Why Pray?

[joshrp]

Hi,

I made a blog post about why we should pray. The blog is here : catholicjoyofjesus.wordpress.com/2011/11/13/why-pray/

I will copy and paste the contents which are not long, in this thread. If anyone wants to, they can subscribe to my blog on the website linked to above, or you can send me a private message with your email, as I am compiling an email list of people who want to receive updates when I post to my blog.

As far as this thread goes, let me know if you have any further insight on this subject.

But here is what I wrote in this post:
Why do we pray? What is the purpose of prayer? Most simply, prayer is a time to let God fill you with His love for Himself and for all of His children. Prayer is a time for you to ask God to fill you with His love for Himself and for all of His creation. When you pray, do you love more than you did before you started praying? Prayer is nothing without love. A prayer said without love is not …a prayer at all, but a curse upon yourself. And if you do not feel love, ask God for the power to love more and more each day, each time you pray. If you do not love now, it is the beginning of love to ask God to help you to love. For no one can love without God’s help, because “God is love”. People ask all the time, myself included, “How do I pray?” The simple answer is “with love.” Pray with love, for love, of love, to love, and everything else will fall into play. Soon you will begin to enjoy praying more and more, because God will infuse all of your days, all of your minutes, all of your actions, all of your words, with eternal love for Himself and for all whom you meet. And when you pray for others, tell God how much you love them. Prayer is telling God how much you love someone. Don’t forget to tell God how much you love Him too. It is almost impossible to tell someone you love them too often, especially God. You don’t always have to pray for specific things for yourself or for others. Just tell God how much you love them and continually thank God for making all of us, giving us existence, and pouring down His love upon us at every moment of the day.

 

[WoundedIcon]

I’d honestly say that what you wrote is wrong. It sounds nice, but that doesn’t matter. The problem is that feelings are not that important to God. What matters to Him is maturity. And to achieve that maturity - as Catholic mystical theology teaches - sometimes God will sap every last consolation out of your prayer life, your good works… sometimes everything. The Dark Night as they call it. If a person who is experiencing one of these growth periods reads what you’ve written (or talk to a priest who believes similarly) they will be crushed. They’re not cursing themselves just because they can’t stir up warm feelings, and warm feelings don’t matter as much as the One listening. Which is precisely why losing all those feelings and still marching on, I would say, is more meritorious than doing it when it feels good.

 

[Dorothy]

I’d honestly say that what you wrote is wrong. It sounds nice, but that doesn’t matter. The problem is that feelings are not that important to God. What matters to Him is maturity. And to achieve that maturity - as Catholic mystical theology teaches - sometimes God will sap every last consolation out of your prayer life, your good works… sometimes everything. The Dark Night as they call it. If a person who is experiencing one of these growth periods reads what you’ve written (or talk to a priest who believes similarly) they will be crushed. They’re not cursing themselves just because they can’t stir up warm feelings, and warm feelings don’t matter as much as the One listening. Which is precisely why losing all those feelings and still marching on, I would say, is more meritorious than doing it when it feels good.

Your last two sentences sums up the dark night beautifully!

 

[fred_conty]

Prayer - THE GREAT MEANS OF SALVATION AND OF PERFECTION
He says it all right here.
St. Alphonsus Maria De Liguori
ourladyswarriors.org/prayer/mustpray.htm

n Spiritual Reading - St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori
ourladyswarriors.org/saints/ligoread.htm

 

[Kathryn_Ann]

**Just paraphrasing here, but in the movie “Shadowlands,” C.S. Lewis (played by Anthony Hopkins) says it best:

We pray, not to change God, but to change ourselves.:harp:

And I would add, that we pray to become more like the children Whom God our Father wants us to be. It’s a yearning that is holy and good.**
:angel1:

 

[joshrp]

I’d honestly say that what you wrote is wrong. It sounds nice, but that doesn’t matter. The problem is that feelings are not that important to God. What matters to Him is maturity. And to achieve that maturity - as Catholic mystical theology teaches - sometimes God will sap every last consolation out of your prayer life, your good works… sometimes everything. The Dark Night as they call it. If a person who is experiencing one of these growth periods reads what you’ve written (or talk to a priest who believes similarly) they will be crushed. They’re not cursing themselves just because they can’t stir up warm feelings, and warm feelings don’t matter as much as the One listening. Which is precisely why losing all those feelings and still marching on, I would say, is more meritorious than doing it when it feels good.

I never said anything about feelings. Love is not a feeling, it is an act of the will. I have never once in my life referred to love as being a feeling. You can love or do something with love without ever feeling that you would call love but still be making an act of love in your prayer.

 

[joshrp]

I’d honestly say that what you wrote is wrong. It sounds nice, but that doesn’t matter. The problem is that feelings are not that important to God. What matters to Him is maturity. And to achieve that maturity - as Catholic mystical theology teaches - sometimes God will sap every last consolation out of your prayer life, your good works… sometimes everything. The Dark Night as they call it. If a person who is experiencing one of these growth periods reads what you’ve written (or talk to a priest who believes similarly) they will be crushed. They’re not cursing themselves just because they can’t stir up warm feelings, and warm feelings don’t matter as much as the One listening. Which is precisely why losing all those feelings and still marching on, I would say, is more meritorious than doing it when it feels good.

Love is an act of the will, always. The only reason I would encourage having feelings of love is that it makes it easier for one to love others as an act of the will. But you can be full of love without feeling any consolations. And I think a lot of Catholics abuse St. John of the Cross’s idea of the Dark Night. Love is a principle of action, not a feeling. If you are not praying in order to be able to act with love for God and for neighbor, you need to change your priorities in your prayer. Prayer is about an increase of love and nothing else. You can sit there in misery of some so called “dark night” all you want but if you do not have the INTENTION to love at least, then your prayer is like a tinkling cymbal or a sounding gong, like St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13. I said in this post “If you do not feel love” once, but for the fact that you do not have to have feelings of love in order to love. If someone is going through a dark night period of growth, and that is what God wants them to go through, then fine, but my point is that when you pray, you have to ask that God fills you with His CAPACITY to love others. If all a person is doing is moping in what they are told is a dark night, and they don’t make the effort to ask God to help them act in love towards others, are they really growing, or are they just pitying themselves. I’ve been in plenty of dark nights. But I’ve always asked God to help me love Him and His children more, and that was the point of what I was writing here. In fact I wrote this while I was feeling quite sad and lonely. Some of the most useful times of prayer were accompanied by feelings of great desolation. But they were only useful because I always said to God in some form “Lord, I want to love, I feel horrible right now, but I come to You because I don’t want these feelings of misery to get in the way of me radiating joy to other people, regardless of how I feel. I want to reflect your love and kindness in such a way that people know that you are kind and loving, even and especially in what You did while You were dying on a miserable Cross. Without love, I am nothing. And without sharing Your love with others, I am wasting what You have done for us, with Your life, death, and resurrection. Do not let my feelings of pain and suffering get in the way or prevent me from loving others and giving them good reason to love You. Help me in my actions to love others explicitly in Your name and always give You glory and lead others to Your Holy Kingdom.”

This post was written explicitly to help people focus on the need to be filled with the capacity to love God and others with their wills, especially when they are feeling miserable. I was feeling miserable before I wrote this. But I need to be able to inspire others to be joyful. If my misery is bringing other people sadness, and not joy, then it is no dark night but a kind of selfishness.

One thing that has struck me is that many people seem to act as if they are being paid large sums of money to be miserable. It is almost like there is some contest that will award a quadrillion dollars for every day of the rest of one’s life to the winner and to each of their descendents to the person who is judged to be most miserable in the world.

Mother Teresa experienced a Dark Night for decades, but as far as I know, she never advertised it. She always told people in her speeches and books, that we need to “radiate joy”. Read Mother Teresa’s book “Total Surrender”.

 

[WoundedIcon]

Love is an act of the will, always. The only reason I would encourage having feelings of love is that it makes it easier for one to love others as an act of the will. But you can be full of love without feeling any consolations. And I think a lot of Catholics abuse St. John of the Cross’s idea of the Dark Night. Love is a principle of action, not a feeling. If you are not praying in order to be able to act with love for God and for neighbor, you need to change your priorities in your prayer. Prayer is about an increase of love and nothing else. You can sit there in misery of some so called “dark night” all you want but if you do not have the INTENTION to love at least, then your prayer is like a tinkling cymbal or a sounding gong, like St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13. I said in this post “If you do not feel love” once, but for the fact that you do not have to have feelings of love in order to love. If someone is going through a dark night period of growth, and that is what God wants them to go through, then fine, but my point is that when you pray, you have to ask that God fills you with His CAPACITY to love others. If all a person is doing is moping in what they are told is a dark night, and they don’t make the effort to ask God to help them act in love towards others, are they really growing, or are they just pitying themselves. I’ve been in plenty of dark nights. But I’ve always asked God to help me love Him and His children more, and that was the point of what I was writing here. In fact I wrote this while I was feeling quite sad and lonely. Some of the most useful times of prayer were accompanied by feelings of great desolation. But they were only useful because I always said to God in some form “Lord, I want to love, I feel horrible right now, but I come to You because I don’t want these feelings of misery to get in the way of me radiating joy to other people, regardless of how I feel. I want to reflect your love and kindness in such a way that people know that you are kind and loving, even and especially in what You did while You were dying on a miserable Cross. Without love, I am nothing. And without sharing Your love with others, I am wasting what You have done for us, with Your life, death, and resurrection. Do not let my feelings of pain and suffering get in the way or prevent me from loving others and giving them good reason to love You. Help me in my actions to love others explicitly in Your name and always give You glory and lead others to Your Holy Kingdom.”

This post was written explicitly to help people focus on the need to be filled with the capacity to love God and others with their wills, especially when they are feeling miserable. I was feeling miserable before I wrote this. But I need to be able to inspire others to be joyful. If my misery is bringing other people sadness, and not joy, then it is no dark night but a kind of selfishness.

One thing that has struck me is that many people seem to act as if they are being paid large sums of money to be miserable. It is almost like there is some contest that will award a quadrillion dollars for every day of the rest of one’s life to the winner and to each of their descendents to the person who is judged to be most miserable in the world.

Mother Teresa experienced a Dark Night for decades, but as far as I know, she never advertised it. She always told people in her speeches and books, that we need to “radiate joy”. Read Mother Teresa’s book “Total Surrender”.

Sorry about that, joshrp. When I responded as I did I was in a bit of a tiff about the sappy music at Mass and it kind of set me off. I’m not trying to hold on to misery, it’s just that when I go through a Dark Night it’s usually extreme (and trust me, I’ve read St. John’s works and have been hit out of nowhere by suicidal scrupulosity, extreme temptations, no answered prayers, and an utter lack of ability to enjoy “sensual” things.) And as a person on the autistic spectrum I have a hard time with the more heart-oriented side of the faith in the first place. I just can’t feel like others do, I usually go head-first, not head over heels. So I get kind of touchy when I think someone’s trying to say that I need to be a way that I can’t be. Not that you were.

 

[joshrp]

Sorry about that, joshrp. When I responded as I did I was in a bit of a tiff about the sappy music at Mass and it kind of set me off. I’m not trying to hold on to misery, it’s just that when I go through a Dark Night it’s usually extreme (and trust me, I’ve read St. John’s works and have been hit out of nowhere by suicidal scrupulosity, extreme temptations, no answered prayers, and an utter lack of ability to enjoy “sensual” things.) And as a person on the autistic spectrum I have a hard time with the more heart-oriented side of the faith in the first place. I just can’t feel like others do, I usually go head-first, not head over heels. So I get kind of touchy when I think someone’s trying to say that I need to be a way that I can’t be. Not that you were.

I understand completely what you mean, and I have Asperger’s Syndrome. For me, I have often been all against reducing faith and love to mere emotionalism. That’s one of the reasons I love Pope Benedict, because he is such an intellectual giant with pure faith and love for the Lord. Love does not have to be sensual whatsoever. In fact, I wrote this specifically against the belief that love has to be sensual in order to be love. Love sanctifies us, it does not have to make us feel good. If someone has to feel good in order to make an act of love, or if they only “love” in order to feel good, they are not loving whatseover. Love that seeks oneself is not love at all, but self-centered infatuation with the good someone can do for oneself, and not with the good that one can do for the other.