Good morning, Digital Neighbors!
One week into Lent and I hope it is going well. While Lent puts a magnifying glass on the practices of discipleship; prayer fasting and almsgiving are lifelong practices. Lent is more intense and intentional. For the beginning of Lent I strive to focus more upon prayer since it tends to be the least concrete of the spiritual practices that invite maturity in Christ. It is not necessarily the most difficult of our spiritual practices, but it the most easily forgotten, interrupted, and unintentionally lost. Most Christians want to be people of greater and deeper prayer. We want to create a hunger for Christ and a desire to be more mindful of God and more personal with God.
Fasting is very concrete; it is telling ourselves NO to the good things we desire for the greater things less apparent. Almsgiving works in a similar manner; I use less of my personal material wealth to cultivate bonds of compassion and generosity with my neighbor. Both practices are obvious, and often very difficult. Prayer is more subtle. It begins easily enough with saying various prayers, in understanding them and in doing them. As Catholic at an early age we learn our memorized prayers. I am guessing our Protestant brothers & sisters learn various Bibe verses that become the foundation of their prayer. I will talk about the pros & cons of memorized prayers somewhere down the line in Lent. Personal and spontaneous prayer is not without its challenges and pitfalls as well. All Christians share the Our Father as a commonly held prayer. Other prayers from Catholicism have filtered their way into other Christian communities. Memorized or spontaneous, reaching out to the Divine is good. Sitting in stillness to mull over a prayer or passage of Scripture is good way to let God speak to use in His humble and subtle ways.
One of the prayer habits I knew my parents practiced was the Morning Offering. Make the first moment of the day oriented toward God. Dedicate the next 16 or 18 hours ahead of you to Him. Pray to have a greater awareness of His hidden movement, His subtle brushes with you as the day goes by, to be more intent on noticing the gentle knocking at the door of your heart. The day ahead of you might be one filled with hope, or one filled with dread. You may face the day filled with enthusiasm or struggle to reach the end in hopes that the next night will bring rest or the next day a change for the better. Recognized or not, God is with us. He is the hidden participant and witness to our days. The Oneness of God or His Trinitarian Mystery is present at every moment. Below the fold for you Supporters are a few Morning Offerings to begin your day.
