The way to succeed in any good work. When you are praying at home, at evening, or at morning prayer, or in the church during Divine service, be solicitous in your heart to accomplish this particular good work, and heartily desire to fulfill it to the glory of God. The Lord and His Most-pure Mother will unfailingly teach you, will instill in your heart some bright idea how to accomplish it. If you wish to write a discourse or a sermon, and do not know what to write about, if there is no living water in your heart, you have only to be solicitous of this during your prayer. The Lord and His Most-pure Mother will unfailingly and clearly show you the subject for your sermon and its parts, and your mind and heart will be enlightened by a clear knowledge of all sides of the subject.
—St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ
Category: PRAYER
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However, in making the assertion that a certain service—in this case, raising children—can in fact be prayer, I am bolstered by the testimony of contemplatives themselves. Carlo Carretto, one of the twentieth century’s best spiritual writers, spent many years in the Sahara Desert by himself praying. Yet he once confessed that he felt that his mother, who spent nearly thirty years raising children, was much more contemplative than he was, and less selfish. If that is true, and Carretto suggests that it is, the conclusion we should draw is not that there was anything wrong with his long hours of solitude in the desert, but that there was something very right about the years his mother lived an interrupted life amid the noise and demands of small children.
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For years, while she is raising small children, her time is not her own, her own needs have to be put into second place, and every time she turns around some hand is reaching out demanding something. Years of this will mature most anyone. It is because of this that she does not need, during this time, to pray for an hour a day. And it is precisely because of this that the rest of us, who do not have constant contact with small children, need to pray privately daily.
Domestic Monastery
Ronald Rolheiser -
Satan may allow us to talk about God for many hours, but he will never let us talk with Him, even for a few minutes.
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Do you desire to study to your advantage? Let devotion accompany all your studies, and study less to make yourself learned than to become a saint. Consult God more than your books, and ask him, with humility, to make you understand what you read. Study fatigues and drains the mind and heart. Go from time to time to refresh them at the feet of Jesus Christ under his cross. Some moments of repose in his sacred wounds give fresh vigor and new lights. Interrupt your application by short, but fervent and ejaculatory prayers: never begin or end your study but by prayer. Science is a gift of the Father of lights; do not therefore consider it as barely the work of your own mind or industry.”
—St. Vincent Ferrer -
“Make firm my soul which has become corrupted by my laziness and apathy, O You who raises the lowly and rescues the afflicted. You know how apathetic and pitiful I am. You know how many wily and wicked thoughts fight against me. You see the enmity of the enemy and the many schemes which are employed against me. Be a help to me on account of your great mercy. Make me serious and watchful, animate me, and deliver me by Your grace.”
—prayer from St. Ephraim the Syrian -
Do not have any partiality, not only either for food and drink, for dress, for a spacious and richly decorated dwelling, for the luxurious furniture of your house, but not even for your health, do not even have the least partiality for your life, give up all your life to the Will of the Lord, saying: “for, to me to live—is Christ and to die—is gain.” [Philippians 1.21]. “He that hateth his life in this world, shall keep it unto life eternal.” [John 12.25] Attachment to the temporary life, to one’s own health, leads to many deviations from God’s Commandments, to the indulgence of the flesh, to breaking the fasts, to evading the conscientious fulfilment of the duties connected with our service, to despondency, impatience, irritability. Never sleep before saying evening prayers, lest your heart should become gross from ill-timed sleep, and lest the enemy should hinder it by a stony insensibility during prayer.
—St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ -
“How will we know whether we are living according to the will of God or not? If you are sad for whatever reason, this means that you have not given yourself over to God, although from the outside it may seem that you have. He who lives according to God’s will has no worries. When he needs something, he simply prays for it. If he does not receive that which he asked for, he is joyful as though he had received it. A soul that has given itself over to God has no fear of anything, not even robbers, sickness, or death. Whatever happens, such a soul always cries, ‘It was the will of God.’”
—Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica
SO GOOD QUOTES 