Pray hard!

This week in our “monastery of the heart,” we are concentrating on prayer. The chapter abounds in eternal and unarguable truths:

Benedictine spirituality is rooted

in the timelessness

of scripture.

It is the story of God’s way

with the world.

And. . .

Bendictine prayer,

the heartbeat of Benedictine spirituality,

is always about

the presence of God in time—

this time, our time, my time.

And. . .

Prayer . . . heals the wounds of the day

and reminds us who we want to be

at the deepest, truest part of us.

Honestly, it’s such a beautiful and enriching chapter, such an encouragement to rededicate myself to deep and constant prayer, that it’s hard to choose quotes to share. Get the book! Read it! Some parts you’ll read over and over. But in the end, it’s not reading this or any book that matters.

Pray.

Pray hard.

Pray unceasingly.

Pray your praise and thanks.

Pray your laments and cries of sorrow.

Pray your doubts. Who else can you ask but God’s own self??

Pray.

What counts, says Chittister, “is not the sum of prayers we pray. . . It is the way our prayer life changes our own hearts and lives—the way it makes us more centered in God, the way it makes us more aware of our own limitations—that determines its quality.”

Amen!