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Saturday, December 27, 2008

Difficulties in Mental Prayer

I am reading a book (title above), and I was very impressed with a portion of the preface:
"When Our Savior rose from the dead, He had taken on Himself, and triumphed over, every possible obstacle, in our past, in our future, in ourselves, or in our surroundings, which might interfere with our holiness. The agony that broke His Sacred Heart in the garden was the thought that, after He had done and suffered so much--far more than was ever necessary--for our holiness, we should render His Blood useless by our cowardice and by our failure to believe in Him and to trust in Him. The greatest value that we can set on Christ's sufferings is to believe that they can make holy even such as we are."
Wow, I have read this over so many times and I never get tired of it! I think sometimes I give up on myself becoming holy because it is too difficult. This quote helped me realize how painful that mentality is for Jesus. He has done so much, far more than necessary, for my holiness. I need to trust more in Him. He knows my failings and the areas I need to improve and he can help!

Right now I am on chapter 4. This chapter encourages spiritual reading and even goes so far to say that "to reduce the time for spiritual reading, without due cause, to less than three hours in the week, is to starve the soul, and will bring about the consequences of such starvation."

My soul has been starving, I really need to read more. I have already experienced fruit from reading this current book. Andrew and I just prayed the Rosary and my thoughts drifted to the bold quote above while meditating on the Agony in the Garden. Reading a spiritual book helps to give us something to pray about and focus on during prayer (instead of thinking about dinner, how tired you are, or other random items... as I often do!).

=)

May you all have a Merry Christmas season! Peace to you all!

3 comments:

  1. I think a book you would REALLY love is A Gift of Faith...just started (ok, started several weeks ago, but with two little ones I BARELY get reading time....miss it a lot!) but it is AMAZING. Will have to note this one as well!

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  2. I really like that quote about spiritual reading. It kind of reminds us to get a spiritual booster shot, something I think everyone needs on a regular basis.

    Great post!

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  3. Lindsey -
    Thanks for the cake advice! I don't like cake - and Cake is Joe's favorite.... thankfully we are already having a dessert bar with the food selection we picked, which means we need a smaller cake - I am happy about that! This is one area my mom won at - she insisted on a cake that was able to sit out on a cake table to look pretty and take pictures by. i caved in and said fine ;-) We went cake tasting over Christmas break when Joe and I were home and found some we BOTH liked ;-) I LOVE your dessert selection idea. I am all about trying to have variety so everyone can like at least something.

    Your wedding pictures were beautiful - so beautiful we are having casey do ours!

    what did you do for table decorations?

    How are you and the baby and hubby?

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