Ruminations of an Irascible Hermit.: Prayer is life

Saturday, June 4, 2022

Prayer is life

For many of us, prayer is a retreat - a solace from the struggles and harshness of everyday life. While there is nothing wrong with this, we are also called to go deeper. If our prayer remains at this level, it will remain superficial and we will struggle to ever enter into intimacy with God. But once prayer becomes our life - then everything changes! We understand and experience God with us always, in the joys and the sorrows. We can continually commune with the indwelling Trinity anywhere at anytime. This understanding of the Divine Indwelling is the beauty of the Carmelite Spiritual Tradition, it is what we call “Practicing the Presence of God”.

God deserves more and desires to be with us more than just during a few vocal prayers in the morning when we wake up or before going to bed. There is nothing wrong with this and it’s a fantastic start. But prayer needs to become our life, as the Catechism #2697 says quoting St Gregory Naxianzus “We must remember God more often than we draw breath“

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Disclaimer

Please note. I am a Catholic layman, not a qualified theologian or philosopher. What I say and write here are my own personal thoughts and ideas, although I always try to conform my writings to the Magisterium of the Church.

I- with firm faith believe and profess everything that is contained in the symbol of faith: namely,

I believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen. I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven: By the power of the Holy Spirit, he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered, died and was buried. On the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. I believe in the one holy catholic and apostolic church. I acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

With firm faith I believe as well everything contained in God's word, written or handed down in tradition and proposed by the church--whether in solemn judgment or in the ordinary and universal Magisterium--as divinely revealed and called for faith.

I also firmly accept and hold each and every thing that is proposed by that same church definitively with regard to teaching concerning faith or morals.

What is more, I adhere with religious submission of will and intellect to the teachings which either the Roman pontiff or the college of bishops enunciate when they exercise the authentic Magisterium even if they proclaim those teachings in an act that is not definitive.