I had the hardest time learning how to pray. My idea of praying was telling God what I wanted and counting on Him saying yes to what I was asking. Oh boy did I have things backwards!! I was able to strengthen my prayer life by asking the Holy Spirit to help me. I started going to Adoration once a week for an hour. For the first few months the hour went by in slow motion. I couldn't understand how people could sit in the quiet for so long. It was then I realized how much noise is in my life. I woke up to a blaring alarm, turned on music while I took a shower, got into the car and immediately the radio music turned on, went to work and talked all day long, and got home and ate dinner while watching TV. It was so routine to have all the noise of things block out anytime God wanted to talk to me. I decided to switch up my routine because I wanted to have more than one hour of silence a week.
I started waking up and would have my first cup of coffee and slowly dedicate 5 minutes a day in the morning to silent prayer. I would talk and He would listen. I then increased my silent time with God until I reached 15 minutes first thing in the morning (after the caffeine hit). It finally got to the point where an hour in Eucharistic Adoration would fly by. I started to think an hour a week wasn't enough to go see Christ waiting for me at the chapel. I learned by talking and telling Him what I wanted, I wasn't leaving anytime for him to talk to me! Think about you and your friend going for a cup of coffee. You haven't seen each other for a year and are catching up. Well if you talked the whole time you catching up you wouldn't know anything new about your friend. They would know a lot about you but you wouldn't know what is new in their life or what their advice would be in situations you are struggling with. Like Christ it is a two way conversation. If you talk the whole time He won't have a chance to help you in the right direction. I recommend everyone sign up for an hour to sit with Jesus in the Adoration chapel. Some churches have perpetual adoration (around the clock) or a certain day per week where Christ is exposed in the monstrance. If your church doesn't have Adoration, He will still be present in the tabernacle! This is usually my routine when going to Adoration but it may not work for you:
1. Talk to Him about my week, worries, fears, successes, joy, etc. Ask for prayers for family and friends, etc...
2. Stay in silence for a few minutes and listen to Him.
3. Say the Holy Rosary.
4. Mediate on Christ's life and how it will help in mine. Silently listen to Him and his advice for me.
5. Read a spiritual book. There is this saying that we pray to speak to God and we read for God to speak to us.
"The greatest love story of all time is contained in a tiny white host."- Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Thank you for reading and I hope it helps you seek out a chapel for Eucharistic Adoration. As always if you have any suggestions please feel free to email me!
Ad Jesu Per Mariam,
Chris
christopheragarn@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment