Transcript

Christian life is intended to make us partakers of the divine nature, to give us a real share in God's own life.

The fathers of the church oft repeated that God became man that men might become gods.

Our destiny is to be truly like the Lord.

Prayer is just the ongoing conversation which conforms us more and more to the divine image and likeness, which works in us this very beautiful grace of transformation.

So then, let's take a moment to consider, what is prayer?

Very simply, prayer is the raising of our minds and hearts to God.

In the order of nature, God is our creator and our goal.

And in the order of grace, He is our redeemer and our beloved.

As a result of which, we acknowledge Him as so, and we praise Him for all of His many gifts.

What prayer does is that it offers worship to God, both in the orders of nature and in grace, in response to His generous gift of Himself.

With prayer, we find that there are interior and exterior dimensions.

You can think, interiorly, that we refer our minds and hearts and ultimately everything of our life to God.

And in turn, we receive from Him a kind of simple gaze, a kind of contemplative glance on His mysteries and on His divine life.

Exteriorly, prayer involves our bodies.

It has a kind of liturgical quality.

So we adopt certain postures that correspond with our interior states and sentiments, and with the choices that we make with respect to God.

So you can think, for instance, in the context of the mass.

We sit for the proclamation of the Word of God in a stance of receptivity as the divine word is exposited for us, is poured out, and is explained in preaching.

At the proclamation of the Gospel, we stand in triumph, an acknowledgment of the victory of Christ our King.

And as we approach closer and closer to the sacrifice, to the very mystery made incarnate, made flesh, on our altar, we kneel in humility before such a great gift.

You can think, for instance, of how our voice contributes to prayer.

So, with our voice, we render the debt of our whole selves to God.

So God has given us our voice, and it makes sense to give it back in vocal prayer.

What is more, by joining our voice to our interior desires, we can actually stir up devotion, kindle within ourselves a deeper desire for the very things of God.

And you may find too, that when you're especially moved in prayer, sometimes it's just fitting to give vent to your heart's abundance by speaking the Lord's praise, by having the tongue just give vent to what it is that you love.

We identify four principle movements in prayer, and you can remember the acronym ACTS to conveniently organize them.

First, we give God adoration.

Adoration is just that prayer of sacrifice.

It offers the whole of our life to God who alone is worthy.

C stands for contrition.

With contrition, we lament the past sins that we have committed and give God a contrite heart, give God a spirit of sorrow, a spirit of, not regret, but of desire to make up for things done and to draw closer to Him in friendship.

T stands for thanksgiving.

With thanksgiving, our blessed hearts just overflow in thanks to God for the many things that He has given us.

S stands for supplication.

By supplication, we ask God for what it is that we need.

And very beautifully, God has promised to give us whatever we ask for in His name.

So long as we pray devoutly and with perseverance for the things necessary for salvation, He will give us what it is that we need.

And ultimately, the answer to every prayer is Himself.

For by prayer, we're always cultivating a deeper friendship for God who is our whole heart's love.

The Catholic tradition stresses certain prayers.

There is, of course, the Our Father, which appears in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, that prayer which Jesus Himself taught to His disciples.

We think also of the Hail Mary, which appears in the Gospel of Luke, in the Angel Gabriel's address to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and in the greeting with which Elizabeth met her cousin.

So we join those two together and add to it the Holy Mary to compose that very beautiful prayer.

We also treasure certain credal statements that were formulated by early church councils.

So for instance, at the middle of the mass, we stand and profess our faith, an especially devout and especially beautiful expression of our love for the Church and her teachings.

The mass, of course, is the greatest prayer, because Jesus Christ Himself is made present in His body, blood, soul, and divinity.

Our prayer life really culminates in the sacraments.

The Eucharist is the end of all our prayer.It is the crowning point of our devotional life.

It is where we are fed by the very flesh of God.

We turn now to consider the sacraments more broadly.

In the Catechism, we hear that the sacraments are efficacious signs of grace instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church by which divine life is dispensed to us.

You can think about it this way: the sacraments bring the very mysteries of Christ's life and death to bear on our very lives.

They apply to us the very mysteries of God.

There are, of course, seven sacraments: baptism, the Holy Eucharist, confirmation, penance, anointing, marriage, and holy orders.

Each of the sacraments corresponds to some feature of our spiritual life.

So you can think, just how as in our natural lives there is a certain order and progression, so too in our spiritual lives.

So for instance, baptism represents our birth in the spiritual life.

By the Eucharist, we are fed in our spiritual life.

In penance, we are healed in our spiritual life.

And so too with the other sacraments down the line.

The sacraments, we believe, are real causes of grace.

They are not just mere symbols.

Rather, as St. Augustine once said, They are sign of a sacred thing insofar as it sanctifies men.

So God is truly at work through the minister and in the sacrament, giving grace.

We know, of course, that the minister can perform the sacrament with more or less devotion, with more or less attention, and so too the recipient can receive the sacrament with more or less devotion and attention.

But ultimately, provided that the minister uses the right words and performs the right actions, and that he intends what the Church intends, the sacrament has its effect.

We say that it actually causes what it signifies.

So take, for instance, baptism.

Here you have a ritual action of washing with water.

It's not a mere sign that this person is accepted into the communion of the Church or has some kind of new relationship with God.

Rather, the cleansing of the child with water actually cleanses the soul from original sin.

It causes what it signifies.

It has its spiritual effect.

And so through prayer and sacrament, God makes Himself truly present among us.

He makes His love known and felt as He heals us in our nature and perfects us in His grace.

How truly blessed we are to possess these gifts of our divine friend who draws near to us to make us like Himself.