The Mountain Journey of Prayer

The following is from a recent presentation given to a local youth group on Prayer & Friendship with God.

Mt Princeton, Elv. 14,197

It’s evident within the life of the Church that prayer has been around for quite some time now. It’s not a new thing, nor is it perfected in any particular way. Since the beginning, it has involved connection, intimacy and unity with God. Take a look at some of the prayers from Old Testament figures like Moses, who cried out to God on behalf of the people he was leading out of slavery. Or David, who desperately asked God for help in the Psalms. In these prayers, emotion and affectivity is portrayed. Sorrow, intimacy and longing is what many of these figures went through and for them, that was a prayer. Now the Church has many different types and expressions of prayer that can help one grow in grace and relationship with God and every one of them is a great thing! Prayers of Adoration, Contrition, Thanksgiving or Service (ACTS). There’s blessing prayers, petition prayers, intercessory prayers, the list goes on and on…Religious orders have different expressions of prayer that fall under their charisms. Vocal, meditative and contemplative are the most common. What I’m getting at is that prayer is not a walk in the park. It involves work and it involves presence. It doesn’t matter which type or expression fits you best, if its done without any intention or whole-heartedness then we are preventing our prayer from being the fullest expression that it was meant to be. 

So what should happen in prayer? What’s necessary?

I remember one Monday morning one of the brothers came up to me. He was tired, looked exhausted, and as he was looking around for something to eat for breakfast, he turns to me in his thick Ethiopian accent and says, “You know, Monday is like climbing mountain” There’s truth to that, and I think the same can be said about the prayer life. Similar to climbing a mountain, It involves work and sweat. We have baggage, things that should be thrown out along the way. We experience doubts and fears, even temptations to turn around. But in the midst of it all we are being led to a peaceful, serene and breathtaking place where we are able experience the sublime presence of God: the Summit

What I’ve noticed throughout my personal experience of prayer is that it really involves four components. Without these four things, my prayer life is nothing. Think of climbing that Monday-mountain.

Window Rock, AZ

Longing

Our prayer life should involve a type of longing. We should desire a unity with God with all our hearts. We should long to see God face to face on this mountain journey (Deut 5:4). The psalms use the word ‘longing’ as something necessary or vital for us, like a thirst that needs to be quenched; the deer that longs for running water in Psalm 42. By longing to experience God we also make it clear that we want to experience what will give our souls true fulfillment and completion. This is only found in God and the longing for that encounter is the start of every prayer. If we aren’t longing for God in prayer, it can be very easy to dismiss ourselves. At that point prayer becomes a ritual where we get in, do what’s necessary and get out. We go through the motions, say what needs to be said and leave. It’s true that God can also work through that, but part of longing for God in prayer is also recognizing that God longs to be with us.

Ascent

Br Joe and I hiking through Kenosa Pass, Co in the Fall of 2017

By ascent, I mean a movement of the heart and mind. There’s an emotional investment involved and it’s more than words. In fact, St. Therese of Lisieux writes that for her, prayer is a “surge of the heart”. The Catechism says that prayer should be a “rising of one’s mind and heart to God” (2559). Even our very own Capuchin Constitutions describes prayer as the “breathing of love stirred into life by the Holy Spirit through whom the inner man begins to listen to the voice of God speaking to his heart.” (Capuchin Constitutions 45.1) Our prayer life needs to be an ascent toward Christ. This part of the mountain journey involves time and perseverance through pain, struggle, weakness and doubt. In order for us to make that ascent in prayer, it requires constant care, effort, faithfulness, dedication and strength. Remember, you’re climbing a mountain! it’s not going to be easy. It involves the work that St. Paul describes as praying unceasingly (1 Thes 5:16). During this ascent, we begin to realize our flaws, our imperfections, distractions become apparent, we struggle, and because of our fears and doubts we are tempted to turn around and head back. We want to check out of prayer completely. The crisis is that in the suffering and pain that we experience, God appears not in anyway present to us, we lose sight of his love, his faithfulness and we stop praying. The solution is perseverance, constant use of the sacraments, patience in prayer, time in prayer and again, remembering our longing to experience God. This leads to the third.

Br. Alex and I at the Gore Range Overlook just outside
of Estes Park, Co

Honesty

It’s important to pray with honesty. Be honest with God in your prayer and be honest with yourself. Take a look at your fears, the things that bring you shame or doubt and present that to God in your prayer. Take it to Jesus. Take it to the Cross. Honesty in prayer is about recognizing your own brokenness, admitting to it and allowing God the time to transform it. The beauty is that God knows everything that is on our hearts, He knows us through and through. But just like a father’s love, He gives us the opportunity to come to him on our own. An honest prayer, is being able to own up to our imperfections with humility. Sometimes that means admitting to ourselves that we need the help of God each and everyday. God wants us to be able to turn to him in our every need. He wants to enter into those voids and heal everything that keeps us from a prayerful relationship with him. At this point in the journey, it would be easy to give in to the voices that remind us of our brokenness. Those voices tell us that because of our imperfections and flaws, we will never be accepted nor can we ever be loved. We become dissatisfied with ourselves and we let that determine our worth. But that’s not true! God is a God of mercy who seeks to transform every one of those imperfections that we see in ourselves. All we need is to be honest, be humble and let God in on those sufferings in prayer. Honesty in prayer is where we find our identity in Christ. That discovery comes by allowing God to shed light on our lives, and admitting to the pain in our lives.

Presence

Presence in prayer is about allow God the chance to reveal himself. It is being completely immersed in the workings of God in the now. I like to compare this part of the journey with the experience of finally reaching the summit of the mountain. In that moment, you feel victorious, confident, a sense of freedom and invigorating peace. God asks us to remain there and completely surrender our distractions. It’s there that we unpack, we encounter, and experience God by simply recognizing God in our stillness (Ps 46:10). God asks that we be present to him in prayer, that we recognize his presence in our lives and whole-heartedly allow him to reveal himself to us. During the transfiguration, after Peter, James and John had experienced the glory and dazzling brightness of God, they were completely moved by the experience that they didn’t want to leave (Lk 9:28-34). In our prayer life, we should have the heart of Peter; totally moved by the presence of God that we desperately want to prepare a tent for Him within our hearts, begging him to spend the night. Recognize God’s presence in your life, and prepare a place for him to remain. God wants to reveal himself to you, he wants to speak to you. By being present in prayer, we are surrendering to the workings of the spirit and the life of grace. This takes patience, endurance, and total trust in God’s divine plan. Essentially, remaining in the presence of God in prayer is about awareness, recognition and seeing. It is recognizing with the heart, that the spirit of God is alive and active in this moment, and in this place.

Basically, what I’ve come to understand about my own prayer life is that it requires a certain type of longing; a longing for peace, maybe answers, a longing to be always united with God. It also involves an ascent of the heart, mind and soul; like incense rising up, it needs to be a movement that perseveres through any doubts or discouragements, it needs persistence. Thirdly, prayer should be about honesty with myself, coming to terms with any imperfections; an element of affective prayer that can help unveil our identity in Christ. Lastly, prayer demands a whole-hearted presence, one that involves surrender and seeks an encounter with God by reflecting on the ways he is present in the now. Try these out next time you're in prayer. 

+Br. Vince Mary

Stigmata of St. Francis: 3 ways toward holiness

When Saint Francis received the Stigmata or the Holy wounds of Christ, one can say that this was God’s way of answering the prayer of Francis. He asked God for two things. One, to let him experience the suffering Christ endured on the Holy Cross and two, for him to experience the love in which He did it. Receiving the Sacred Stigmata was an experience that led Francis to be totally transformed, leaving in his heart a marvelous fire in the remaining years of his life.

According to the writings of Saint Bonaventure, Saint Francis was “led by divine providence to a high place apart called Mount La Verna.” (FAED II, Ch. 12) Two years before his death, in what was his usual custom of fasting for 40 days in honor of Saint Michael the Archangel, Saint Francis would “experience more abundantly than usual an overflow of the sweetness of heavenly contemplations.” (FAED II, Ch. 12)

In the days of the Exaltation of the Cross, Saint Francis was praying on the mountainside of Mt. La Verna and he saw a six-winged seraph, fiery as well as brilliant, descend from the grandeur of Heaven. Bonaventure writes, as the vision was disappearing, it left in his heart [Francis] a marvelous fire and imprinted in his flesh a likeness of signs no less marvelous. The Sacred Stigmata of the Crucified Christ were now embroidered into St. Francis and the mark of Christ’s love were now visible to him and all who were around him. Here are some lessons from Francis’ experience that can help us in our own journey towards holiness.

Be Marked 

Be Marked by the love of the Beloved. Bonaventure tells us that it was a custom of St. Francis to never rest from lifting himself up in prayer. He was always found in prayer, seeking the solitude of the quiet he would frequently go off to pray. He made himself available to God by his own desire to be transformed by God. He prayed out of perfect joy and perfect love, because of this, the very marks of Christ’s wounds were engraved in him. The beauty is that God wants to make His mark in us, He wants to trace us with His love and respond to our reaching hearts. The mark may not be a physical mark but an indelible, unfading and enduring mark of love and unity. The challenge, is allowing God to transform our lives just like He did for St. Francis. If you haven’t yet, allow God to make his Mark within you, and trust that through that mark, your life will be a fulfillment of His love, and a mark of discipleship. By this mark of love, we can enter into a relationship of prayer with Jesus Christ.

Gaze on the Crucified Christ

When Francis witnessed the six-winged seraph, he immediately recognized the likeness of a man crucified. His hands and feet both extended in the form of a cross. At this, he eventually would learn that he would be transformed into the likeness of Christ crucified not by death but by the enkindling of his soul. Francis gazed on the Crucified Christ and it allowed him to be transformed. We can look on Christ crucified and recognize a poor, humble God who is the ultimate example of humility. The gaze for us is having an openness to God through the embrace of our hearts so that we too, can be transformed by the very seraphic spirit of God. It is a call to encounter God not only in the cross, but also in the suffering of our own humanity. By this gaze, we can have a real connection with those who are poor, those who are suffering, and those who are in fact, wounded in our own societies. It can also be a connection with ourselves who are often dead and broken from the effects of sin. In either one, the gaze on the Crucified Christ can guide us into a complete transformation out of ourselves and into the realm of the other, regarding their poverty, woundedness, suffering and lowliness with love. This is what St. Francis did. And it’s what Jesus did!

“In my deepest wound, I saw your glory and it dazzled me.” -St. Augustine

Look to the Cross

In Francis’ experience of the six-wing seraph, not only did he see a man who had been crucified, but he saw a man who has fastened to a cross. In Francis’s life, and even in today’s Franciscan spirituality, the cross is a constant source of prayer. Francis had a deep love for the Cross and for him it was a reminder of when Christ first spoke to him at Damiano. The cross for us is where we can encounter God’s love, it points us to the Resurrection and the truth that even in the most horrific and excruciating of deaths, God can still triumph. That example of the cross teaches us that despite death, chaos and violence there is in fact, glory, grace and peace. It reminds us that God is always near to us! Lastly, Bonaventure writes that the cross is a place where we can meet God and where the embrace of life with the cross can bring us to the happiness of our desires.

As we remember the Stigmata of St. Francis, may we always remember that Christ is present within us, wanting us to enter into His eternal glory. He places his mark within us and asks that we reach out to Him with a loving embrace in order that we be transformed just like St. Francis.

“Christ on the cross bows his head, waiting for you, that he may kiss you; His arms are outstretched, that he may embrace you, his hands are open, that he may enrich you; his body spread out, that he may give himself totally; his feet nailed, that he may stay there, his side open for you, that he may let you enter there.” -St. Bonaventure

Gift & Grace, Spirit & Sport

It has become very clear to me through the help of my formators, spiritual directors, and brother friars that our lives are full of continuous instances of grace. Grace, in the measure that we recognize its presence, is always moving and is always active. We are moved by grace and we are born into the family of Christ's Mystical Body through the saving acts of Sanctifying Grace in our baptism. The Sanctifying Grace that we experience commonly comes from the seven sacraments offered by the church. Actual grace, seems to me to be the one that we experience at specific times. In prayer, in Eucharistic Adoration, maybe in sunsets or the outdoors, experiences of overwhelming peace and consolations that satisfy our souls I would say, are all examples of actual grace being present in our lives.

Basically, it is the invigorating presence of God allowing us to be moved into love for love of a living God. 

With grace, it's fascinating because we can't see it or touch it. We can, however, feel it emotionally, we can experience it and sense when the presence of God is near us and moving within us. The beauty of it all is that grace is always active in our lives, giving life to every living thing, guiding us in every circumstance and present in everything that we do. Throughout my years of formation I have learned much about the presence of grace and the spirit and my own need to respond to the actions of the spirit in my life.

That grace, is a gift, it is freely given because we are sons and daughters of God. Grace gives us life, the Spirit of God gives us life, and through it we can recognize God coming into our lives, born in our hearts to shatter our darkness and to bring life to a soul that might be dead.

I was reflecting the other day and thinking about the presence of grace, it's gift and how often I forget about it's very presence. How often do I forget about the presence of God and the real necessity to cultivate and train my soul and body to the ways of the spirit? There are many times in our days, in my days, when I might be so caught up with the things that I "need" to get done that I literally make no time to respond to the actions of the spirit. To use an analogy, it would be like somebody knocking at our door at different times of the day, without any answer and that person is virtually left outside, separated from our lives.

"To the Heights" on three!

All this week I was asked by Fr. Chris to help out at a Basketball Camp run by a Catholic based group called Frassati Sports & Adventure. We were invited to lead the group in prayer, help run drills and maybe ref some games. Fr. Chris was available for confessions and we celebrated daily mass throughout the week. It was great seeing these kids play the game and show tremendous improvement from the first day. Some of the drills included fundamentals like dribbling, passing, defensive slides, pick and rolls, communication, shooting forms and then competitions. Throughout the week, we talked about how the game of basketball can be very similar to the spiritual life. How we should be training to improve our game, our skill and our talents, understanding the game can similar to recognizing grace and the beautiful gift that has been given to us.

Whatever sport it may be, the reason that we train is to be the best, to train our muscles by memory, to form a habit and ultimately to conquer. It is the same with heroic virtue, the goal is to develop good habits that create a conviction to do good. "We are training for heaven. Forever!" The beauty is that the gift that we've been given can be formed and cultivated.

Alright so why all of a sudden am I talking about sports and training?

Fr Chris Gama & myself

Well the point is, if we can train our bodies and muscles to perform in our activity through sports, we can also learn to train our hearts, minds and souls to see and receive, the gift of grace and the spirit constantly at work in our lives. See the gift of grace, recognize the gift you've been given, practice it, and never forget that within both, the spirit and the sport, that God can always be glorified to a much greater degree when we are made aware of them. The grace and the spirit of God throughout history has been the help for all of mankind. In the spiritual life, we are slowly chipping away at ourselves with the help of God's grace and love, so that we can come to know ourselves and all that we were made for and from that, we see and recognize a God who points us to Himself. This is the gift of the sport [and the spirit], that by practicing it we see ourselves dimly in a mirror and slowly we begin to uncover the fruit that is being made by the work that has been done. God's working through you in Grace and in Sport. Practice it.

Knowing your Blessings: 3 ways

There is tendency in life to look back on what we've done in life. No matter how many great quotes we read to let our past be our past, there is always that habit of looking back. I always think of Rhafiki off of the Lion King when he says you can either run from it, or learn from it. At times I think I need a stick to the face to wake me up, and help me see what's ahead and those things that I have and others don't. Sometimes, it can be hard to look at life in a positive way when all we see is what we have done. Aside from that great movie, instead of recognizing our past that we so often do, we should recognize the things that we love so much. Recognize our blessings and the things that make us who we are today. Here are three ways I have come up with to help me see the good in my life and alter the bad.

The first is PRAYER.

Learning to build ourselves up in prayer is not an easy thing to do, I struggle with it and I'm sure many of us do. It's a process and takes habit. The joy is that by our prayers, not only are we conforming ourselves to the heart and will of God, but we are also building a foundation for a relationship with the divine; in mind, body and soul. By our prayer and communication to God, we are able to recognize our blessings in a more complete way. But it doesn't end there, we are also able to see those faults and weaknesses that hurt us, for example our sin, or our vices that were once virtues overpowered by pride. Prayer in essence is our communal relationship with God and it allows us to see what breaks us (sin) and what makes us (blessings). 

The second is the EUCHARIST. 

After our prayer we are in relationship to God, however, as long as we are on earth, that relationship will never be in a complete way. Once we recognize those blessings and weaknesses in our lives, we ought to thank God and give him praise because of them. But why would we thank God for our weakness? The fact is that they help us become better. Just by us recognizing that weakness is a sign and movement toward the good. The word Eucharist, comes from the Greek translation of "thanks-giving" and so if you think about it, in our partaking of the Eucharist, we are professing by word and action our thanks to God, Most High. The Eucharist, in its holiness, is a perfect and most sincere way for us to praise and thank God in all He has done. In our partaking we are made alive, and alert. We are awakened and ready to combat those evils that come for us, this comes from us seeing our weaknesses and what truly hurts us the most. 

The third is LOVE OF SELF

In our prayers and thanksgiving, our "true colors" and true vocation will be made known to us. We will see who we really are, and what we are called to be. Before we sign that divine contract as I like to call it, what should be practiced is a love of self, not so much a pride but who you are upon recognizing yourself. Loving yourself and who you are made to be. If we compare ourselves to other people constantly, then what Joy will that bring us. If we learn to love ourselves and the unique characteristics we each have, we can understand that somehow on a spiritual level, we too can be a blessing for another person. As a consequence of our prayer, we learn to accept who we are and see those things that prevent us from loving ourselves, therefore building our spirits up not down. 

In our prayers and relationship to God we are able to recognize our own strengths and weaknesses. God allows us to see those goods and bads. In our participation of the Mass and the Eucharist we are praising Him and giving Him thanks for all that is preparing us. Then, when we love God in our prayer and in the Eucharist we learn to love who we are and who we are called to be by altering those weaknesses for the good. 

Sanctified: Spirit, Body & Soul

For the week I helped out at a Catholic Summer camp in New Mexico with the youth of Amarillo and I can say that it helped me really understand my role as a member of the Church and here's why. There's a message in 1 Thessalonians 5:23, a prayer for us that we be purified and sanctified in our Lord Jesus Christ. It's a calling for us to be out of the ordinary and step outside that box that we've always been living in. So I think the message for us is to be spiritual, and understand what it really means to be sanctified and purified. By that I mean for us to answer and fulfill the prayer that Saint Paul set out for us that we should be sanctified in the spirit, purified through the body, and perfect in the soul. The real only way to be sanctified is through us giving a hundred percent to God everyday that we live, in Prayer, in Mass, by the sacraments and meditation. That all helps us be one with God and ultimately sanctified by his never-ending grace. There's a call to be sanctified in Spirit, that means for us to be open to the Spirit of God, and his graces that he supplies us with everyday. To be sanctified in the Body means for us to never give in to our desires and our passions because in reality it is our desires that please us only for a moment. So the message is for us to crucify the flesh by never turning to what is evil and sinful because sin can separate us from God, our Creator. In the Soul, we are alive and well. It is the soul that gives us life, and the soul that makes us the very image and likeness of God. We should purify our souls by meditating and praising God. Let the mind conquer our emotions and from that the will of God will be revealed to us.

To be Sanctified means to be renewed and cleansed, it was great to be around a fired up youth that require a cleansing and a purification of self and I'm grateful for that. The joy is that by us admitting our faults and our sins we are sanctified and purified by the very sanctifying grace of God through confession. I always love the guilt that is placed inside of me because through it we return to the yard of Christ. We are sanctified all you gotta do is admit and confess with your spirit through grace, abandon the body of sin, and pray to God through the soul that was breathed into us.

Shoutout to everybody that went, Perryton and Sunray! God bless you guys.

Restoring the City of Man; Jerusalem

In our brokenness, there is always room for healing. In God's eyes we can be forgiven of any fault and fall that we've endured. In our sin, there is restoration by God to a spirit a faithfulness and obedience to him. Just as the restoration of Jerusalem is described in Psalm 147, we too, are restored and brought to new life in him. We might feel so unworthy for the love that Christ offers to us because of who we are and maybe where we've been. We might feel so unclean that there is no room to be washed and cleansed but the joy is that in our sin and suffering, there is healing. Healing of a better heart, a better soul, even a better mind! Because in our unworthiness God restores us and still holds us up even after we sin. In this restoration of Jerusalem, or man, God sustains, He provides, he rebuilds, gathers, strengthens, blesses, proclaims and delights in this City. He does all of this for us. God, in our sin, restores us, he sustains us still, and provides for us the necessary grace to return to his yard.

For me in my unworthiness, it can be hard sometimes to be fully devout because I know that I am unworthy of His love. With that, it doesn't mean that I can't be as faithful and obedient as I can be. It is my unworthiness that should allow me to be faithful, obedient and fully devout to God who restores even in all of this. God made us, he built us, why wouldn't he be able to rebuild us in our sin, and restore our relationship with him?

Practice Patience

For the past couple days, I have slowly been realizing that my own patience is one of those virtues that is needed and I can't strive to be better without it. Patience, especially for me is hard, I struggle with inconsistency in my patience. I can tell you that I am not a very patient person, especially when I see something I want. There is inconsistency there because some days I am pretty patient other days, not so much. I get ahead of myself, and want things done, I'm impatient thinking about a couple things like my future, or the days that I am in, and even school now.  I think a big-part of our Christian lives has to do with waiting. Not necessarily waiting on things to happen on their own, but waiting and being patient in our fast-paced lives. When I think about it, we live today in a world that is supplying to our needs, we can get just about anything if we really want to. For example, if we want food, we eat, if we want drink, we drink. The norm is if you want something you can get it. Today with patience I think it applies the same; If we want something, we're so used to having those things placed right in front of us really fast. When we are patient towards receiving, all of a sudden its different for us. Now we have to wait for any sort of delay to pass, wait for things to develop and train our minds to really slow down and get used to the act of waiting itself. The joy is that God who is the cause of all things even our choices allows for us to practice this patience of our own so we can enjoy something even greater in the end. In life, our patience is tested everyday. Last night for me, it was in the McDonald's drive-thru line. Maybe for you its something else, the experience is that in our patience God molds our minds and prepares our soul to be still and quiet to focus on him. In our delay, God prepares us and stills us to experience a far greater joy in the end. We hear in Proverbs that "Patience brings peace." This is true in our lives, for the fisherman, patience is everything and has to be applied on the job, if it ain't, then he is looking at a hard day ahead of him. I have to remind myself constantly that I'm not here on my own time, If we did what we wanted when we wanted all the time then what room do we have for that growth of peace and stillness that we need to experience Christ? So far I have learned that Patience is not only training but it helps us also learn to submit ourselves to the will of the Father and not our own. When we are patient, the outward sign is that we are placing ourselves at the foot of the cross and we are allowing the one true God to do with us according to His will. This is the true meaning of patience.
 
I remember the scripture from Psalm 46:10
"Be still and know that I am God"

Your Joy is My Joy.

It's the start of another school year and there's a bit of a joy in that. Joy for the start of something great, and maybe joy for the end of something not so great. The cool thing is that somewhere, somehow there's joy to be found and 'recycled' if you would. I think Joy is one of those words that travels within, almost like this hylemorphic word like a body and soul. if you think about it, one could never really experience joy unless it is through someone else. There has to be someone to deliver that joy and there has to be someone else to receive it. Sound right?...Well praise God for making us in his image, that is perfect in our human form. That could only mean a couple of things, since God is perfect in all things that means he's perfect even in Joy. We hold that same Joy in each of us, we were created with it, we were created to be happy, and to strive to be happy and joyful. Not only strive to be, but to find it and sort of counter it for all to experience. One great mission we have is to allow people to experience the peace and joy that we have so that they can experience Christ who is the perfect Joy, and is the Perfect peace. Being back at school for a lot of us, we have a pretty neat opportunity to mirror our joy within us and bring out the joy in others. That is why for us humans, we need physical and visual aids. We have to be able to touch people, give them hugs and high 5's and waves. We have to be able to see people and see those waves and see those smiles that are given. If we don't then how can we really receive the Joy that is offered to us by Christ. If we are cooped up by ourselves all day, we are putting a barrier between a chance to fully experience Joy and what it can really do for us. For me, it's great to be back at school to experience some of these things because not only do I try and give out joy to others but most of the time it's other people doing it for me that makes me want to go out an share the same joy that has been given to me! It's like a fire that is shared through candles, once yours is lit, there's no other option but to go an lite another. It gives you a great desire to go out and experience Joy through your friends and your peers just so you can go and share with another the exact same joy. It makes you want to see people and find that joy. We have nothing to lose so why not experience Joy.