Mark Dohle
Well-Known Member
We Are All Called to Prayer
The greater the feeling of responsibility
for the person, the more true love there is.-Pope John Paul 11
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When I pray and am sitting before the Lord, it is then that I can sense from time to time how rock-like my heart is. I can feel locked up or hiding behind some high barrier so that I cannot be seen. It is not something that I can control, it seems to be instinctive. Yet it does not have to have the final answer for me.
Perhaps I am like Adam and Eve in the garden, running away and hiding when they became aware that they were naked. They felt shame and did not have the trust necessary to approach God in truth and to ask for forgiveness, which would have been given. I believe that we place ourselves in the corners we feel trapped.
Yet I feel called to prayer, which is a grace, and an invitation from the Father. So I show up, and sometimes I can pray ‘well’, at other times my mind seems drunk and bouncing from one thing to another. Then there are moments when one thought grabs me and it can be challenging to let go of. The root of such events is often rooted in some fear that is so deep that I can’t often name it. Yet prayer does give us all an out.
The ‘Gideon-Knot’ is a good symbol for me for certain levels of my interior. Not everything can be figured out. I guess if the knot can be untied, it has to come from the inside. That is how grace works I believe. In secret, hidden, healing us from within, and often concealed from our conscious mind. More often than not, we sense healing when our relationships with others start to change for the better.
To pray is to step back and observe. When I am praying and feel scattered, or too focused on one thought, prayer helps me if I stay patient, and trusting, to resist worry about judging my ‘performance ‘ leading to growth in self-knowledge Which I Believe is necessary for a deep interior life.
Prayer as a discipline can be taxing and very difficult. Yet it is then that we learn to forget ourselves, and simply trust It is in trusting that we allow the light and love of God deeper into our hearts.
If we pray only when we feel like it, we will make little progress, it is when we struggle that we show our love for God, and this leads us to learn to love others in ways that increase our desire to help those we come in contact with and understand that we do in fact have a responsibility towards others. Perhaps in some small way towards everyone with whom we come in contact.-
No, we are not called to save others, only God can do that, but to listen, love, and help in ways that will enhance life.-Br.MD