Prayer, A Matter of Life-Part II PDF Print

 
WHERE DID PRAYER COME FROM?
 
Prayer came from God's longing and search of man. Prayer was a product of God's longing to reach out to man after the fall. The question of God remains lingering in the silence of our hearts. It is the question: "Adam, where are you?" (Gen. 3:9) 

Prayer is God's desire to reconnect with man. Even when man's prayer is imperfect, God will listen. The perfection and the highlight of prayer was accomplished by Jesus, the perfect acceptable sacrifice and Model of Prayer, and the Holy Spirit as the Master of Prayer. The Father sent Jesus and the Holy Spirit to teach us to pray, not only in the visible, verbal and physical way, but also in the interior, silent and spiritual way. 

WHAT HAPPENS TO GOD WHEN I PRAY - WHAT HAPPENS TO ME?

What happens to God when I pray - God moves. God seizes opportunities to draw us closer and closer to himself. In prayer God exercises his providential care to finally take up his residency. An open heart is a heart where God wants to dwell. It is a heart that is hospitable. God has access to our soul because God is the maker, but God respects our free will. Man has to make constant decisions to allow God to mold him.

To exercise God's providential care in prayer means to form man's heart into God's stewards and caretakers of the universe. In prayer we are transformed to be caretakers in the manner in which God cares.

In prayer, God exercises his gate-keeping care of the house that nothing ungodly will enter in and out of it. God is the Lord of the House. Through a life of prayer God forms the heart to be a true house of prayer, a spiritual house of sacrifice. Prayer forms the heart as a worthy dwelling of His presence.

What happens when I pray? I change, not God; prayer changes me. Adoration is purification. The less we adore, the less we are purified. The more we adore, the more healing we receive and the more we are likened to God.

The more we pray, the more we love, and the more we love, the more we become like God. As we mature in love and prayer we become more attached to God. When we gaze at Jesus in prayer, we become like Jesus because we become what we adore. When we spend time praising God, God inhabits us. The more God inhabits us, the more we become the House of the Spirit.
 

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A HOUSE OF THE SPIRIT?

To become a house of the Spirit is the work of the Holy Spirit to set up God’s residency.

God becomes the Master of the House. The way you live in someone's house is the way you live in God's house. When you live under his roof, you adopt his attitude, outlook, views, lifestyle and part of his pattern of movement.

Grace is passed on through a hierarchical process. Grace goes first to the head of the house. The grace of Jesus, as head of the house, passes all these graces on to all members of the house. Ultimately, the grace of the house flows from the head to the members.

To become a sacrificial house means to be a house of offering. This implies pain and suffering. However, it is not simply pain and suffering for its own sake. The essence of pain and suffering is love. We were not called to suffer, we were called to love, and to love is to suffer.

For the house to be truly sacrificial requires that love is present. There is no true sacrifice without love. No sacrifice can be offered out of fear, because fear constricts the house and stifles the spirit of love.

Prayer allows us to install an altar in the house where we can turn to God to bless us, and make the work of the day a sacrifice of praise. Our prayer of sacrifice connects us to the ongoing daily sacrifice of the Mass being celebrated every two seconds at an altar in the house of the Church throughout the world.

Excerpt from book entitled, ABC of Prayer by Rev. Michael B. Semana, © 2001.

 
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