Why Your Body Matters for Prayer

Christian prayer is embodied prayer. In C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters we discovered an experienced devil giving lessons to a young temptor. At one point, the veteran orders his young charge to encourage his 'client,' a budding Christian, to envision prayer as something very 'interior' and 'mystical,' having little to do with posture or the position of the body. He wants the poor Christian to think that whether he stands, slouches, sits, or kneels is irrelevant to the quality of his communication with God. This, of course, is the Cartesian voice, the belief that our bodies and souls are independent and have little to do with each other.

But then consider the view of William James. In his Principles of Psychology, James writes that it is not so much sadness that makes us cry as crying that makes us feel sad. The body in a significant sense precedes the mind.

The same dynamic occurs when we pray. It is not so much keen feelings of devotion that force us to our knees as kneeling that gives rise to keen feelings of devotion.

If you're having difficulty in prayer today, try kneeling, or bowing, or making some sort of reverent gesture. The body often leads the mind into a deeper spiritual space. - Fr Robert Barron

For Love To Be Real - It Must Hurt, It Must Empty Us Of Self.

Love, to be real, it must cost - it must hurt - it must empty us of self. - Blessed Mother Teresa

Prayer Is Helplessness Casting Itself On Power...

Prayer is helplessness casting itself on Power, infirmity leaning on Strength, misery reaching to Mercy, and a prisoner clamoring for Relief. - Venerable Fulton J. Sheen

Love Jesus Trustfully Without Looking Back

Believe in Jesus - trust Him with blind and absolute confidence because He is Jesus. Believe that Jesus and Jesus alone is life - and sanctity is nothing but that same Jesus intimately living in you - the same life we received at Baptism grown up and made perfect. That is why it is so beautiful that the Holy Father has asked us to go more deeply into the riches of our Baptism this year. Love Jesus trustfully without looking back, without fear. Give yourself fully to Jesus. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love, than in your weakness. We must not be afraid to proclaim Jesus' love and to love as he loved. In the work we have to do, no matter how small, we must make it Christ's love in action. Do not be afraid to be poor and so proclaim His poverty. Be not afraid to keep a pure and undivided heart and so to radiate the joy of belonging to Jesus. Do not be afraid to go down with Christ and be subject to those who have authority from above - His Church - and so declare Christ's obedience unto death.

Serve Jesus with joy and gladness of spirit - casting aside all that troubles and worries you. In each of our lives Jesus comes as Bread of Life - to be eaten, to be consumed by us. This is how He loves us. And then Jesus comes in our human life as the Hungry One, the Poor One, hoping to be fed with the bread of our life, our hearts by loving, our hands by serving. As He said, "What ever you did to the least of my brothers, you did it to me". In so doing we prove that we have been created in the likeness of God - for God is Love and when we love we are like God. This is what Jesus meant when He said, "Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect."

Jesus wants us to be holy as His Father is holy. Holiness is not the luxury of the few, but a simple duty for you and for me. Holiness - very great holiness - becomes very simple if we belong fully to Our Lady. In 1997, the Year of Jesus Christ, may the Immaculate Heart of our Queen and Mother be more and more our way to Jesus and may she obtain the light of Jesus, the love of Jesus and the life of Jesus for each one of us. Then, when the Jubilee of the Year 2000 comes, we will be able to rejoice that once more Christ is walking through the world in us and through us going about doing good. Let us pray. God bless you! - Mother Teresa

What On The Outside Is Simply Brutal Violence Becomes An Act Of Total Self-Giving Love

By making bread into His Body and the wine into His Blood, He anticipates His death, He accepts it in His heart, and He transforms it into an action of love. What on the outside is simply brutal violence - the Crucifixion - from within becomes an act of total self-giving love. This is the substantial transformation which was accomplished at the Last Supper and was destined to set in motion a series of transformations leading ultimately to the transformation of the world when God will be all in all (cf. 1 Cor 15:28). - Pope Benedict XVI, Heart of the Christian Life

Through Christ I Enter In, Not To Your Houses But To Your Hearts

I, seeking to enter in among you, that is, into your heart, preach Christ: if I were to preach other than that, I should be trying to enter by some other way. Through Christ I enter in, not to your houses but to your hearts. Through Him I enter and you have willingly heard me speak of Him. Why? Because you are Christ's sheep and you have been purchased with Christ's blood. - Saint Augustine

It Is God, The Thrice Holy Who Makes Us Saints

Can I do so with my own strength? The answer is clear: A holy life is not primarily the fruit of our own effort, of our actions, because it is God, the thrice Holy (cf. Isaiah 6:3), who makes us saints, and the action of the Holy Spirit who encourages us from within; it is the life itself of the Risen Christ, which ... transforms us. - Pope Benedict XVI