In today’s Gospel, Jesus teaches us something important about prayer. There are different ways to pray: you can pray out loud with words – vocal prayer – you can pray quietly in your heart but still with words: prayers of petition, asking God for help, for grace, etc. There is another kind of prayer that every Christian is invited to discover: prayer in the Spirit. Some people call it mental prayer, others call it contemplative prayer, but it is more deeply understood as the core of the Christian life. In today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “When you pray, go into your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret.” What is the inner room Jesus is talking about? What does He mean when He says, “close the door?” How do you pray to the Father? What does He mean by, “in secret?”
Tuesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time
An important way for us to walk in freedom is to remember the true nature of love. So long as we only think about love as a good or strong feeling, we are prisoners of love – not free to love. The stronger your feelings are, the more you pay attention to them, the more you allow your decisions and choices to be based upon how you feel – the less free you are to love truly. Feelings aren’t bad in and of themselves – most of them are connected to our instincts. However, feelings can put pressure on us to respond without thinking or in spite of what we may think. When you’re hungry and you love hamburgers, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll eat a hamburger if it is available. If you are prevented from eating a hamburger by someone, you might consider them to be an enemy.
Monday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time
“Do not receive the grace of God in vain.” This is a hard but necessary saying from Saint Paul. On the one hand, grace is given to us in abundance – there is no limit to God’s forgiveness, His mercy and His love. We will never get to the point where God gives up on us. Human beings might give up on us – family, friends, society, etc. – but God will never give up on us. On the other hand, God gives us grace for a specific purpose: to elicit our free and loving response. God does not give us a clean slate just so that we can feel better about ourselves.