St. Augustine on "Praying in The Spirit"

[BarbaraTherese]

The quote in the quote box below is taken from the Second Reading in the Office of Readings for Tuesday, 23rd. October.

The Church teaches and always drawing on Scripture, which is vast indeed, that God is forever and always and faithfully providing what we do need. We may not indeed receive that for which we actually ask/hope for, but we always receive what we actually need. What is for our best and the best and this can be a great mystery and indeed a very great burden and much suffering. As Jesus prayed in Gethsamane “Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me, but not My Will but Thine be done” Jesus did not receive what He actually asked for but He understood that His Father knew what was for the best. The Father too knew the Deepest Heart and Desire of His Son and that was His Love for us and ardent desire (“I have longed to eat this Passover with you”) to save mankind and conquer death opening Heaven for all. About to be faced with the reality of it all, crucifixion - a terrible death and the most cruel and most inhuman method of murder/execution ever devised by man - tthe absolutely human Heart of Jesus would be afraid and ask for deliverance if possible. Jesus was afraid to the point of sweating drops of blood and it is known (contemporary science) that under the most extreme stress it is possible to sweat blood.
To watch a man dying of crucifixion was horrific - totally horrific and yet Mary stayed with Her Son until the end…that is a thought to bring tears.

“Jesus meek and humble of Heart, make our hearts like unto Thine”.
“I will take your hearts of stone and grant you hearts of flesh”
We are baptized into Christ “no man can be better than his master” and “we make up in our own bodies
what was lacking in the sufferings of Christ”

universalis.com/20071023/readings.htm
Reading A letter to Proba by St Augustine
On the Lord’s Prayer

We need to use words so that we may remind ourselves to consider carefully what we are asking, not so that we may think we can instruct the Lord or prevail on him.
Thus, when we say: Hallowed be your name, we are reminding ourselves to desire that his name, which in fact is always holy, should also be considered holy among men. I mean that it should not be held in contempt. But this is a help for men, not for God.
And as for our saying: Your kingdom come, it will surely come whether we will it or not. But we are stirring up our desires for the kingdom so that it can come to us and we can deserve to reign there.
When we say: Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we are asking him to make us obedient so that his will may be done in us as it is done in heaven by his angels.
When we say: Give us this day our daily bread, in saying this day we mean “in this world”. Here we ask for a sufficiency by specifying the most important part of it; that is, we use the word “bread” to stand for everything. Or else we are asking for the sacrament of the faithful, which is necessary in this world, not to gain temporal happiness but to gain the happiness that is everlasting.
When we say: Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, we are reminding ourselves of what we must ask and what we must do in order to be worthy in turn to receive.
When we say: Lead us not into temptation, we are reminding ourselves to ask that his help may not depart from us; otherwise we could be seduced and consent to some temptation, or despair and yield to it.

When we say: Deliver us from evil, we are reminding ourselves to reflect on the fact that we do not yet enjoy the state of blessedness in which we shall suffer no evil. This is the final petition contained in the Lord’s Prayer, and it has a wide application. In this petition the Christian can utter his cries of sorrow, in it he can shed his tears, and through it he can begin, continue and conclude his prayer, whatever the distress in which he finds himself. Yes, it was very appropriate that all these truths should be entrusted to us to remember in these very words.

Whatever be the other words we may prefer to say (words which the one praying chooses so that his disposition may become clearer to himself or which he simply adopts so that his disposition may be intensified), we say nothing that is not contained in the Lord’s Prayer, provided of course we are praying in a correct and proper way. But if anyone says something which is incompatible with this prayer of the Gospel, he is praying in the flesh, even if he is not praying sinfully. And yet I do not know how this could be termed anything but sinful,

since those who are born again through the Spirit ought to pray only in the Spirit.

 

[BarbaraTherese]

If anyone should be interested in the daily prayers and liturgy of the day including the Gospel and Readings at Mass including online texts of The Office of Readings (from which the Opening Post quotation was taken), Morning and Evening as well as Night Prayer for each day, also the particular mystery for the day with an Online Rosary for the particular mystery of the day, the thread is located at:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=188361

in this Spirituality Forum…and all being well is updated on a daily basis. Each new month will be a new thread.
If anyone has any questions I know a thread in the appropriate forum will bring all the right replies. It can all be very confusing when one is first beginning … and everyone has a time that was the first beginning. There is also the PM facility which is often very handy in that it is private and is meant to be kept private.
Asking questions can always be helpful to others and one can never know just how helpful as some read posts and are helped, but may not comment. Sometimes we prefer privacy; hence the PM facility.

I am pretty sure I will be absent from CAF, in the main anyway and I am now off school holidays too. I’ll be mainly I think absent for about the next 24 hours or so and it will take a bit of time, I am supposing, to catch up with things. Apologies for any inconvenience. I will be keeping the daily prayers and liturgy updated as normal, I am planning thus anyway.

Blessings and God’s Peace and Joy…Barb