perhaps that is why Irelands first official martyrs on Irish soil were to be those of the Reformation?
Any way I post today because as I was praying the Office of Readings, there being as yet no official texts for the Feast save the prayer, I was reading the passage in the Common from St. Cyprian when it struck me that the numbers of religious in general, and the women religious in particular, are an indication of the spiritual and religious health of the nation. St. Patrick himself wrote:
So, how is it that in Ireland, where they never had any knowledge of God but, always, until now, cherished idols and unclean things, they are lately become a people of the Lord, and are called children of God; the sons of the Irish and the daughters of the chieftains are to be seen as monks and virgins of Christ. And there was, besides, a most beautiful, blessed, native-born noble Irish woman of adult age whom I baptised; and a few days later she had reason to come to us to intimate that she had received a prophecy from a divine messenger [who] advised her that she should become a virgin of Christ and she would draw nearer to God. Thanks be to God, six days from then, opportunely and most eagerly, she took the course that all virgins of God take, not with their fathers' consent but enduring the persecutions and deceitful hindrances of their parents. Notwithstanding that, their number increases, (we do not know the number of them that are so reborn) besides the widows, and those who practise self-denial.(verses 41-42 of the Confessio)
The abundance of vocations in the past and the collapse in vocations in the last forty years should cause us to pause. I have written on this recently here. In this Sunday's Gospel (Luke 4:21–30) Jesus reads a passage from Isaiah and then enters into conflict with the people he grew up with. The issue is obedience to God as an expression of faith. Faith is only faith when it is obedient. That is why Jesus sites two examples, both of pagans who showed their faith by obedience to the great prophets of Israel. The Sidonian widow shared her last food with Elijah in faith and was saved, Naaman the Syrian bathed in the Jordan in obedient faith and was cured and converted to Judaism. Their obedience brought them a blessing. Likewise the disobedience and lack of faith of the Jews in Nazareth denied them the blessing of Jesus. He would work no miracle because they would not believe, they would not acknowledge God by their actions.
Is the collapse in vocations a sign of a profound disobedience in Ireland? Are we deserving of a curse because at heart because, despite the generosity of some to the poor, our hearts have wandered away from the path our ancestors took when they chose to abandon paganism and embrace Christ? I believe it is. I believe that in embracing contraception, Ireland has made a deeper commitment to an alternative faith. We have erected in our land the idols of self-indulgence and self-centredness. This has not been done consciously. Like the Israelites of old we have not thought it strange to bow down both to God and Baal. Other Christians over the centuries have bowed both to Christ and to Jupiter, or Wotan or Liberty or the State. This unreflected, passive idolatry is poisoning us. It has seeped into every corner of our land. It comes not just through the TV, radio or the net but in conversations, films, books, and through the more direct workings of the enemy. What Cyprian calls the 'joy of the Church' is dying because the Church no longer puts her entire hope in Christ. We have watered down our faith and made it soft and bland. We like the fuzzy pantheism of 'Celtic Spirituality' and not the raw demanding self-sacrifice of the real, Christian thing. God help us if we ever go back to paganism - human sacrifice anyone?
Monday, January 28, 2013
FIVE POINTERS ON PRAYER AND FURTHER THOUGHTS
When I chose to try out this life what attracted me most was the prayer life of the brothers and brotherhood - the life in common. I wanted a life that would both provide a support for my prayer and yet not leave me on my own. I already prayed a lot - it was a big emphasis in the charismatic prayer meeting I attended. I wanted something more and felt a draw to that. Somehow along the way I forgot that priority. Studies, student life, ministerial demands, meetings, and the distractions of TV and the internet meant that prayer often took a back seat. Now I am trying to find my way back.
It isn't easy.
There are always distractions and the problem is not with things but with me. Each of us has within us, because we are fallen, the illusion that we are the centre of everything and that everyone else ought to orbit around us. This is not a conscious idea for most of us otherwise we'd all be megalomaniacs. It's there all the same and becomes visible in our sins and our sinful attitudes, in our tendency to always put our own interests first. The only way to peace is to acknowledge that the only centre of everything is God. I cannot be God. We cannot be God. Only God can be God. God must take central place in our lives if they are to be at peace.
Somehow I let prayer slide into the background because I wanted to be the centre instead of God. Not that I never prayed but I never prayed as regularly as I could. There was always something that would interfere. What I have discovered is that it cannot be packed it at the last moment. It has to be planned and given priority. I have to intentionally live with as the centre if I wish to live a prayerful and peaceful life.
Needless to say it is not done overnight but re-establishing habits that will last takes not just time but commitment. It takes a continual returning to the source, a starting over each day. It means that as long as one is seeking one will eventually find.
Therefore I have discovered these basics:
Regularity: same place, same time and preferably early rather than late.
Spiritual Reading: dump the novels and feed your imagination with sacred images not with junk. Remember: 'Junk in junk out'.
Avoidance of the unnecessary and not just the sinful: it's not enough merely to seek to avoid evil one must seek good and do good. So much time is wasted on what is not important and not urgent. Prayer is important.
Perseverance: don't give up. Start again. If you fail, start again.
Make the Sacramental connection: nothing is possible without the grace of God. All good comes from Him. Draw on Him for support. Focus on attending Mass and draw on Christ truly present - worship Him! Use the Sacrament of Reconciliation for healing and help.
Suggested reading:
An Introduction to the Devout Life
The Practice of the Presence of God
Though I might point out that illustration given at the front of the pdf above is not of Brother Lawrence but of a Franciscan. Lawrence was a Carmelite.
It isn't easy.
There are always distractions and the problem is not with things but with me. Each of us has within us, because we are fallen, the illusion that we are the centre of everything and that everyone else ought to orbit around us. This is not a conscious idea for most of us otherwise we'd all be megalomaniacs. It's there all the same and becomes visible in our sins and our sinful attitudes, in our tendency to always put our own interests first. The only way to peace is to acknowledge that the only centre of everything is God. I cannot be God. We cannot be God. Only God can be God. God must take central place in our lives if they are to be at peace.
Somehow I let prayer slide into the background because I wanted to be the centre instead of God. Not that I never prayed but I never prayed as regularly as I could. There was always something that would interfere. What I have discovered is that it cannot be packed it at the last moment. It has to be planned and given priority. I have to intentionally live with as the centre if I wish to live a prayerful and peaceful life.
Needless to say it is not done overnight but re-establishing habits that will last takes not just time but commitment. It takes a continual returning to the source, a starting over each day. It means that as long as one is seeking one will eventually find.
Therefore I have discovered these basics:
Regularity: same place, same time and preferably early rather than late.
Spiritual Reading: dump the novels and feed your imagination with sacred images not with junk. Remember: 'Junk in junk out'.
Avoidance of the unnecessary and not just the sinful: it's not enough merely to seek to avoid evil one must seek good and do good. So much time is wasted on what is not important and not urgent. Prayer is important.
Perseverance: don't give up. Start again. If you fail, start again.
Make the Sacramental connection: nothing is possible without the grace of God. All good comes from Him. Draw on Him for support. Focus on attending Mass and draw on Christ truly present - worship Him! Use the Sacrament of Reconciliation for healing and help.
Suggested reading:
An Introduction to the Devout Life
The Practice of the Presence of God
Though I might point out that illustration given at the front of the pdf above is not of Brother Lawrence but of a Franciscan. Lawrence was a Carmelite.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
A SINKING SHIP: DEMOGRAPHICS AND OUR FUTURE
I started this article last year and recently finished it and then submitted it to our Provincial Bulletin. I've decided to make it more widely available!
Some time ago I watched the documentary ‘Demographic Winter’ and its grim warning on the future of Western civilisation made a deep impression on me. In essence Ireland, along with all the Western, the former Eastern Block nations and indeed most of the world outside the Middle East and Africa, is in decline. We’re not having enough babies to sustain our population.
This is not a new discovery. Demographers (a branch of sociology that studies how human populations grow and decline) have been aware of this for a long time. I remember reading about this back in the 80’s before I joined the Order. Back then in Europe only Ireland and Poland had Net Fertility Rates that were above what is called ‘Replacement Rate’. The Net Fertility Rate is the number of babies born relative to the number of women of child-bearing age. It should come out at or just above 2.1 or 2.2 babies per woman for a Western population to stay stable (neither growing nor declining). This is the Replacement Rate. Ireland’s Net Fertility Rate is about 2 but that is a very recent figure - a recent but un-sustained upward surge. It is not clear if the surge is due to an increase in births to natives or to the ‘new Irish’. For a long time it has been under 2.1 and as low as 1.85.
How did we get here? In 1978 the Fianna Fail government with the assistance of the opposition parties succeeded in legalising the sale of contraceptives (A). Ireland’s Net Fertility Rate had at that time stabilised at about 3.3. About ten years later (B) we were under Replacement Rate and, even with the recent rise (C), it has remained below it. Contraception was not the only factor – the impact of a local recession, changing expectations on the part of women etc., may have played a part, but contraception was the technical means that allowed our fertility rate to fall. Simply put we are not replacing our population. Our people, our society and therefore the Irish Church are in decline. Like a ship that has been holed we are sinking. The Government must know this but little, if anything, is being done to reverse the process. They simply do not plan that far ahead – there are no votes in that and they won’t be standing for election then.
The concerns of the demographers do not stop with the decline in certain populations. There are other implications to being below the Replacement Rate. The population profile ages. There are fewer young people generating the wealth and paying the taxes to sustain the rest of the population. There are also fewer young people to police society, nurse the sick and maintain the infrastructure. This situation worsens if there is also emigration. On the other hand immigration, unless it is on a massive scale with all the attendant problems, only slows the process and it negatively impacts on the demographics of the source countries. The economy of the declining country stagnates and eventually collapses. If the Net Fertility Rate reaches 1.1 then the society cannot recover and it collapses too. Imbalances between countries with declining populations and those with expanding ones can lead not just to massive migration but to social and cultural instabilities and wars. ‘Youth bulges’ in some populations could reshape the political and social and even religious map of the world. Perhaps this is why the US is aggressively promoting contraception and abortion in third world countries.
Once the Net Fertility Rate drops below 2.1 that society has about forty-eight years to reverse the process before it becomes too late. It is around the age of forty-eight that people generally begin to stop spending except on necessities and begin to save for their old age. Japan just passed that point. Already its economy is in decline. Despite her huge population she is going down. Japan and Russia are paying women to have babies. The Japanese, Russians and Swedes are among those trying to save their respective populations with little success. The French have had a campaign for a number of years to try to get their Net Fertility Rate up with some success but not yet enough to reach Replacement Rate. While populations have collapsed before this is a new kind of crisis, an entirely new situation created by human technology.
I was born in 1964 when Ireland’s net fertility rate was about 4. I joined the Capuchins in 1988 around the time we dropped below the Replacement Rate. Back then we had large crowds of young men attending vocations days. The vast majority did not join of course. Still there were six of us in postulancy and seven in novitiate of which only Joe Nagle and myself remain. Many of those young men were born in the mid to late 60’s. Richard, our youngest solemnly professed, was born in 1973 when our Net Fertility Rate, although in decline already, it was about 3.7. It is interesting that, so far, our native vocations have come from that era.
As a specialist group within society clergy and religious depend on the extra .3, .4, .5, who are conceived and are born to the mothers of our nation. When the Net Fertility Rate falls below the Replacement Rate of 2.1 there simply aren’t enough babies being born to both supply the Church with clergy and religious and the next generation with parents. I was twenty-four when I joined and if you go back twenty-four years from 2012 to 1988 you find why there are so few vocations; they simply weren’t conceived. If they don’t exist they cannot be called.
Just as Ireland has contracepted herself onto the road of decline and collapse so she has contracepted us to decline and annihilation. What is tragic is that our nation did this with the approbation of some of her Catholic clergy even if only in the secrecy of the confessional. This was with little or no correction from the hierarchy. How do I know this? Apart from anecdotal evidence there are those who have documented the campaign at that time within Irish society and the Irish Church for the acceptance of contraception. Just check out the work done by the blogger at Lux Occulta. This should be no surprise. After all would any Irish Government of the time, especially Fianna Fáil, have considered such a policy without some support and encouragement from within the Catholic Church? No one realised such a catastrophic fall in our fertility rate would be the result. No doubt there were expressions of disappointment when contraception was legalised and talk of ‘pastoral realities’ etc., but in the end we are here because there was a failure of both oversight and foresight. These rocky shores could’ve been avoided but now the ship is sinking and who has the courage to go down and plug the holes?
This situation also places all religious and clergy in a ‘prophetic position’ vís a vís Irish and Western society. We are where they will be. Thanks to Jeremy (one of our friars) I have these charts.
The first chart above shows the age distribution in the Province. The sad reality is that in ten to fifteen years a majority of our friars will be deceased or no longer capable of ministry and perhaps even community life. This is where Ireland is eventually headed too.
While not definitive the second chart above clearly shows how we will probably decline in numbers. As I write there are ninety-four Irish friars and of them there are only forty-two friars under 70. In ten years time only thirteen and in twenty years time only six will be under seventy. Union with the British Province, though it may bring other benefits, will not solve this problem. They have their own sinking ship. Two sinking ships will not keep one another afloat. On this point all union will do is spread the same problem over a wider geographical, cultural and social area. Either way our future does not present a pleasant prospect.
On a national scale it means that there will come a time when there will be too few young people both to generate the wealth and pay the taxes as well as run the system that supports the elderly and needy. Perhaps that is really why there are moves to introduce both assisted suicide and euthanasia.
So there are other considerations besides the impact on vocations. As for society so for us: there will be fewer friars to provide and care for the greater number who are elderly. There will be fewer friars to maintain ministries. Let me be more direct: many of our ministries and communities will no longer be viable. How can nine communities and their ministries be sustained with these declining numbers? It’s not possible.
For our province and for the Irish Church there is a hard and bitter task ahead. If Irish society and therefore the Irish Church are to be saved from the deep we must brace ourselves for the icy days ahead. The waters of conflict must be braved and a great effort made to reverse that most dreadful and fateful decision of 1978. Is it not time for a re-appropriation of the Church’s teaching on contraception? Is it not time that Catholics are clearly and consistently told why contraception is morally wrong? That will not go down well! No doubt even among the clergy there are those who will not assent to this teaching. Perhaps we are where the Roman Republic once was and,if I may quote the Roman historian Livy, “We can bear neither our vices nor the remedies.” Perhaps there are those who have no stomach for the task ahead but if we do not strive to do something we will not survive.
It is also true that the Church has lost her moral authority. Perhaps that is no great loss. Surely the people should be convinced by the rationality of our arguments not the moral authority of the institution? At least, if we are successful, we might save Irish society, restore some life to the Church and even to vocations. If the rest of society sinks then the Church in Ireland could be a lifeboat for the Irish. If we shirk this task we will go down together.
Br. Tom Forde OFM Cap
Sources:
Resource for statistics:
Population Research Institute:
CIA concerns:
Demographic Winter:
Some time ago I watched the documentary ‘Demographic Winter’ and its grim warning on the future of Western civilisation made a deep impression on me. In essence Ireland, along with all the Western, the former Eastern Block nations and indeed most of the world outside the Middle East and Africa, is in decline. We’re not having enough babies to sustain our population.
This is not a new discovery. Demographers (a branch of sociology that studies how human populations grow and decline) have been aware of this for a long time. I remember reading about this back in the 80’s before I joined the Order. Back then in Europe only Ireland and Poland had Net Fertility Rates that were above what is called ‘Replacement Rate’. The Net Fertility Rate is the number of babies born relative to the number of women of child-bearing age. It should come out at or just above 2.1 or 2.2 babies per woman for a Western population to stay stable (neither growing nor declining). This is the Replacement Rate. Ireland’s Net Fertility Rate is about 2 but that is a very recent figure - a recent but un-sustained upward surge. It is not clear if the surge is due to an increase in births to natives or to the ‘new Irish’. For a long time it has been under 2.1 and as low as 1.85.
How did we get here? In 1978 the Fianna Fail government with the assistance of the opposition parties succeeded in legalising the sale of contraceptives (A). Ireland’s Net Fertility Rate had at that time stabilised at about 3.3. About ten years later (B) we were under Replacement Rate and, even with the recent rise (C), it has remained below it. Contraception was not the only factor – the impact of a local recession, changing expectations on the part of women etc., may have played a part, but contraception was the technical means that allowed our fertility rate to fall. Simply put we are not replacing our population. Our people, our society and therefore the Irish Church are in decline. Like a ship that has been holed we are sinking. The Government must know this but little, if anything, is being done to reverse the process. They simply do not plan that far ahead – there are no votes in that and they won’t be standing for election then.
The concerns of the demographers do not stop with the decline in certain populations. There are other implications to being below the Replacement Rate. The population profile ages. There are fewer young people generating the wealth and paying the taxes to sustain the rest of the population. There are also fewer young people to police society, nurse the sick and maintain the infrastructure. This situation worsens if there is also emigration. On the other hand immigration, unless it is on a massive scale with all the attendant problems, only slows the process and it negatively impacts on the demographics of the source countries. The economy of the declining country stagnates and eventually collapses. If the Net Fertility Rate reaches 1.1 then the society cannot recover and it collapses too. Imbalances between countries with declining populations and those with expanding ones can lead not just to massive migration but to social and cultural instabilities and wars. ‘Youth bulges’ in some populations could reshape the political and social and even religious map of the world. Perhaps this is why the US is aggressively promoting contraception and abortion in third world countries.
Once the Net Fertility Rate drops below 2.1 that society has about forty-eight years to reverse the process before it becomes too late. It is around the age of forty-eight that people generally begin to stop spending except on necessities and begin to save for their old age. Japan just passed that point. Already its economy is in decline. Despite her huge population she is going down. Japan and Russia are paying women to have babies. The Japanese, Russians and Swedes are among those trying to save their respective populations with little success. The French have had a campaign for a number of years to try to get their Net Fertility Rate up with some success but not yet enough to reach Replacement Rate. While populations have collapsed before this is a new kind of crisis, an entirely new situation created by human technology.
I was born in 1964 when Ireland’s net fertility rate was about 4. I joined the Capuchins in 1988 around the time we dropped below the Replacement Rate. Back then we had large crowds of young men attending vocations days. The vast majority did not join of course. Still there were six of us in postulancy and seven in novitiate of which only Joe Nagle and myself remain. Many of those young men were born in the mid to late 60’s. Richard, our youngest solemnly professed, was born in 1973 when our Net Fertility Rate, although in decline already, it was about 3.7. It is interesting that, so far, our native vocations have come from that era.
As a specialist group within society clergy and religious depend on the extra .3, .4, .5, who are conceived and are born to the mothers of our nation. When the Net Fertility Rate falls below the Replacement Rate of 2.1 there simply aren’t enough babies being born to both supply the Church with clergy and religious and the next generation with parents. I was twenty-four when I joined and if you go back twenty-four years from 2012 to 1988 you find why there are so few vocations; they simply weren’t conceived. If they don’t exist they cannot be called.
Just as Ireland has contracepted herself onto the road of decline and collapse so she has contracepted us to decline and annihilation. What is tragic is that our nation did this with the approbation of some of her Catholic clergy even if only in the secrecy of the confessional. This was with little or no correction from the hierarchy. How do I know this? Apart from anecdotal evidence there are those who have documented the campaign at that time within Irish society and the Irish Church for the acceptance of contraception. Just check out the work done by the blogger at Lux Occulta. This should be no surprise. After all would any Irish Government of the time, especially Fianna Fáil, have considered such a policy without some support and encouragement from within the Catholic Church? No one realised such a catastrophic fall in our fertility rate would be the result. No doubt there were expressions of disappointment when contraception was legalised and talk of ‘pastoral realities’ etc., but in the end we are here because there was a failure of both oversight and foresight. These rocky shores could’ve been avoided but now the ship is sinking and who has the courage to go down and plug the holes?
This situation also places all religious and clergy in a ‘prophetic position’ vís a vís Irish and Western society. We are where they will be. Thanks to Jeremy (one of our friars) I have these charts.
The first chart above shows the age distribution in the Province. The sad reality is that in ten to fifteen years a majority of our friars will be deceased or no longer capable of ministry and perhaps even community life. This is where Ireland is eventually headed too.
While not definitive the second chart above clearly shows how we will probably decline in numbers. As I write there are ninety-four Irish friars and of them there are only forty-two friars under 70. In ten years time only thirteen and in twenty years time only six will be under seventy. Union with the British Province, though it may bring other benefits, will not solve this problem. They have their own sinking ship. Two sinking ships will not keep one another afloat. On this point all union will do is spread the same problem over a wider geographical, cultural and social area. Either way our future does not present a pleasant prospect.
On a national scale it means that there will come a time when there will be too few young people both to generate the wealth and pay the taxes as well as run the system that supports the elderly and needy. Perhaps that is really why there are moves to introduce both assisted suicide and euthanasia.
So there are other considerations besides the impact on vocations. As for society so for us: there will be fewer friars to provide and care for the greater number who are elderly. There will be fewer friars to maintain ministries. Let me be more direct: many of our ministries and communities will no longer be viable. How can nine communities and their ministries be sustained with these declining numbers? It’s not possible.
For our province and for the Irish Church there is a hard and bitter task ahead. If Irish society and therefore the Irish Church are to be saved from the deep we must brace ourselves for the icy days ahead. The waters of conflict must be braved and a great effort made to reverse that most dreadful and fateful decision of 1978. Is it not time for a re-appropriation of the Church’s teaching on contraception? Is it not time that Catholics are clearly and consistently told why contraception is morally wrong? That will not go down well! No doubt even among the clergy there are those who will not assent to this teaching. Perhaps we are where the Roman Republic once was and,if I may quote the Roman historian Livy, “We can bear neither our vices nor the remedies.” Perhaps there are those who have no stomach for the task ahead but if we do not strive to do something we will not survive.
It is also true that the Church has lost her moral authority. Perhaps that is no great loss. Surely the people should be convinced by the rationality of our arguments not the moral authority of the institution? At least, if we are successful, we might save Irish society, restore some life to the Church and even to vocations. If the rest of society sinks then the Church in Ireland could be a lifeboat for the Irish. If we shirk this task we will go down together.
Br. Tom Forde OFM Cap
Sources:
Resource for statistics:
Population Research Institute:
CIA concerns:
Demographic Winter:
Monday, November 26, 2012
FIVE BASIC POINTERS ON PRAYER
The image above is part of a illustration by F. Cayley-Robinson from Cardinal Manning's translation of the Fioretti.
Rebuilding one’s prayer life is a regular part of the struggle to remain faithful to Christ for some of us. We wander off, get lost, lose focus or get distracted and prayer takes a back-seat. Then we have to rebuild and re-establish the patterns without which life becomes chaotic and disjointed.
Remember above all that everything depends on grace - without the help of God we are incapable of doing or achieving any good. It is God who prays in and through us - the Holy Spirit makes our prayer the prayer of Christ the Son to the Father. He makes our prayer possible. He makes our prayer to be prayer.
On a more practical but less sublime level:
1. Time. One has to give time to prayer. It cannot be packed into the odd leftovers of the day. Each of us is different though. We differ in age, gender, experience and health, in the business of our life, and in our openness to grace. That means we will not all give the same amount of time to prayer everyday, or have the same time of day or even have the same pattern of prayer time throughout our lives. Still one must make time for prayer, quality time. It may mean, for many of us, getting to bed earlier so that we can get up earlier to pray. It may mean we start with fifteen minutes and only slowly expand that time. Like anyone getting fit one must put in the time and the effort.
2. Space. Most people do not have the luxury that I have of easy access to an oratory. Often prayer must happen in the bedroom, sitting room or parlour, on a bench in a park or at the back of a cold church before morning Mass. Whatever space we have it ought to be quiet, free from distractions and not so warm that we fall asleep nor so cold that we freeze. Having a ‘prayer corner’ can help. Such a ‘corner’ can be a spot with the bible or our missal, a crucifix or an icon, a candle but whatever is there it is a space where only our prayer things go. It is separate from the rest of the room and sacred. It helps us make the transition to a prayerful state of mind. Likewise a favourite spot in a church or a park can help us establish the habit of prayer, the practice of quietly listening to God.
3. Preparation. Too often we jump straight to prayer. Sometimes we are ready but more often we are not. We forget that we are fallen creatures easily distracted, easily caught up in the unnecessary like Martha rather than focused on the Lord like Mary. Have set prayers to prepare such as an invocation of the Holy Spirit. Take some moments to breath and focus on what you are about to do, whom you are about to address.
4. Content. Unlike the meditation of Eastern religions Christian prayer has content. We are spending time with the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity and the Court of Heaven. By baptism we have this extraordinary privilege of praying to the Father, through the Son in the Holy Spirit. Our prayer, even if it is only a phrase from the Gospel or a repeated prayer always has something to it. It is never simple attending to what is as in Zen meditation. It never seeks to be without thought or to lose awareness. We are in relationship with God, Three in One, and love draws us on deeper and deeper into that Mystery.
5. Perseverance. Never forget to end the prayer with an act of thanksgiving. Prayer is a gift from God. Remember too that every day is different. There are good ones and bad ones. There are days when we are sick, busy, distracted, worried or hurt. There are visitors, disturbances and unexpected alterations to our lives. Prayer that adapts and still keeps going is prayer that will last and have an effect. When we turn from prayer to do an urgent work of mercy or charity it becomes a powerful prayer in itself. Prayer that is genuine draws us closer to genuine love for God and charity toward our neighbour.
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