Month: April 2024

Teach Us To Pray

Achieving Greatness 

Smitten With Goodness
Season of neediness in prayer

The Church celebrates St. Catherine of Siena this week and quotes from her writings are relevant to us today. Meredith Frediani shares her perspective on one of her popular quotes about achieving greatness.

“Nothing great is ever achieved without much enduring.”

We often tell our kids this. When they grouse about going to school or the amount of homework they get, we remind them we value that which we work for. St. Catherine knew this. All of us have endured. Not one of us has skated through life with constant joy and sunshine. It’s comforting to know that God is with us in our enduring. Whether it is slogging through a chemistry class or working a job we don’t like, he is a constant presence.

Sometimes it becomes demoralizing when challenges come up as we work toward our goals. It would be nice if it were easy all the time. But when I look back, I feel best about accomplishments that I worked at. I value that song I learned to play with several measures that seemed impossible and the project I undertook that seemed it might do me in. Living a life of witness to Christ is not easy but in the end it will lead to something great. 

Lord, let us draw upon Your strength to run the race of this life. Help us endure the challenges before us and see them as an opportunity for growth. Let our hearts know that You are always with us to carry the current cross we bear and let our eyes rest in Your loving gaze filling our hearts with Your hope. Amen 

Teach Us To Pray

Speak Truth

Smitten With Goodness
Season of neediness in prayer

The Church celebrates St. Catherine of Siena today and quotes from her writings are relevant to us today. Meredith Frediani shares her perspective on one of her popular quotes.

“Proclaim the truth and do not be silent through fear”

There is good reason to be afraid to speak of faith these days. It makes people uncomfortable to hear the truths proclaimed by the Catholic Church and more and more our society is uncomfortable with being uncomfortable. Since relativism and “you do you, I’ll do me” is the mantra of the day, it would be easy to keep silent. It would be safe. But Jesus didn’t ask us to be quiet and hang out in the background. He asked us to make disciples and to do that, we need to talk. 

There is a quote, wrongly attributed to St. Francis, to preach the gospel always and if necessary use words. My first response to this was, “Yes! I can just try to live a good life. I do not need to say anything. Actions speak louder than words after all.”  Except … that’s not what Jesus did. Jesus used lots of words; sometimes the same ones over and over. And it‘s a safe bet that I am not living so holy a life that my actions are enough. St. Francis was a holy man whose actions reflected the Lord’s love but he didn’t shy away from speaking about the gospel. 

So I need to speak and I often do not know what to say, but I know that I will be given the words. When we ask, God gives us what we need to build his kingdom. We can speak in love, with a humble heart and be confident that the Holy Spirit will arrive like the cavalry to our aid. I will not let fear stop me.

Lord, Help me speak Your truth allowing me to help build up Your kingdom. Amen

Teach Us To Pray

Set the World on Fire

Smitten With Goodness
Season of neediness in prayer

We all need great role models. The Saints provide us with holy examples of how we can live today.  St. Catherine of Siena was born in 1347 in Italy. She became a third order Dominican, learned to read and write, and was known for her service to the poor and her involvement in politics. She worked for the unity of the Church and was loyal to the pope. She died April 29, 1380 at the age of thirty-three and was later proclaimed a Doctor of the Church. Her best known spiritual writing is The Dialogue. Her quotes, though over six hundred years old, are still relevant today and can be a launching pad for our personal prayer. The Church celebrates her this week, we will explore several quotes from St. Catherine of Siena by Meredith Frediani and we will start with one of my favorites. 

“Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.”

We all have to discern our path in life. For some it is easier than others. When I see what others get to do in order to be part of building God’s kingdom and compare it to my task, I feel like maybe what I am doing does not matter. I have not published a bestseller that inspires people to pray, and I am not on the speaking circuit revving up young adults. I am here, doing my thing. I have faith that it is what God desires from me and for that reason alone it is important. St. Catherine reminds me that even though it may seem insignificant, it is helping set the world on fire for God. 

Lord, Help me today to be who you created me to be so I can set the world on fire with Your love. Amen

Teach Us To Pray

Prayer to Love, Myself

Smitten With Goodness
Season of neediness in prayer

We can’t give what we do not have.  To grow in love is to open ourselves to God, the all-consuming Ocean of Love, and allow him to heal us and bring us into relationship with him through the sacraments, through the teachings of the Church and through prayer.  Each of us has been given unique gifts and abilities that God wants us to share with others and yet we are loved not for what we do, but for who we are in Christ. We are the beloved of God! 

Lord, teach me to love myself.

You gave me this life. You blessed me with this temperament.

You formed me, and I am loved by you unconditionally.

In my eyes, I have many faults.

I am constantly beating myself up about something.

I question the purchase I made, the work I’ve chosen, the clothes I wear.

Lord, help me to rise above myself, doubt.

In reality, your love is all that matters, and you love me as I am.

Bless me with the gift of loving myself as you love me… as I am.

From Talking to God, Julie Dortch Cragon

Teach Us To Pray

Singing Goodness 

Smitten With Goodness
Season of neediness in prayer

Do you take risks with your goodness and test its limits? Don’t just love, astonish people!

We all need to hear the Good News of God’s goodness.  There are visible ways the Good News comes alive. To proclaim isn’t just to speak, it’s speaking in ways people can hear in their own lives and hearts. It replaces fear and sin with joy and redemption. It heals those who suffer. Rich with actions on behalf of all who need help, this news is good indeed! This is singing the goodness of the Lord! 

Holy God,

Give us courage and wisdom to proclaim your good news with our words and actions through Christ our Lord. Amen

Teach Us To Pray

Prayer for Guidance 

Smitten With Goodness
Season of neediness in prayer

We all need words at times to encourage us and to help guide us. May this prayer help us be grounded in God’s love. 

God of love – I feel like I am lost but your word says that you will always guide me. You do not leave me wandering through life but you are with me during every moment of every day. Help me to follow your ways when I feel weary and frustrated and help me to experience joy in life. May I be like the well-watered garden which thrives because the roots are firmly planted in your love.  Amen

Teach Us To Pray

Living the Mystery

Smitten With Goodness
Season of neediness in prayer

Do you believe the deepest mystery of the gospel… That God’s grace elevates us to share in his own divine life?

As we live in the Easter season, let’s reflect on why God became man in Jesus Christ. To reconcile us with God; so that we might know God’s love; to be our model of; and to make users of the divine nature.

Christ atoned for all sin and by this action, we are raised up to become adopted children of God, to share in his very nature. Christ united himself to our humanity so that we might share in his divinity. 

Today I pray….

May your journey toward the cross and encounter with the empty grave slow you down and reawaken you to God’s mercy and redemptive power.

May you take time to behold glory at work in each co-worker, loved one and stranger; may you find your faith renewed in the beholding.

May you pause long enough to be awed by creation that you cannot help but lose yourself to a higher perspective.

May you allow eternal love to draw you into the divine inhale and exhale where your whole soul may flourish.

And may you find your place with all the saints proclaiming an unending “Alleluia” until all people on the earth know healing and wholeness through the hope of the Resurrection.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen

Teach Us To Pray

Need for Justice

Smitten With Goodness
Season of neediness in prayer

In the eastertide,  we need to reflect on the meaning of justice.  Not as the world defines it but as God does.  It’s the difference between an “eye for an eye” or turning the other cheek.  If we want peace we must work for justice. The Gospel calls us to be peacemakers, where we give every person his or her due.  How about a world where we listen to what breaks our heart and we shines Christ’s light in the darkness.  

Broken bread

God, whom we meet in bread and wine,
in body broken and blood outpoured,
fill us with your compassion,
that we may hear the cries of the hungry
and reach out to those in need.
Engender in us a thirst for justice,
that the hungry will be satisfied
and the rich sent empty away.
Roll away our apathy
that, with arms outstretched,
we may offer life in place of death
and hope in the face of despair.

Amen.

Prayer by Annabel Shilson-Thomas/CAFOD

Teach Us To Pray

Recreate the World

Smitten With Goodness
Season of neediness in prayer

In this Easter Season and in the joy of the Resurrection, let’s live as Easter people helping do God’s work of renewing the face of the earth in love, mercy and compassion. 

Creator God,
Because of your abundant love
you chose to bring light and order into the formless void,
to create a world of unsurpassed beauty
and you saw that it was good.
We ask that you continue to recreate the world
with that same attentive love,
to bring light into today’s ever increasing chaos and darkness
where we have failed to be stewards and carers of your creation.
Replenish our hearts
so that we too can renew the face of the earth.

Amen.

Prayer by Kieran O’Brien/CAFOD

Teach Us To Pray

Loved Beyond Measure 

Smitten With Goodness

Taking refuge in the Lord, the Good Shepherd, requires us to face our own powerlessness, our limitations, and our need to follow someone if we want to experience true fulfillment in our life. Unlike literal sheep, we are aware of the risk that our Shepherd takes: a good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. With this understanding, we see what love the Father has bestowed on us! More than merely knowing the Shepherd’s voice, we know his name, the name that saves us. We agree to be sheep, God’s children, adopted, secure and loved beyond measure.

A Prayer to the Good Shepherd

Where are you pasturing your flock, O good Shepherd, who carry the whole flock on your shoulders? (For the whole of human nature is one sheep and you have lifted it onto your shoulders). Show me the place of peace, lead me to the good grass that will nourish me, call me by name so that I, your sheep, hear your voice, and by your speech give me eternal life. Answer me, you whom my soul loves.

I give you the name ‘you whom my soul loves’ because your name is above every name and above all understanding and there is no rational nature that can utter it or comprehend it. Therefore your name, by which your goodness is known, is simply the love my soul has for you. How could I not love you, when you loved me so much, even though I was black, that you laid down your life for the sheep of your flock? A greater love cannot be imagined, than exchanging your life for my salvation.

Show me then (my soul says) where you pasture your flock, so that I can find that saving pasture too, and fill myself with the food of heaven without which no-one can come to eternal life, and run to the spring and fill myself with the drink of God. You give it, as from a spring, to those who thirst – water pouring from your side cut open by the lance, water that, to whoever drinks it, is a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

If you lead me to pasture here, you will make me lie down at noon, sleeping at peace and taking my rest in light unstained by any shade. For the noon has no shade and the sun stands far above the mountain peaks. You bring your flock to lie in this light when you bring your children to rest with you in your bed. But no-one can be judged worthy of this noonday rest who is not a child of light and a child of the day. Whoever has separated himself equally from the shadows of evening and morning, from where evil begins and evil ends, at noon he will lie down and the sun of righteousness will shine on him.

Show me, then (my soul says), how I should sleep and how I should graze, and where the path is to my noonday rest. Do not let me fall away from your flock because of ignorance, and find myself one of a flock of sheep that are not yours.

Thus my soul spoke, when she was anxious about the beauty that God’s care had given her and wanted to know how she could keep this good fortune forever.

By St Gregory of Nyssa