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Terry Trombley's avatar

I find this post to be most compelling. When as a child of 3 or 4 and was first taught to pray, as often as possible I would go off and pray alone. I would ultimately, almost without exception, find myself in the magnificent and irresistible presence of God and in rapt attendance to Him. My child's mind and heart could not want to resist any opportunity to be with Him. I recall that, without a word passing between Us, I would express to God my own dispositions along with my inquiries which always seemed to be most graciously compelled by His while I received His of me as well in this same manner. At the time, I also tendered, out of obedience to my mentors, the simple prayers which were mostly those of the Rosary that I had only recently learned from them. I found pretty much all of these to be less than compelling expressions of my increasingly relentless desire to please God in a manner I perceived would actually get a rise out of Him, and these really did not at the time. Because of this, for Half of my life I ignorantly abandoned their use in my prayer except in liturgical expressions of worship.

At midlife, after a life of much greater conflict and strife than I would care to relive here, these learned prayers began to filter back and be recalled to me in my contemplation of God, one prayer by one, and one phrase before another. The first words I became assured were presented to me by God for my deliberation were simply "our Father". That was it. Suddenly, I was compelled by them as never before. Rather than a deliberation of mere words or concepts, consideration of these two words became what I can only describe as a relentless immersion in the dispositions of God; truly a capturing of my heart and soul by my true Father that on the basis of these alone continued for weeks. Later subsequent phrases that are included in the "Our Father" followed, one by one to the end over the next months, and for years by the phrases of other prayers from the Rosary. When the plea, "Do not lead us into temptation" was proposed to be removed from the Our Father, I was incensed and repulsed and greatly offended in my spirit because I had become aware of precisely why these words had long ago been included.

Today, I admit that tendering one decade of the Rosary in prayer may take me an entire night or so when expressed in contemplation of the dispositions of our Father, our Savior, Beloved Holy Spirit, and our Mother. I cannot bring myself to conclude that my incomplete recitation of the Rosary, which I regret occurs more often than not now, offends our Triune God or our Mother more than excluding these expressions from my prayer altogether as I once did. Largely because of this, since then I have a new expectation of every expression of prayer we may choose to tender to God. Within every expression of our prayer, our magnificent Benefactor beckons our entry into His blessed Heart, uniting in a perfectly mutual union, His with ours. Now. instead of my prayer arising out of my humanity as it once did, it now rises from participation in the nature of God and my destiny of Sainthood, as was obviously the case with St. Theresa. As a true Son of God, I can approach the throne of our Father in prayer attendant only to Him fully resident in Heaven while yet here on earth.

This in essence is the choice that our God offers every single one of us here on earth. We can strive in futility attempting to drag the life of earth to Heaven for its sanctification which is always a scrupulous exercise conducted in the worst of pride or we can choose to bring the life of God that is resident as a result of our embodiment by God within our unique Sainthood. This is a surrender of the truly exquisite selflessness and a full participation in that of our Savior on our behalf. It is one that becomes as incessantly and consummately vulnerable as His is, and is likewise always, without question or explanation, perfectly at risk to the convictions, the needs, and desires of our Father. I would suggest making the choice of our convictions here very wisely, carefully, and above all, without our pitiful assumptions about the absolute need, before our entry into Heaven, of a very personal and intimate communion with our God.

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Kathleen's avatar

This touched my heart mightily!!!!!

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