YOUCAT Catechism + Catechism of the Catholic Church Lesson 506
Ave Maria series
Is prayer not just a sort of conversation with yourself?
The distinctive feature about prayer is precisely the fact that one goes from Me to You, from self-centeredness to radical openness. Someone who is really praying can experience the fact that God speaks—and that often he does not speak as we expect and would like.
Sermon on the Mount where Jesus taught his disciples how to pray (see Matthew 6:5). Painting by Carl Heinrich Bloch 1834-1890. …...506
Those who are experienced in prayer report that a person very often comes out of a prayer session different from the way he went in. Sometimes expectations are met: you are sad and find consolation; you lack confidence and receive new strength. It can also happen, though, that you would like to forget pressures but are made even more uneasy; that you would like to be left in peace and instead receive an assignment. A real encounter with God—the kind that occurs again and again in prayer—can shatter our preconceptions about both God and prayer.
“Here God and the devil struggle, and the battleground is the human heart.” --Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky
As long as we live, we fight, and as long as we are fighting, that is a sign that we are not defeated and that the good Spirit dwells within us. And if death does not meet you as the victor, he should find you a warrior. –St. Augustine (354-430)
JT Beatitudes Sermon On The Mount
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