OCTOBER 5, 2011
DAILY PRAYER WITH REGNUM CHRISTI

PRAYER HAS AN IMPORTANT PLACE IN OUR CONTINUING CONVERSION
Father James Swanson, LC
Luke 11:1-4
Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, one
of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray just as John
taught his disciples." He said to them, "When you pray, say: Father,
hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily
bread and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in
debt to us, and do not subject us to the final test."
INTRODUCTORY PRAYER: Lord Jesus, you are the master of the universe,
and yet you wish to listen to me and guide me. You know all things
past, present and future, and yet you respect my freedom to choose
you. Holy Trinity, you are completely happy and fulfilled on your
own, and yet you have generously brought us into existence. You are
our fulfillment. Thank you for the gift of yourself. I offer the
littleness of myself in return, knowing you are pleased with what I
have to give.
PETITION: Lord, teach me through the "Our Father" to pray more
deeply.
1. TRADITIONAL PRAYERS TEACH US THE CORRECT ATTITUDES TO HAVE
TOWARDS GOD: What better prayer could we devise than a prayer using
the very words Jesus taught us here? Yet the "Our Father" is a
traditional prayer, a prayer with set words, prone to be recited
merely by rote. But in fact, traditional prayers are an invitation
to meditate, set up in a way that appeals to beginners. In the "Our
Father", as in all traditional prayers, we repeat phrases that
express the essence of a correct relationship with God. Whether we
already hold these attitudes in our heart or not, the beauty of
traditional prayers is not what we say, but how we say it. If we
pray these words, trying to make them our own, conforming our heart
with the attitudes they express, then little by little we will form a
Christian heart, a heart that loves the way it should.
2. TRADITIONAL PRAYERS CAN CHANGE MY HEART AND DRAW IT TO GOD: When
I first turned to the Lord, I had a lot to work on. Most people do.
I didn't love the way I should have. I was flawed in many other ways.
One of the things that helped me was the "Our Father" as well as
other traditional prayers. When we first come to the Lord, we don't
know how Christians should think, what attitudes a Christian should
hold. When we pray the "Our Father" from the heart, it helps our
heart to change, to become more Christ-like. It takes only a moment
to pray an "Our Father", but from time to time, we should meditate on
the words. Say each phrase and repeat it, not moving on to the next
phrase until we feel that we have really gotten to the bottom of
what it is saying.
3 TRADITIONAL PRAYERS FIGHT OFF THE ATTITUDES OF THE WORLD: Our
conversion to Christ is a change of attitudes from those of the world
to those of a Christian. Every day, the world proposes its attitudes
as something good that should be lived. But often what the world
proposes as good is actually harmful to us. How do we resist? By
constantly repeating to myself and meditating on Christian attitudes.
This is what can happen in using traditional prayers. It is a way of
helping our heart understand and embrace the Christianity we profess.
The Christian who disdains traditional prayers is rejecting a powerful
tool of conversion.
CONVERSATION WITH CHRIST: Dear Jesus, too often I rattle off my
prayers without thinking about the attitudes they contain. I want to
get the full benefit of all the prayers I say every day. I want to
pray these prayers more often, especially the "Our Father," since it
is the prayer that you, yourself, taught me.
RESOLUTION: Today I will pray my traditional prayers with special
attention and with the conviction that they will instruct me and
change me in a way that leads me closer to God.
meditation.regnumchristi.org

October 5 St. Maria Faustina Kowalska (1905-1938)

St. Maria Faustina's name is forever linked to the annual feast of the Divine Mercy (celebrated on the Second Sunday of Easter), the divine mercy chaplet and the divine mercy prayer recited each day by many people at 3 p.m. Born in what is now west-central Poland (part of Germany before World War I), Helena was the third of 10 children. She worked as a housekeeper in three cities before joining the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in 1925. She worked as a cook, gardener and porter in three of their houses.
In addition to carrying out her work faithfully, generously serving the needs of the sisters and the local people, she also had a deep interior life. This included receiving revelations from the Lord Jesus, messages that she recorded in her diary at the request of Christ and of her confessors.
www.americancatholic.org/Features/Saints/saint.aspx
At a time when some Catholics had an image of God as such a strict judge that they might be tempted to despair about the possibility of being forgiven, Jesus chose to emphasize his mercy and forgiveness for sins acknowledged and confessed. “I do not want to punish aching mankind,” he once told St. Maria Faustina, “but I desire to heal it, pressing it to my merciful heart” (Diary 1588). The two rays emanating from Christ's heart, she said, represent the blood and water poured out after Jesus' death (Gospel of John 19:34)
Because Sister Maria Faustina knew that the revelations she had already received did not constitute holiness itself, she wrote in her diary: “Neither graces, nor revelations, nor raptures, nor gifts granted to a soul make it perfect, but rather the intimate union of the soul with God. These gifts are merely ornaments of the soul, but constitute neither its essence nor its perfection. My sanctity and perfection consist in the close union of my will with the will of God” (Diary 1107).
Sister Maria Faustina died of tuberculosis in Krakow, Poland, on October 5, 1938. Pope John Paul II beatified her in 1993 and canonized her seven years later.