“Prayerfulness” is our theme of Reflection for the year 2009. A message of “Prayerfulness” will be part of our “Daily Reflection”.  We will take time to explore and deepen our understanding of prayerfulness as an attitude, a mind-set, a disposition of mind and heart, a quality of our being….

I pray for you and I pray for all, who, at this moment, are welcoming the gift of this New Year with all its uncertainties. May your life be rooted in prayer and your prayer rooted in life. May this New Year be the most amazing, fascinating, marvelous, wonderful and hope-filled year for you and for those you love!  May God bless you with the richest and finest of his blessings!

Now I invite you to consecrate this new year and all that come with it….in your own way, in humble, simple, may be even inadequate words………..

BE STILL AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD.

(Psalm 46:10)

We have begun the New Year 2009 not knowing what awaits us and not knowing what the days and months will bring us or how we will face the future. Let us pray that we welcome all who come our way; that we deepen our faith to see all of life as God’s wonderful gift; that we live and move with hope and abiding trust in “God-with-us”, in God dwelling in us amidst all our joys and sorrows; that we rise each day with desire and decision to love life, love people, love creation and love our God with all that we are and all that we have.

Before we walk into the New Year, let us take a few moments to thank God for all his blessings during the past year. Let us also be grateful to the many who blessed us, encouraged us, loved us, trusted us, and cared for us….

Loving and glorious God,

Today, I thank you for the many things I often take for granted:

the air I breathe, the water I drink, supermarkets filled to overflowing;

the ability to walk, talk, see, hear, smell, and to work and earn a living.

For all these and more, I thank you.  

Prayerfulness:

Prayer is a hunger and a thirst for God and God’s ways. This hunger is a longing, a yearning, an impelling desire to be with the Lord, to turn to him in prayer, to seek his presence and to dwell in the awareness of his living, loving reality. In our quest for the Lord and His ways, prayer becomes the prime means of fulfilling this fundamental and urgent longing.

The hunger for God is itself God’s gift to us… much more so the experience of God’s presence. God makes himself present to us and His Holy Spirit enables us to experience that presence.

We may go through difficult and testing times of our prayer and feel our prayer to be totally unsatisfying and unsuccessful. We may seem to be unable to achieve anything and only battle through distractions, interruptions and dry spells. Our discouragement can then become crippling and perhaps, we soon give in and abandon such prayer.

St. Augustine tells us that prayerfulness, left alone, cannot last forever. The attitude of prayerfulness needs to be often re-energized through new acts of prayer. So we use various types of prayer to attain and maintain this union with our Triune God, to capture and maintain a personal and intimate encounter with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Prayer is a personal experience and intimate connection with our loving Heavenly Father.

The late Cardinal Suenens said that, for him, prayer meant opening the soul to God while closing self to ‘atmospheric disturbances.’ Hence deeper prayer implies a need for silence and openness. To pray is to open ourselves to the Father so that our entire life - from the seeking of daily bread to the transformation of the world - is filled with love.

To pray means to expose oneself to the love of the Father so as to be enabled to live even better as his child. St. Catherine of Siena reminds us that our holy desire for prayer itself is a continual prayer.

Prayerfulness is an important sign of growth in the Spirit, because it is a reflection of our awareness of God’s abiding presence in us. Prayerfulness must be cultivated by interior attitude of adoration, praise, surrender and thanksgiving and expressed in specific acts of prayer.

‘Whenever you pray, go to your room, close your door and pray to your Father in private. Then, your Father who sees what n man sees, will repay you….your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Mt. 6:6-8).

“At every opportunity, pray in the Spirit, using prayers and petitions of every sort. Pray constantly and attentively for all God’s people” (Eph. 6:18).

“Pray perseveringly, be attentive to prayer and pray in a spirit of thanksgiving” (Col. 4:2).

“Dismiss all anxiety from your minds. Present your needs to God in every form of prayer and in petitions full of gratitude” (Phil. 4:6)

When prayer is a struggle, do not worry about the prayers that you cannot pray.

You yourself are a prayer to God at that moment.

All that is within you cries out to Him.

Take a few moments…prayerfully reflect on the call to be prayerful. Reflect on what you can do to cultivate prayerfulness and make a few personal choices that will enable you to cultivate this quality as we continue our journey through this year.

Fr. Gus Tharappel,msfs