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In its fullness, prayer is an encounter with God that transforms the way we see and interact with the world. As so many saints have suggested, it is like a bright light that reveals what we otherwise do not see.
If anyone needed proof that sin has screwed up our world on a massive scale, all we need to do is ask them look at the horrific and cruel injustices perpetuated upon nonhuman animals. But as Christians we know that Jesus has redeemed human beings and all of creation. This redemption has already happened, but it has not been fully implemented. More work remains. In giving human beings dominion over creation, God has charged each of us with protecting its many creatures—both human and nonhuman. How will we respond?
Christopher Heffron reviews True Conviction and Pope: The Most Powerful Man in History.
The Heart of Nuba
Dr. Tom Catena grew up in a Catholic family in Amsterdam, New York, played football for Brown University, earned a degree in engineering, and then decided he wanted to help people. After becoming a physician and serving in the military, he left for Africa to become a medical missionary.
It is Christ in us who drives us through darkness to a light of which we have no conception and which can only be found by passing through apparent despair. Everything has to be tested. All relationships have to be tried. All loyalties have to pass through fire. Much has to be lost. Much in us has to be killed, even much that is best in us. But victory is certain. The Resurrection is the only light and with that light there is no error.
In prayer we discover what we already have. You start where you are and you deepen what you already have, and you realize that you are already there. We already have everything, but we don’t know it and we don’t experience it. Everything has been given to us in Christ. All we need is to experience what we already possess.
— from The Art of Thomas Merton: A Divine Passion in Word and Vision
Were it not for grandparents soothing and solving a child’s troubles, I suspect counselors would have more business. Grandparents have experience. They have life wisdom. Perhaps above all, they aren’t Mom or Dad. Most grandparents don’t have to do the everyday disciplining of a parent. They don’t have nearly the disciplinary friction with a child, especially a teen. Thus, they may be seen as safer, more understanding. Interesting, isn’t it? As we get older, the kids think we think more like them. And that only fortifies the bonds between us.
As John Paul II explained, the repeated prayers in the rosary help us get more in touch with the deepest desires in our souls for God.
The life of contemplation is a life of great simplicity and inner liberty. One is not seeking anything special or demanding any particular satisfaction. One is content with what is. One is not worried about the results of what is done. One is content to have good motives and not too anxious about making mistakes. In this way one can swim with the living stream of life and remain at every moment in contact with God, in the hiddenness and ordinariness of the present moment with its obvious task.
With a life in Jesus as our foundation, God’s call to us and our ultimate purpose in life tend to look very different. Thinking less about the decisions themselves and more about the life those decisions effect, we realize that what matters most to God is ultimately not what we choose but the amount of love that those decisions create in our lives; where we go to school, what we do for a living, and our familial life matters to God only to the extent that what we choose enables us to live as Christ-like as we can.
