One Minute
Καλή Χρονιά, Δ.Α.! Wishing you a happy and healthy new year.
How do you usually start your day?
What is the first thing you do in the morning?
Those were the first few questions that Mgr. Christian Lépine, archbishop of Montreal, started with during his homily today. I thought it was a very interesting homily (like most of Mgr. Lépine talks) that I wanted to put whatever (I remembered) into text to remember it in the future.
Today that we are starting a new year, I was expecting a different kind of intro for the homily. I thought: 'Maybe we could be talking about something a bit more important?' But then again, thinking about the first thing we do when we wake up is an important question. And that's where Mgr. Lépine's focus was: The importance of what that first thing we do when we wake up must be... To pray. The first thing.
For those of you that might be reading these lines and who already do it: Continue to do it. For those of us that still don't do it: Let's start. For those of us that do it from time to time: Let's do it all the time.
There can be many reasons why we could say "I can't do that." There can be many reasons why not to do it... even if we could do it. One of the reasons I've heard quite often (and I have also used it quite frequently) is "I don't have the time. I have to many things to do." They are reasons that have themselves reasons to exist. One of the first ones is that, in fact, we are quite busy. It's true (specially in our culturally accelerated times). However, the second reason for which this reaction comes to our hearts, is because of this resistance to God that inhabits us (we Christians call it sin).
When the only thing that comes to my heart is "I have no time, I have no time." Whenever I get to that point, it is usually not because I don't have time. It is because of my tendency towards evil (again, sin) that acts upon me. Again, one may say "I'm really busy. I don't have the time. I don't even eat!" But can one really be constantly in that state? In my humble opinion, not really, or at least not for very long. After 3 days that person will start to eat again. Some other might say because of stress "I don't have the time. I hardly sleep anymore!" Again, can one really do that for an extended period of time? Maybe for a day or two.
I cannot say "I don't have the time to pray." When our body is well, we can see that; we don't wait for our bodies to deteriorate to start eating or sleeping. While that is true for our bodies, it is equally true for something else that we are. We are spiritual beings. We have our souls. And our soul can weaken, without us realizing, really quickly. The flame of love can also extinguish itself without realizing. And yes, we can stop to pray or neglect prayer and without realizing, we will start noticing how this takes something away from us. We will start to notice how this takes away the strength to live, the strength to love. How this takes away our reasons to live and to love. How this affects us. We can stop to pray and not realize how this affect us. How this makes us feeble. (I can certainly identify with the beginning of my previous post)
When talking about the question of time and the resolution that Mgr. invited us to take, he gave us a interesting tidbit that many fathers of the Church have also pointed out through out the ages: Take one (1) minute to pray. One (1) minute. Every day. Take one (1) minute. (If someone says "I don't have the time," we can understand that it is maybe something else.) He jokingly said that taking this approach is similar to when one goes visit family and friends and says "I'll just take 5 minutes," only to stay over an hour with them! (In all honesty, it's never really is just 5 minutes). In the same way, taking the time to pray, it might not just be just one (1) minute but the idea is to start somewhere.
What is difficult in prayer, Mgr. said, is to put yourself in God's presence. That's the hard part. Not really finding time to do it. He then mentioned something that I could relate completely. He said that many people don't realize this, but in a Monastery, where they have a structured schedule for people to pray, it's even harder to pray. Did you know that? And do you know why is that? Because we are confronted against our reality that we lean towards evil (sinners in nature), that we have inside ourselves a force that opposes God. It is in those moments where we cannot say "I don't have the time," that we necessarily need to confront this reality: That we tend to do things that are not what God wants. That we have a tendency to refuse God (which is increased by the influence of our world) and which takes us away from prayer. It is really an internal struggle.
To start our day with prayer is like opening the window so that the rays of the sun can enter and illuminate our room. In the same way, we let God light enter our hearts. And we don't just let Him in for the one (1) minute that we pray. Nope. The window is open and it will continue to illuminate our day throughout the day. Like the rays of the sun light up our whole room while we keep our windows open, the light of God will shine upon all of our day.
Sometimes we can even go and say "I don't know how to pray. How can I pray? What can I do to pray?" It's ok. It's a valid question. I remember a singer used to say that a prayer is neither short nor long, it is sincere. So, like Mgr. Lépine mentioned earlier, the idea is to start. The idea is not to know how to pray, but to start to pray. It's like with babies. Babies don't need to know how to walk before they start walking (imagine a baby getting college level physics to understand how to walk! ha!). They first start to walk and only later they then understand how to walk. By that same token, we cannot be deceived by the idea that we first need to learn how to pray before we start to pray. We'll never reach anywhere like that (like a baby that needs to learn the physics of walking before walking. Kinda a weird image to put! ha!). Sure, we can have help from others that can help us pray (like parents giving a little push to their baby so that they can walk). But we need to take that first step.
Pray. Take the first step. Even if you are not sure, go forward and onward.
Mgr. Lépine also mentioned something very important during his homily about prayer: Read the Bible. The Bible is a good company to pray. Open the Bible, read the Bible. But then another question arises! "What do I read from the Bible?" It doesn't matter. Just open the Bible wherever, he said (though I'd probably take the New Testament or the Psalms, but that's just me). Open the Bible because it is the word of God. And the word of God will speak to you there, in your concrete circumstance of your life. It is the word of encouragement that God has for you, to pray. God makes use of the Bible so that we can pray to Him. God makes use of the Bible to touch our hearts, to heal our hearts, to guide our hearts. That is the reason why Mgr. Lépine invited us to open the Bible to read a line, a sentence, a paragraph. Not more. To choose anything and start to read. To experience this every day. Not whenever we have the time. We know that we never have the time to pray. Never. We make time to pray.
Open the Bible. Start. Dive into it.
One of the last things Mgr. Lépine mentioned during his homily was to ask. Ask God for the things we need. God loves it when we ask Him. It's a bit counter intuitive if you think about it. We'd normally think that God would get tired to listen our constant demands/requests. But He loves it when we ask Him for things. Ask Him for yourself, ask Him for your loved one(s), ask Him for the Church, ask Him for the world, ask Him for the things that will put your heart at peace, etc. He will certainly listen to you and pour an immense amount of grace on you. So ask! Ask God. Ask God to give you peace, ask God to guide you in your personal life. Ask Him to give peace to your heart. Ask Him to guide you in a path of peace.
Ask.
Open the Bible. Read a verse. Ask. And then, say "Thank you."
Thank you, Lord, for your presence in my life. Even if I am the worst scum of the Earth (which I am). You are still with me. Thank you for your Merciful love that wants to take me to you. Thank you, Lord, because you always reply when I call out to you. You always answer my prayer, my constant asking, my constant demands. One may say "Oh, no! I ask for many things, but God never seems to listen to me! I dunno!" I can (with conviction) tell you: God has always replied your prayers. Sometimes we may not see it; sometimes, whenever He replies, it might not be by giving us what we want. But the grace is there! It is never lost! (It's like when a kid asks his parents to get him a 500 USD Lego set. In occasions, kids usually don't ask things that are good for them -or the parent's wallet for that matter-. The parents might not give him that thing which the kid asks for, but they might as well give the kid what he really needs.) Parents always reply to their kid's needs. God always reply to our needs. Always. In life, we might see the fruits of our prayers if God allows us to see them. I think that, probably in Heaven we will see how God answered our prayers. If we could see everything, we would already be in Heaven.
Throughout this new year, let us start our day with prayer, read the bible, ask God for the things we need, and say Thank you. It will transform our lives. It will transform us because it will open our hearts to God's work. But it will not only transform our hearts but it will also transform our environment because God not only works in us but through us. Maybe, if we all start our day with a prayer, we could be that change we want to see in the world, and change the face of the earth. There will be moments where this will be easy. There will be moments where we will enjoy to do this. And maybe there will be moments where it will really be easy to even pray one (1) hour... But let's start with just one (1) minute every day, not more, specially if it's not part of your daily routine. One (1) minute every day will transform our life. If we start all of a sudden to pray for one (1) hour, after one (1) month later we will stop to pray. One (1) minute every day. It will transform our life. It will transform our community. It will transform our world. It is because thousands of people have prayed throughout the centuries that our world was able to transform. Putting Christ in the center of their lives. Even if you don't believe in Christ as God, you cannot deny that He transformed the history of our world. We can also help to be the change we want to see in the world by putting Christ in the center of our lives and of our prayers.
Δ, the things I lived in 2017 will forever define my person, the same way you once did (and still are). I will continue to pray for you and to ask our Lord for your happiness and the happiness of those who have gone in and out of my life (living and not). The memories of all of you will continue to push me forward to better, loving, man.
How do you usually start your day?
What is the first thing you do in the morning?
Those were the first few questions that Mgr. Christian Lépine, archbishop of Montreal, started with during his homily today. I thought it was a very interesting homily (like most of Mgr. Lépine talks) that I wanted to put whatever (I remembered) into text to remember it in the future.
Today that we are starting a new year, I was expecting a different kind of intro for the homily. I thought: 'Maybe we could be talking about something a bit more important?' But then again, thinking about the first thing we do when we wake up is an important question. And that's where Mgr. Lépine's focus was: The importance of what that first thing we do when we wake up must be... To pray. The first thing.
For those of you that might be reading these lines and who already do it: Continue to do it. For those of us that still don't do it: Let's start. For those of us that do it from time to time: Let's do it all the time.
There can be many reasons why we could say "I can't do that." There can be many reasons why not to do it... even if we could do it. One of the reasons I've heard quite often (and I have also used it quite frequently) is "I don't have the time. I have to many things to do." They are reasons that have themselves reasons to exist. One of the first ones is that, in fact, we are quite busy. It's true (specially in our culturally accelerated times). However, the second reason for which this reaction comes to our hearts, is because of this resistance to God that inhabits us (we Christians call it sin).
When the only thing that comes to my heart is "I have no time, I have no time." Whenever I get to that point, it is usually not because I don't have time. It is because of my tendency towards evil (again, sin) that acts upon me. Again, one may say "I'm really busy. I don't have the time. I don't even eat!" But can one really be constantly in that state? In my humble opinion, not really, or at least not for very long. After 3 days that person will start to eat again. Some other might say because of stress "I don't have the time. I hardly sleep anymore!" Again, can one really do that for an extended period of time? Maybe for a day or two.
I cannot say "I don't have the time to pray." When our body is well, we can see that; we don't wait for our bodies to deteriorate to start eating or sleeping. While that is true for our bodies, it is equally true for something else that we are. We are spiritual beings. We have our souls. And our soul can weaken, without us realizing, really quickly. The flame of love can also extinguish itself without realizing. And yes, we can stop to pray or neglect prayer and without realizing, we will start noticing how this takes something away from us. We will start to notice how this takes away the strength to live, the strength to love. How this takes away our reasons to live and to love. How this affects us. We can stop to pray and not realize how this affect us. How this makes us feeble. (I can certainly identify with the beginning of my previous post)
When talking about the question of time and the resolution that Mgr. invited us to take, he gave us a interesting tidbit that many fathers of the Church have also pointed out through out the ages: Take one (1) minute to pray. One (1) minute. Every day. Take one (1) minute. (If someone says "I don't have the time," we can understand that it is maybe something else.) He jokingly said that taking this approach is similar to when one goes visit family and friends and says "I'll just take 5 minutes," only to stay over an hour with them! (In all honesty, it's never really is just 5 minutes). In the same way, taking the time to pray, it might not just be just one (1) minute but the idea is to start somewhere.
What is difficult in prayer, Mgr. said, is to put yourself in God's presence. That's the hard part. Not really finding time to do it. He then mentioned something that I could relate completely. He said that many people don't realize this, but in a Monastery, where they have a structured schedule for people to pray, it's even harder to pray. Did you know that? And do you know why is that? Because we are confronted against our reality that we lean towards evil (sinners in nature), that we have inside ourselves a force that opposes God. It is in those moments where we cannot say "I don't have the time," that we necessarily need to confront this reality: That we tend to do things that are not what God wants. That we have a tendency to refuse God (which is increased by the influence of our world) and which takes us away from prayer. It is really an internal struggle.
To start our day with prayer is like opening the window so that the rays of the sun can enter and illuminate our room. In the same way, we let God light enter our hearts. And we don't just let Him in for the one (1) minute that we pray. Nope. The window is open and it will continue to illuminate our day throughout the day. Like the rays of the sun light up our whole room while we keep our windows open, the light of God will shine upon all of our day.
Sometimes we can even go and say "I don't know how to pray. How can I pray? What can I do to pray?" It's ok. It's a valid question. I remember a singer used to say that a prayer is neither short nor long, it is sincere. So, like Mgr. Lépine mentioned earlier, the idea is to start. The idea is not to know how to pray, but to start to pray. It's like with babies. Babies don't need to know how to walk before they start walking (imagine a baby getting college level physics to understand how to walk! ha!). They first start to walk and only later they then understand how to walk. By that same token, we cannot be deceived by the idea that we first need to learn how to pray before we start to pray. We'll never reach anywhere like that (like a baby that needs to learn the physics of walking before walking. Kinda a weird image to put! ha!). Sure, we can have help from others that can help us pray (like parents giving a little push to their baby so that they can walk). But we need to take that first step.
Pray. Take the first step. Even if you are not sure, go forward and onward.
Mgr. Lépine also mentioned something very important during his homily about prayer: Read the Bible. The Bible is a good company to pray. Open the Bible, read the Bible. But then another question arises! "What do I read from the Bible?" It doesn't matter. Just open the Bible wherever, he said (though I'd probably take the New Testament or the Psalms, but that's just me). Open the Bible because it is the word of God. And the word of God will speak to you there, in your concrete circumstance of your life. It is the word of encouragement that God has for you, to pray. God makes use of the Bible so that we can pray to Him. God makes use of the Bible to touch our hearts, to heal our hearts, to guide our hearts. That is the reason why Mgr. Lépine invited us to open the Bible to read a line, a sentence, a paragraph. Not more. To choose anything and start to read. To experience this every day. Not whenever we have the time. We know that we never have the time to pray. Never. We make time to pray.
Open the Bible. Start. Dive into it.
One of the last things Mgr. Lépine mentioned during his homily was to ask. Ask God for the things we need. God loves it when we ask Him. It's a bit counter intuitive if you think about it. We'd normally think that God would get tired to listen our constant demands/requests. But He loves it when we ask Him for things. Ask Him for yourself, ask Him for your loved one(s), ask Him for the Church, ask Him for the world, ask Him for the things that will put your heart at peace, etc. He will certainly listen to you and pour an immense amount of grace on you. So ask! Ask God. Ask God to give you peace, ask God to guide you in your personal life. Ask Him to give peace to your heart. Ask Him to guide you in a path of peace.
Ask.
Open the Bible. Read a verse. Ask. And then, say "Thank you."
Thank you, Lord, for your presence in my life. Even if I am the worst scum of the Earth (which I am). You are still with me. Thank you for your Merciful love that wants to take me to you. Thank you, Lord, because you always reply when I call out to you. You always answer my prayer, my constant asking, my constant demands. One may say "Oh, no! I ask for many things, but God never seems to listen to me! I dunno!" I can (with conviction) tell you: God has always replied your prayers. Sometimes we may not see it; sometimes, whenever He replies, it might not be by giving us what we want. But the grace is there! It is never lost! (It's like when a kid asks his parents to get him a 500 USD Lego set. In occasions, kids usually don't ask things that are good for them -or the parent's wallet for that matter-. The parents might not give him that thing which the kid asks for, but they might as well give the kid what he really needs.) Parents always reply to their kid's needs. God always reply to our needs. Always. In life, we might see the fruits of our prayers if God allows us to see them. I think that, probably in Heaven we will see how God answered our prayers. If we could see everything, we would already be in Heaven.
Throughout this new year, let us start our day with prayer, read the bible, ask God for the things we need, and say Thank you. It will transform our lives. It will transform us because it will open our hearts to God's work. But it will not only transform our hearts but it will also transform our environment because God not only works in us but through us. Maybe, if we all start our day with a prayer, we could be that change we want to see in the world, and change the face of the earth. There will be moments where this will be easy. There will be moments where we will enjoy to do this. And maybe there will be moments where it will really be easy to even pray one (1) hour... But let's start with just one (1) minute every day, not more, specially if it's not part of your daily routine. One (1) minute every day will transform our life. If we start all of a sudden to pray for one (1) hour, after one (1) month later we will stop to pray. One (1) minute every day. It will transform our life. It will transform our community. It will transform our world. It is because thousands of people have prayed throughout the centuries that our world was able to transform. Putting Christ in the center of their lives. Even if you don't believe in Christ as God, you cannot deny that He transformed the history of our world. We can also help to be the change we want to see in the world by putting Christ in the center of our lives and of our prayers.
Δ, the things I lived in 2017 will forever define my person, the same way you once did (and still are). I will continue to pray for you and to ask our Lord for your happiness and the happiness of those who have gone in and out of my life (living and not). The memories of all of you will continue to push me forward to better, loving, man.
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