Recently in prayer Category

I've been thinking lately about the expression, and the book title, "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff." I agree with that. But that does not mean small stuff is not important. Wherever we happen to find ourselves in life is typically not the result of one or a handful of big decisions, but a series of many small decisions.

For example: hoarding. I doubt that any person wakes up in the morning and says, "Hey, I'd like to live in a trash pile." The image we all have of a house inhabited by a hoarder is the result of many small decisions by the hoarder not to let go of things. On a less extraordinary level, a cluttered coffee table or a full sink is the result of several small decisions in the moment immediately after one eats to not clean up after oneself.

The exciting flipside is that what we consider to be the images of success -- be it financial or social or spiritual success, or all of these -- are also the result of a series of small decisions, made day after day. Decisions like whether to clean up after ourselves or put it off until next time. To watch TV or to keep working. To play Angry Birds before I go to sleep or to pray. To sleep in or go to class. To respond to setbacks by pitying oneself or by looking for opportunities within adversity. To respond to difficult people in kind or with kindness. To speak or to listen. To be restrained or to lash out.

These are not huge decisions. They're small ones. And we shouldn't sweat them, because sweating won't help us make the right decisions. But that doesn't mean they are not important.

Our interior spiritual life is like that coffee table. I have to ask myself constantly: How cluttered is it in there? How many embarrassments and hurt feelings and mea culpas over things I did or that happened to me years ago do I carry around in there instead of letting go? And what kinds of better things, how many friendships and moments of appreciation, do I miss because my mind is too crowded with grudges and complaints? Choosing to carry those things around, too, is not a big decision. It is a series of small decisions made day after day.

But that's great news. Because tomorrow we can make a small decision to let go, to clean off the coffee tables of our souls. It doesn't have to happen on a mountain top. Our souls are more beautiful than mountains. Small decisions that happen in small places in enough small moments over enough small days can lead to great happiness, for ourselves and our loved ones. Whoever is trustworthy in small things, is trustworthy in larger things also.

By the way I do not have a problem with Angry Birds. Actually I really enjoy it. It's just better to put it down sometimes.

Have you ever stood in line at the sandwich shop and found yourself just getting annoyed with the person standing behind you? Maybe they're standing in your space or they appear very grumpy or have their noses in the air. Perhaps they hit on some pet peeve of yours. Or maybe you don't even know why you are annoyed with the person.

That was me yesterday on my lunch break. So I wrote this prayer last night:

LORD --
I want to see the beauty in other people.
I want to see you, Lord Jesus, in the face of every person that I encounter.
I want that awareness to guide my every interaction with everyone in my life.
Even if they do not see you in themselves, or in anyone else, when I see a person, let me first see you.

Protect me from the tendency, which I know I have, to be annoyed, to draw conclusions, to nitpick, to silently criticize, and to dismiss.
Give me the grace, please, to reflexively be, when I meet someone, delighted, curious, affirming, forgiving, and welcoming --
just as you so constantly are, with me.

In your name I pray.
AMEN.

Now that you know all about the insane roads of Rome, here's a look at some of the stuff the missus and I saw while we were there.

The very first thing we did when we arrived in Rome, as much because we were fighting off jet lag as because I was very eager to see it, was walk a couple of miles from our hotel to Vatican City. I'm not sure what I can say about the place that people don't already know about it.

When you're standing in St. Peter's Square, it will seem a little surreal. The place is huge, of course. It's kind of like standing on a really holy football field made out of cobblestone, surrounded by pillars and giant holy statues, with a fountain at midfield. Once you're inside St. Peter's Basilica, you will feel like you're inside another holy football stadium. And that may not be doing it justice.

Almost immediately when you walk into the main nave of the basilica, to your right you will see Michelangelo's Pieta. The sculptural masterpiece used to be displayed openly to passers by, but is behind bulletproof glass now. The sculpture, which depicts the Virgin Mary holding Jesus' body after his crucifxion and death, was attacked on Pentcost Sunday in 1972.

I could go on about all the stuff you will see in the Vatican. Just a couple more quick observations. If you go down below to see the papal tombs, you will notice that while popes of years past had tombs that were sculptures of themselves. Very detailed and ornate. John Paul II has a simple marble slab for his tomb. People passing through stop to pray in front of it. I did briefly. Won't ever forget it.

You may not get to see the tomb of St. Peter directly, but you will get to be right on top of it.

Words cannot describe what it is like to stand in the Sistine Chapel and look up at those two fingers nearly touching. ... Be prepared though. The place will be packed with people. There is supposed to be silence in there at all times and absolutely no photographs. If you don't know this at the moment you walk through the doors you will know it a few seconds later, because the handful of guards on hand will be constantly saying, at various decibal levels, "Shhh!" and "No foto!"

But that won't matter when you're standing in there looking up at that ceiling, and when you realize that this is the room where the new pope is selected. In one corner of the chapel is actually the "Room of Tears," where the new pope goes to weep after his number gets called.

Now, the Vatican was amazing from beginning to end. The thing about the Vatican though is that you EXPECT it to be amazing. Most people don't go to the Vatican expecting it to be some kind of ho-hum tourist experience. It'sa the frickin' VATICAN.

What's almost more surprising is when you're on your way from the Trevi Fountain to the Pantheon or wherever, and you get tired of looking for the place, so you decide to just duck into this whatever church right here, nestled in between buildings that line a narrow city street. So you walk nonchalantly into this church and it's FREAKIN' ... HUGE. You thought this was just another church, and yeah, it pretty much is just another church -- in Rome. But in ROME, "just another church" is a freakin' huge church. Sure there are some smaller ones, but by in large, you will come to expect that the church you walk into is basically giant.

And the stuff you see in them is amazing as well.

The most jaw-dropping thing I saw was the tomb of St. Paul at his church -- the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, in Rome. On display right next to that tomb, were a set of prisoner's chains. According to an undisputed tradition, those chains were the chains that made Paul a prisoner of the Roman Empire. When I saw this, I realized that St. Paul did with his life what I would much like to do with mine -- he wrote well about Jesus, and he did it without fear. I asked him to intercede for me, that God might give me the grace to do likewise.

All these churches are packed with stuff. I say "stuff," but what I mean is basically treasures -- and not just gold-plated stuff, although there is surely lots of that. I mean saints' relics, sculptures, paintings, Catholic religious iconography of every sort. It's almost too much to process. You can expect to see the phrase "AVE MARIA GRATIA PLENA" ("Hail Mary full of grace") quite often in these places. And then there's the chapels that run along the sides of the churches' main sanctuaries. Almost every church has half a dozen to a dozen mini-churches. I call them "mini", but they are often huge in their own right!

Oh, and Jesus Christ is there, too. In some of those ancillary chapels, they will have adoration -- the holy Eucharist exposed on the altar for Catholic faithful to worship and pray before.

What you won't find in many of these holy Houses of God, is a bathroom. Go to the gelato place next door.

Just a little prayer I wrote last night.

LORD,
Help me always to recognize how small I am before you.
Let me always realize the lightness of my burdens, the insignificance of my inconveniences, and the mildness of my misfortunes.
Conversely, let me never forget that I am drowning in your blessings.
Give me ever the desire to love as you do, having no regard for my burdens, inconveniences, or misfortunes.
Center me on alleviating the misfortunes of my neighbor, rather than on alleviating my own.
Deliver me, Jesus, from all self-pity, to the joy that is your gracious will, which is to be loved by you and, thereby, to love as you do.
AMEN.

Came across this passage from Hebrews Chapter 3, verse 13 while praying the Divine Office this morning:

Encourage yourselves daily while it is still "today," so that none of you may grow hardened by the deceit of sin.

It reminded me of that Kris Allen song "Live Like We're Dying," which is basically about not waiting before you say or do something really important to or for a loved one. The song definitely has a Christian element to it, about how we never know when the end is going to meet us face to face, and we need to always make sure we are reconciled with others.

Encouragement does not only mean "affirmation," telling someone he or she is doing a good job. It can also include telling someone that he or she is capable of doing better.

None of us, in this life, will ever reach a point where we cannot be any holier than we are at the present time. There will always be something more we can give to God. There will always be a way for us to grow closer to Him, to invite Him more into our hearts. There will always be some aspect of our lives in which we can be more like Jesus. That is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Think about who in your life needs to hear that.

Because the key is not to beat ourselves up for not being better than we are now, but to encourage each other to grow.

Prayer is like planting a tree in an empty backyard. One may not always feel like planting a tree. One may even be pressed into doing so by a friend or politely asked to help do so by a dad to whom one owes much of his present success.

Planting a tree takes a great deal of effort, especially in a place like Central Texas, where one encounters hard rock about an inch beneath the surface. You plunge the shovel into the nice brown dirt a couple of times, and then, CLANK.

At that point, all you can really do is keep plunging the shovel into the ground again and again. And what difference might you see between one plunge and the next? If you're not the strongest dude on the block, probably not a whole lot.

So it is with prayer. It may have a certain novelty and fun at first. But then it becomes work. And at times it may appear to be fruitless work. You may not see much if any difference in your life from one prayer to the next. In that way, it may be easy to get discouraged. But one must keep the end in mind.

You might ask yourself, while you're plunging that shovel into the ground over and over again, only to dislodge a couple of tiny limestone shards, what is even the point? The point is not merely to plunge away with increasing impatience and anger at the rock. The point is to make room in the ground. Why? To plant a tree.

You're plunging that shovel into the ground over and over again, at great discomfort to yourself, blistering your hands, in order to bring new life, new beauty into your backyard (or your parents' backyard, as the case may be). The tree spices up the backyard and brings shade to the grass below. It turns the backyard from a flat, uninteresting place to potentially, one day, a garden.

But it starts with plunging that shovel into the hard rock ground.

So it is with prayer. It is the first step to bringing new life into the spiritual soil of one's soul. And at first all one can do is repeat the motions. But one must keep the end in mind. The end in mind is holiness -- turning our flat, uninteresting lives into something more, something blessed and joyful. Prayer is making room in our very crowded hearts and minds for that new life -- which is God.

If I had brought the new tree into the backyard and just thrown it on the ground without first making room for it, the tree could not have taken root. No roots, no life. No life, no shade. No new beauty. In order to enjoy the benefits of the tree, I have to make room for the tree.

If we want to enjoy the benefits of God in our lives, if we want the deep interior happiness and comfort that only He can give, we have to make room for Him. Over and over again.

Let's ask ourselves: How many times in a day do I say the words "thank you," either to another person or to God? How far into the day do I get before that happens?

Do I react to the morning alarm with thankfulness that I am alive and in sufficient good health to get out of bed? If not, perhaps that sets the tone for and colors the way I approach everything else in my day -- traffic, the job, the news, other people, etc.

Being thankful is a challenge because it is sometimes too obvious. There's stuff to be thankful for everywhere. The breath in our lungs, the people we love, the trees breaming green beneath a cloudless sky on a good day, or the rain that cools us off. But our cynical side may encourage us to simply roll our eyes and dismiss it. What's so great about being in sufficient good health to get out of bed? If you're consciously thanking God for that, all that means is you don't have anything particularly great to thank Him for.

On the contrary, if we do not thank God for the smallest of gifts (I would argue that sufficient good health is quite a marvelous gift, but anyway), we will never recognize the great gifts when they are given.

Thankfulness has to begin from the moment of consciousness in the morning. For consciousness is itself a gift. When I experience it, I should thank God for it. When you wake up, say "Thank you, Lord, for ..." You may not even know what for immediately. You may be half awake as it is. That's okay. It will come to you.

Think about the number of people in this world who respond to their alarm clocks by uttering some profanity. "Son of a b--, shut up clock," etc. How would you prefer to wake up in the morning? The sad thing is many people aren't even aware that they have a choice. That's right. A choice.

Anger and cynicism are not involuntary muscle spasms. They are decisions we make at every moment that we grumble and criticize and dismiss. Real happiness and thankfulness are not the products of brainwashing. They are decisions we make every time we allow some little thing, or some great God, to make us smile inwardly, and outwardly.

It's a choice. Between waking up and spouting swear words and waking up immediately saying "Thank you," immediately setting the tone for our whole day.

If you haven't done it before, or if it's been a while, try it, and see what happens.

Thank you for reading. *high five*