Our associate's homily this evening

[Rayne2Step]

Wanted to share a small part of our associate pastor’s homily from this evening. To summarize he was speaking of offering our heart to GOD in total self giving. His quote which got me to thinking now is “distractions in prayer are the things our heart is attached to”. I welcome good discussion on how to build off that. Peace be with all of you.

 

[adgloriam]

Tough issue. Attachment touches on ourselves and all aspects of being in the world. It’s also related to detachment and abandonment to God. But again, how are you to detach form everything? Putting to lesser importance everything except God.

It’s quite an exercise, without falling into nihilism. Perhaps one of the limit exceptions that illustrates the difficulty is family, since -being God given- you are to be intrinsically attached and simultaneously detached. One flesh, one bone, and one blood, attached whilst detached - both.

One priest gave a very good conference on the subject.

 

[Rayne2Step]

Thank you for posting. I have watched it and its very well done. Learned about myself and my interaction with my 20 year old son. Peace be with you

 

[adgloriam]

Thank you for posting.

No problem, my pleasure.

Perhaps one of the most striking aspects mentioned in the video is the relation between sorrow and attachments. Meaning you can always remit any sorrow you feel to some attachment as its origin. That in turn opens vast possibilities of self-analyses, since all sadness one experiences can be traced back to an attachment and that opens new perspectives on the gift of the Holy spirit that is Joy. All the more significant since both depression and anxiety are major problems of our time, and indeed everyone will experience sorrow at one point. In that light, sorrow serves a purpose (as the video states) in remitting us back towards God - and thus lends sense to sorrow because sorrow’s apparent senselessness adds to sorrow.

I also found it especially significant that sorrow can’t exactly be translated to a single word in the romance languages but requires a set of words to be described that aren’t exactly synonymous among themselves.

It does make for quite a reflection.

 

[Rayne2Step]

I have never thought of sorrow as something good but it makes sense. Thinking about how the purpose of sorrow would tie into the 7 sorrows of Mary. Or would that be a different use for the word ? Very interesting. I always thought of sorrow as only a condition/feeling.

 

[adgloriam]

Thinking about how the purpose of sorrow would tie into the 7 sorrows of Mary.

And I had never thought of that in that way ! Very good Marian connection on the question of sorrow. Thanks @Rayne2Step.

 

[otrrl]

I find that most of my distractions during prayer are external. If I try to pray along with a recorded rosary, I get distracted by the background music (why do they have it?) or there may be one person in a group who is saying the prayers in a sing-song fashion, to stand out and be a distraction.

I have PTSD and I get bothered by things that don’t bother others. It’s called hyper-something, like hypersensitivity (only that’s not the word). Hyper-vigilance - that’s it.

So…it is me plus something “out there” that distracts me.

When I was a kid, my mother used to do things to antagonize me. She knew how to push my buttons and she tried all the time. So, I’m sensitized to things that annoy me, like people talking in church before Mass. The Holy Father has spoken about this often, not chatting in church, but it has no effect in the local churches. So few people are attending church as it is, I think the priests are looking at the bottom line and aren’t going to correct those who are doing what they’re not supposed to do in church.

 

[Rayne2Step]

Very sorry you don’t have better memories of child hood. Will think of you during my prayer. Peace be with you