Matthew Leonard Lesson: Overcoming distraction the power of prayer. Contemplation as infused prayer, where God makes it happen. See the Catechism of the Catholic Church ccc2729 about distractions: involuntary and voluntary. . . Let the silly wondering come and go, offer it up to God. Distraction reveal what we are attracted to. . . Offer it up to God to bring clarity. . . Self-examination is safe…
Voluntary distraction are created and engaged in. . . Which are venial-sins that need to be addressed.
Silence on the outside, leads to silence on the inside. We are Made for the silence of GOD see ccc 2717
Silence in prayer leads to just the BEingness. . . 1 Thessalonians 5:17 pray continually,
Are we just hanging out with God. . . Just Be is perfect as is. The quiet gaze of faith and the silent exchange of love is where we all belong.
This prayer is a game changer for you spiritually, and a game changer for every aspect of your life. If every Catholic in America prayed in this way for a few minutes each day the Church would be on the fast track to renewal. If everyone in your parish began to pray using this process your parish would explode with enthusiasm and engagement.
The Prayer Process
- Gratitude: Begin by thanking God in a personal dialogue for whatever you are most grateful for today.
- Awareness: Revisit the times in the past twenty-four hours when you were and were not the-best-version-of-yourself. Talk to God about these situations and what you learned from them.
- Significant Moments: Identify something you experienced today and explore what God might be trying to say to you through that event (or person).
- Peace: Ask God to forgive you for any wrong you have committed (against yourself, another person, or him) and to fill you with a deep and abiding peace.
- Freedom: Speak with God about how he is inviting you to change your life so that you can experience the freedom to be the-best-version-of-yourself.
- Others: Lift up to God anyone you feel called to pray for today, asking God to bless and guide them.
- Finish by praying the "Our Father."
Each of the first six steps in the process should stimulate a conversation with God. It is easy to fall into the trap of merely thinking about these things. When you find yourself doing that, return to actually speaking with God about whatever it is you are thinking. The goal is to develop the ability to have intimate conversations with God during this time set aside for prayer. The more deeply rooted we become in this daily habit of prayer, the more those conversations with God will spill over into the moments of our daily lives.
If you are just beginning, you may want to start with just one minute of conversation with God each day, adding a minute each week until you reach ten. If that is the case, don't try to race through all seven aspects of the prayer process. Just use the first step. Gratitude. Spend your minute speaking to God about everyone and everything youare grateful for, and then close with an Our Father. As you expand your time of prayer over the coming weeks, adding minutes, I suggest you add one step at a time of the process to your daily prayer. The key is to get the conversation started! But whether you start with one minute a day or ten minutes a day, I hope this section has left you thinking, "I can do that!" Nothing will change your life more meaningfully than developing a vibrant and sustainable prayer life.
The Prayer Process is infinitely expandable and contractible. If you went away on retreat you could spend hours praying your way through the process, looking not just at the past twenty-four hours, but at the past year-or even your whole lifetime. For example, the first step in the process surrounds gratitude. Imagine how long you could speak to God about everything that has ever happened in your life that you are grateful for. On the other hand, perhaps on a particular day you don't get to pray at your regular time and then the day gets away from you. Rather than going to bed withoutdoing the Prayer Process because you don't have the will or the energy to pray for ten minutes, shorten the experience. Take just a minute, still go through each of the seven steps, but just speak to God briefly about one thing in each step.
The goal of the Prayer Process is to trigger a regular and meaningful conversation with God. Prayerlessness is one of the great torments of modern times. For decades the time we spend in focused prayer has been diminishing as our lives have become busier and busier. We have fallen into the tyranny of the urgent, which demands that we rush from one urgent thing to the next. The problem with this is that the most important things are hardly ever urgent. This can leave us always doing urgent things but never doing important things. It is these most important things that we are never gettingaround to in this cycle. Prayer is one of those important things, and among the highest priority. Prayer helps us to identify what matters most and strengthens our hearts and minds to give priority to those things in our daily lives. What could be more important than prayer?
Prayerlessness also distorts the human person. Without prayer, over time we forget the attitudes and qualities that make us uniquely human (compassion, generosity, humility, fortitude) and we become more and more like mere animals.Prayer leads us to catch a glimpse of the-best-version-of-ourselves, and helps us to develop the virtue necessaryto celebrate our best selves. If you watch your evening news tonight you will discover that the world desperately needs men and women of prayer and virtue. People in your neighborhood need your prayers, your parish needs your prayers, and your colleagues at work need your prayers. And it is painfully obvious at times that the Catholic Church is in desperate need of prayer.
Over the years I have encountered many great families in my travels. A number of years ago I started trying to work out what made these families so steadfast and full of life. Tolstoy begins the epic novel Anna Karenina with these lines: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." What I have discovered is thatall the great families I have encountered have a giant of prayer, a person who covers his or her family with prayer, anchoring the family in God's grace .
These prayerful giants pray constantly for their families, surrounding them with God's protection. Somewhere in these families' not-too-distant past is a person who was a prayerful giant. Sometimes it is the grandmother or grandfather,the mother or father, an uncle or aunt, and from time to time you have to go back two or three generations, sometimes more. But you always find a prayerful giant in their family tree. Every family needs a cornerstone of prayer to pray for the family, now and in ne future. I suppose if a family gets far enough down the road from that prayerful giant without raising up another, its members begin to lose their way. Does it take a generation or two, or three or four?!?!?
They know they need God and his grace, and they need community. They come to Mass seeking this grace and community. For this reason and others, the Mass is central to their lives. Many of them identifyit as the crown jewel of the spiritual life. Personal prayer is a deepening of your relationship with God, discovering who God is calling you to be for him and for others. The liturgical prayer of Sunday Mass is the prayer of the whole Church gathered for a public proclamation of who we are as Catholics. What you bring to Mass on Sunday is your prayer life, and the deeper it is, the more deeply you can enter into the public expression of the faith of the Church. The Mass is not simply about you; it is the whole Church gathered as a sign of hope to the world. A community at prayer is a beautiful thing. The first sign of a Dynamic Catholic is prayer. Dynamic Catholics are first and foremost men and women of prayer, just as the saints were. Is it enough for us just to pray? No. We have been given the mission to transform the world. But the best action springs forth from a vibrant prayer life. Our efforts to transform society into a more loving and just experience for all must be deeply rooted in our Christianity, and thus deeply rooted in prayer. Otherwise our Christian social efforts can become disconnected from our Christianity, and this quickly diminishes into just another form of social work. Don't get me wrong-social.
It is all about a real relationship with God . . . Maturing spirituality means a shift in the conversation. It always is so powerful. To stop and pray in silence always makes it clearer. Stepping out to get refocused is so important. . . Silence is fundamental and critical to make life beautiful. Trying to be silent when there is noise everywhere! It is so important to “humanize” our relationship with God! Trying to be the better version of myself. . .
9:12:22 3/27/2025
Wow, what a busy crazy experience to be in this time and place. Three basics for sound prayer:
- PRAYER In perseverance; Is a battle, as a child to their father, Luke 11:9-10. . . Progress only comes with efforts: “And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.” https://bible.com/bible/1/luk.11.9.KJV
- HUMILITY: works like a magnet, “humus” (Latin) earth, soil, ground that beats pride the deadly sin. Humility is foundation of Prayer. Luke 18:13 “God Be merciful to me a sinner.”
- CONFIDENCE: confidence is always in Christ, Matt 7:8-11 to move into a real relationship of loving communion. “for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.” https://bible.com/bible/1/mat.7.8.KJV “Lord I believe, Help with my unbelief”. . .
It's important to examine yourself to determine if you're living a life that God will praise. Consider these areas:
- Your mind: When you wake up, is your mind bent toward the Lord or toward all you must do over the next few hours?
- Your desires: Do you want to listen to God, walk in His ways, and let Him accomplish His will for your life?
- Your deeds: Is obeying God your top priority? He desires for you to be a faithful steward. (See 1 John 2:5-6 . . . “But who so keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him.” https://bible.com/bible/1/1jn.2.5.KJV)
- Your pure heartedness: Do you tolerate sin in your life? A godly person readily confesses wrongdoing before the Lord.
- Your time: Are you spending your time on worthless things or investing it in the kingdom of God?
Wow. . . So much, so quickly. . . I posted this to my children, the Men’s Group and a few others:
God makes a promise, Faith believes it, hope anticipates it, and patience waits quietly for it... https://www.intouch.org/listen/radio/shortcutting-the-will-of-god-pt-2
It's all about Glory for God ... where all the best comes through Him. The Lord said unto him, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”
Matthew 25:21 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/mat.25.21.KJV
And from the Ladies group: https://youtu.be/HueOaeoTfIE
