Saturday, February 25, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Mental prayer
Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me, for I am afflicted and poor. Keep my life, for I am devoted to you; save your servant who trusts in you. You are my God.
Father Anthony is bilingual. On Ash Wednesday at St. Patrick’s Church in Urbana he prayed over the elements in Spanish, and delivered his homily in English. The Spanish was beautiful music to me, since I couldn’t understand it but knew what it meant. I heard responsive murmerings in the congregation from the Hispanic families.
“Lent might have sneaked up on you,” he said. “We have been busy and our prayers have been busy too.”
Now it seems it is time to rest, to participate as the springtime comes (Lent literally means “springtime”). Let this springtime slip into your prayer, as seeds all around us sprout, and grow. Practice the gifts of prayer, fasting and giving. Watch and learn.
If you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted, then light shall rise for you in the darkness. The Lord will guide you always and give you plenty even in a parched land. He shall renew your strength, and you shall be like a watered garden, a spring whose water never fails.
Father Anthony’s homily offered all of us a chance to pray in a quiet, inviting-spring way. Giving credit to St. Teresa of Avila for the idea of “mental prayer,” he turned down the lights and asked us to practice this way of prayer for a few moments.
Imagine God whispering three things to us, he said, and then take time to respond.
- I want to give you special graces during Lent. I began to talk about my sense of lostness, my lost coin, my lost sheep, myself as a lost son. God reminded me of his prodigal fatherness, asked me to breathe deeply and realize myself in the peacefulness of this moment. No matter what has already been lost. Now I have been found.
- I want you to enter thoughtfully into Lent. Of course, Lord, I want to slow down my breathing and my behavior, and be still. Let the thoughts that emerge from stillness stay with me longer than they usually do. Let me wade through my monkey minded chaos, time and again, and let my fretfulness fall away. Fall into the deep pool of Lent.
- Will you give Me permission to enter and stir up your heart, and draw you close to me? Oh! That takes my breath away. Like I am listening to God as Solomon did in his Song. as I listen deep into the night for the breathing of my wife, sleeping in peace. As I watch Jasper and Miles, asleep, often holding each other, keeping it together. Yes, Lord. Come in and stir up my emotions, stir my will. Teach me the art of obedience, and show me your peace.
On this classic February pre-spring day Father Anthony prayed his own prayer with all of us. “Will my vulnerability with you overwhelm me, Lord?
“But no. You are a gentle and tender God.
“What do you want from me today, O Lord?”
You, O Lord, are good and forgiving. Have mercy on me, for to you I call all the day. Gladden the soul of your servant, for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
 (Isaiah 58, Psalm 86, Ezekiel 33, Luke 5)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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