1. Praying Our Experiences Lasallian Volunteer Orientation August 28, 2009

2. Prayer = raising whats on our minds and in our hearts to God 3. Thomas Merton on Prayer: In prayer we come to know ourselves as we are in the hands of God 4. Model:Mary pondered these things in her heart.. 5.

Assumptions:

• God is already in our life

• We are in God; in God we live & move & have our being

• Gods word comes to us

• • -Scripture

• • -Jesus

• • -Creation (our own history)

6. We pray our experiences when weuse the content of our livedexistence as the content of ourprayer 7. Praying our experiences means being opento seeing ourselves as we are & toseeing our personal history as itis known to the Lord 8.

Distinction:

• Knowing / knowing about

• Praying / praying about

We pray our experiences/history not in order to change but to DISCOVER; to REVISIT our experiences.

9.

Fact vs. Issue (in my life, pushes my buttons)

• baggage

• emotional content (out of proportion)

• its in the way

Necessary:stabilize the emotional content / revisit the issue so that it becomes a fact.

10.

Types of questions when dealing with issues:

• What question = fact

• Why question = motive, judgmental,negative, condemnation

ASK:What questions, not Why(we oftendont know why)

11. God is facilitating this process of discovery within us;half of our struggle is denial. 12. God is facilitating this process of discovery within us;half of our struggle is denial. 13. The goal of the spiritual life is not achieving virtue, as traditionally presented.It is, rather, the Discovery Dialogue Doing, the true work of our salvation. 14. The aim of prayer is to come to knowGod through the realization that ourvery being is penetrated withGods knowledge & love for us - Thomas Merton 15. To touch the hearts of your students is the greatest miracle you can perform & one which God expects of you - De La Salle 16. You must constantly represent the needs ofyour students to Jesus Christ, explaining to him the difficulties you experience in guiding them. - De La Salle 17. Examine before God how you are acting in your ministry & whether you are failing in any of your responsibilities. Come to know yourself just as you are.Find fault withyourself accurately, unsparingly..- De La Salle 18. The spiritual life is not passive;it is very active 19. Pray the way you can, not the way you cant(be open to other possibilities) 20. How do the saints report back that they spend their time in prayer? 21.

• Saints report back

• 1.Reflective prayer (intellect), meditation the thinkers

Focus:i)Sacred Scripture;ii)Life

• • St. Ignatius:contemplation = thinking & imagining

• • St. Theresa:going inside our interior castle

• • St. Benedict:lexio divino

22. Saints report back 2.Affective prayer (will) the heart people - Comes out of longing (willingness) of the heart -The Jesus Prayer -Mantras -The Rosary (touch = incarnational) 23. Saints report back.. Saints report back.. 3.Contemplative prayer -To be present to God & ourselves as we are -Centering prayer -De La Salles simple attention 24. Mother Theresa was afflicted with feelings of abandonment by God from the very start of her work among the homeless children & dying persons in Calcuttas slums.From all available evidence, this experience persisted until her death five decades later, except for a brief interlude in 1958. 25.

From Mother Theresa..

• I am told God lives in me and yet the

• reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is

• so great that nothing touches my soul.

26.

From Mother Theresa..

• I want God with all the power of my soul and yet

• between us there is terrible separation..

• Heaven from every side is closed.

27.

From Mother Theresa..

• I feel just that terrible pain of loss, of God not

• wanting me, of God not being God,

• of God not really existing.

28. In our brokenness we come to know Gods acceptance & love 29. Pray the way you can, not the way you cant(be open to other possibilities) 30.