I …
I, who am so proud and arrogant…
I, who am so impatient and judgmental…
I, who am so obtuse and self-centered…
I, who know so little of prayer…
I, who am a poor sinner…
I ask Saint Juan Diego for my conversion to know something of what he knew:
- A soul that is utterly simple, most sensitive, perceptive, enthusiastic, humble, lowly, piercingly discerning, burgeoning with God given fortitude to do the necessary in face of all opposition, and thankfulness, and a hope which makes all obstacles of the world, the flesh and the devil utterly fade into insignificance, used only as fodder for that divine humor which brings good out of the worst evil, and a devotion, a dedication, to God’s Immaculate Virgin Mother, whereby I cooperate in being brought by her to Christ our God, her Son, our Brother, praising Him, worshiping Him from the first moment of His conception until this very moment as the Lord marks time with His pierced Heart beating for us in eternity.
- A simplicity of life reflecting that simplicity of soul, whereby it is will be clear to all that they are to ignore me, but look to the one to whom I point by virtue of Mary’s intercession, Jesus, through whom and with whom and in whom we are to see our Heavenly Father, at the ready with prompt obedience to seal that testimony, that witness, with our blood, I, with my blood, should we, should I, be given the opportunity to do so.
- A simplicity of life which follows after the One thing necessary, union of charity with Him who is the Way, the Truth, our Life.
I need… we priests need… prayer, if we are going to be any kind of priests of The Priest, the Prince of the Most Profound Peace, the dear Son of the Immaculate Conception, our Lady of Guadalupe.
Saint Juan Diego, pray for all of us! Yikes!
Accompany me, Father George David Byers, S.S.L., S.T.D., as I begin life as a Catholic Priest-Hermit by choice. Holy Souls Hermitage is dedicated to the sanctification of my fellow priests, bishops, deacons & seminarians going through the purgatory of this life or the next. Prayer and sacrifice go up, of course, for both Benedict XVI and the next Successor of Saint Peter. 
Amen Father! St. Juan Diego please help us to love Our Lady and Our Lord like you.
I say the emergency chaplet and the LIitany of our Lord Jesus Christ Priest and Victim for priests everyday. It is sort of a selfish thing in a way. I want good priests around to minister to me and mine. I also say a special prayer for 4 pecial priests whose names begin with “G”. I call it my “G squared” prayer.
Joisy Goil: Honestly!
Yeah!
THE GREAT MEANS OF SALVATION AND OF PERFECTION
By Saint Alponsus De Liguori, Doctor of the Church
Page 1: “But I do not think that I have written a more useful work than the present, in which I speak of prayer as a necessary and certain means of obtaining salvation, and all the graces that we require for that object. If it were in my power, I would distribute a copy of it to every Catholic in the world in order to show him the absolute necessity of prayer for salvation.”
Page 24: “In several places above quoted, and especially in his book of Sentences, he (Saint Thomas Aquinas) expressly lays it down as certain that everyone is bound to pray because—as he asserts—in no other way can the graces necessary for salvation be obtained from God except by prayer.”
Page 30: “He who prays is certainly saved. He who prays not is certainly damned.”
Page 45: “And let us understand that if we do not pray, we have no excuse because the grace of prayer is given to everyone.”
Page 87: “….everyone has sufficient aid from God to enable him actually to pray ….by prayer he may obtain all other graces…. God in his goodness grants to everyone the grace of prayer, by which he is able to obtain all other graces….”
Page 200: “Therefore all men have grace given them to pray, and by prayer to obtain the abundant grace which makes us keep the commandments.”
Pages 214-215: “God refuses to no one the grace of prayer, whereby we may obtain his assistance to overcome every concupiscence and every temptation…. For the rest, my principal intention was to recommend to all men the use of prayer as the most powerful and necessary means of grace in order that all men should more diligently and earnestly attend to it if they wish to be saved; for many poor souls lose God’s grace, and continue to live in sin, and are finally damned, for this very reason, that they do not pray, nor have recourse to God for assistance. The worst of the matter is that so few preachers and so few confessors have any definite purpose of indoctrinating their hearers and penitents with the use of prayer, without which it is impossible to observe the law of God and to obtain perseverance in his grace….. Our whole salvation depends on prayer, and, therefore, that all writers in their books, all preachers in their sermons, and all confessors in their instructions to their penitents, should not inculcate anything more strongly than continual prayer. They should always admonish, exclaim, and continually repeat: ‘Pray, pray, never cease to pray.’ For if you pray, your salvation will be secure, but if you leave off praying, your damnation will be certain. All preachers and directors ought to do this because there is no doubt of this truth that he who prays obtains grace and is saved, but those who practice it are too few, and this is the reason why so few are saved.”
Page 233: “St. Teresa used to say that he who neglects mental prayer needs not a devil to carry him to hell, but that he brings himself there with his own hands. And the Abbot Diocles says that ‘the man who omits mental prayer soon becomes either a beast or a devil.’”
“Without petitions on our part, God does not grant the divine helps; and without aid from God, we cannot observe the commandments. From the absolute necessity of the prayer of petition arises the moral necessity of mental prayer; for he who neglects meditation and is distracted with worldly affairs will not know his spiritual wants, the dangers to which his salvation is exposed, the means which he must adopt in order to conquer temptations, or even the necessity of the prayer of petition for all men; thus, he will give up the practice of prayer, and by neglecting to ask God’s graces he will certainly be lost.”
Page 234: “St. Robert Bellarmine says that for him who neglects meditation it is morally impossible to live without sin.”
Pages 234-235: “But it is impossible for him who perseveres in mental prayer to continue in sin; he will either give up meditation or renounce sin. A good servant of God used to say that mental prayer and sin cannot exist together. And this we see by experience; they who make mental prayer rarely incur the enmity of God; and should they ever have the misfortune of falling into sin, by persevering in mental prayer they see their misery and return to God. Let a soul, says St. Teresa, be ever so negligent, if it persevere in meditation, the Lord will bring it back to the haven of salvation.”
“All the saints have become saints by mental prayer. Mental prayer is the blessed furnace in which souls are inflamed with the divine love….. St. Catharine of Bologna used to say: ‘He who does not practice mental prayer deprives himself of the bond that unites the soul with God; hence, finding her alone, the devil will easily make her his own.’ ‘How,’ she would say, ‘can I conceive that the love of God is found in the soul that cares but little to treat with God in prayer.’”
Pages 236-238: “St. Laurence Justinian says: ‘By the efficacy of mental prayer, temptation is banished, sadness is driven away, lost virtue is restored, fervor which has grown cold is excited, and the lovely flame of divine love is augmented.’ Hence, St. Aloysius Gonzaga has justly said that he who does not make much mental prayer will never attain a high degree of perfection.”
“St. John Chrysostom compared mental prayer to a fountain in the middle of a garden.. . .
But let him omit meditation, and you will find him instantly wanting in modesty of the eyes, proudly resenting every word, indevout, no longer frequenting the sacraments and the church; you will find him attached to vanity, to useless conversations, to passions, to earthly pleasures; and why? The water has failed, and, therefore, fervor has ceased…… The soul has neglected mental prayer; the garden is therefore dried up, and the miserable soul goes from bad to worse. When a soul abandons meditation, St. Chrysostom regards it not only as sick, but as dead. ‘He,’ says the holy Doctor, ‘who prays not to God, nor desires to enjoy assiduously his divine conversation, is dead…. The death of a soul is not to be prostrated before God.’”
“The same Father says mental prayer is the root of the fruitful vine. And St. John Climacus writes that ‘prayer is a bulwark against the assault of afflictions, the spring of virtues, the procurer of graces.”
Pages 260-261: “Distractions: If, after having well prepared ourselves for mental prayer, a distracting thought should enter, we must not be disturbed, nor seek to banish it with a violent effort; but let us remove it calmly and return to God.”
“Let us remember that the devil labors hard to disturb us in the time of meditation in order to make us abandon it. Let him, then, who abandons mental prayer on account of distractions, be persuaded that he gives delight to the devil. It is impossible, says Cassian, that our minds should be free from all distractions during prayer.”
“Let us, then, never give up meditation, however great our distractions may be. St. Francis de Sales says that if, in mental prayer, we should do nothing else than continually banish distractions and temptations, the meditation would be well made. Before him St. Thomas taught that involuntary distractions do not take away the fruit of mental prayer.”
“Finally, when we perceive that we are deliberately distracted, let us desist from the voluntary defect and banish the distraction, but let us be careful not to discontinue our meditation.”
Pages 261-263: “Arridities: The greatest pain of souls in meditation is to find themselves sometimes without a feeling of devotion, weary of it, and without any sensible desire of loving God; and with this is joined the fear of being in the wrath of God through their sins, on account of which the Lord has abandoned them; and being in this gloomy darkness, they know not how to escape from it, it seeming to them that every way is closed against them.”
“When a soul gives itself up to the spiritual life, the Lord is accustomed to heap consolations upon it in order to wean it from the pleasures of the world, but afterwards, when he sees it more settled in spiritual ways, he draws back his hand in order to make proof of its love and to see whether it serves and loves God unrecompensed, while in this world, with spiritual joys. Some foolish persons, seeing themselves in a state of aridity, think that God may have abandoned them; or, again, that the spiritual life was not made for them, and so they leave off prayer and lose all that they have gained.”
“In order to be a soul of prayer, man must resist with fortitude all temptations to discontinue mental prayer in the time of aridity. St. Teresa has left us very excellent instructions on this point. In one place she says: ‘The devil knows that he has lost the soul that perseveringly practices mental prayer.’ In another place she says: ‘I hold for certain that the Lord will conduct to the haven of salvation the soul that perseveres in mental prayer, in spite of all the sins that the devil may oppose.’ Again she says: ‘He who does not stop in the way of mental prayer reaches the end of his journey, though he should delay a little.’ Finally she concludes, saying: ‘By aridity and temptations the Lord proves his lovers. Though aridity should last for life, let not the soul give up prayer; the time will come when all shall be well rewarded.’”
“The Angelic Doctor says that the devotion consists not in feeling but in the desire and resolution to embrace promptly all that God wills. Such was the prayer that Jesus Christ made in the Garden of Olives; it was full of aridity and tediousness, but it was the most devout and meritorious that had ever been offered in this world. It consisted in these words: ‘My Father, not what I will, but what Thou wilt.’”
“Hence, never give up mental prayer in the time of aridity. Should the tediousness which assails you be very great, divide your meditation into several parts, and employ yourself for the most part, in petitions to God, even though you seem to pray without confidence and without fruit. It will be sufficient to say and to repeat: ‘My Jesus, mercy. Lord, have mercy on us.’ Pray and doubt not that God will hear you and grant your petition.”
“In going to meditation, never propose to yourself your own pleasure and satisfaction, but only to please God and to learn what he wishes you to do. And, for this purpose, pray always that God may make known to you his will and that he may give you strength to fulfill it. All that we ought to seek in mental prayer is light to know and strength to accomplish the will of God in our regard.”
Pope Benedict XVI: Saint Alphonsus on Prayer
August 1, 2012
Dear brothers and sisters?
The Joyous Embrace of God the Father.
Today marks the liturgical memorial of St. Alphonsus Maria de’ Liguori, bishop and doctor of the Church, founder of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer — the Redemptorists — patron saint of scholars and moral theology and of confessors. St. Alphonsus is one of the most popular saints of the 18th century because of his simple, straightforward style and his teaching on the sacrament of Penance: In a period of great rigorism — the result of the influence of Jansenism — he recommended to confessors to administer this sacrament by revealing the joyous embrace of God the Father, who in His infinite mercy never tires of welcoming back the repentant son.
Prayer: Necessary and Sure Means to Salvation.
Today’s memorial offers us the occasion to consider St. Alphonsus’ teachings on prayer, which are extremely valuable and filled with spiritual inspiration. He considered his treatise, Prayer: The Great Means of Salvation and of Perfection, which dates back to 1759, to be the most useful of all his writings. In fact, he there describes prayer as “the necessary and sure means of obtaining salvation, and all the graces we need to attain it” (Introduction).
He Who Prays is Saved.
This sentence sums up the Alphonsian understanding of prayer. First, in saying that it is a means, he reminds us of the end to be attained: God created out of love in order to be able to give us the fullness of life; but because of sin, this goal, this abundance of life has, so to say, drifted away — we all know this — and only God’s grace can make it available. To explain this basic truth, and to enable us to understand in a straightforward way how real the risk is of man’s “being lost,” St. Alphonsus coined a famous, very elementary maxim, which states: “He who prays is saved. He who prays not is damned!” Commenting on this lapidary statement, he added: “To save one’s soul without prayer is most difficult, and even impossible … but by praying our salvation is made secure, and very easy” (Chapter II, Conclusion). And he goes on to say: “If we do not pray, we have no excuse, for the grace of prayer is given to everyone … if we are not saved, the whole fault will be ours, because we did not pray” (ibid.).
We Cannot Manage Without Praying
In saying that prayer is a necessary means, St. Alphonsus wanted us to understand that in every situation in life, we cannot manage without praying, especially in times of trial and difficulty. We must always knock at the Lord’s door with trust, knowing that in all things He takes care of His children, of us. We are invited, therefore, not to be afraid of turning to Him and of presenting our requests to Him with trust, in the certainty of obtaining what we need.
What Is Truly Necessary?
Dear friends, this is the central question: What is truly necessary in my life? With St. Alphonsus I respond: “Health and all the graces we need for this” (ibid.); naturally, he means not only bodily health, but above all also that of the soul, which Jesus gives to us. More than anything else, we need His liberating presence, which truly makes our lives fully human and therefore full of joy. And it is only through prayer that we are able to welcome Him and His grace, which by enlightening us in each situation, enables us to discern the true good, and by strengthening us, makes our will effective; that is, it enables it to do the good that is known. Often we recognize the good, but we are unable to do it. Through prayer, we arrive at the point of being able to carry it out.
Weakness and the Richness of God’s Mercy
The Lord’s disciple knows that he is always exposed to temptation, and he never fails to ask God for help in prayer in order to conquer it. St. Alphonsus recalls the example of St. Phillip Neri—very interesting—who “used to say to God from the first moment he awoke in the morning, ‘Lord, keep Thy hands over Philip this day; for if not, Philip will betray Thee’” (III, 3). A great realist! He asks God to keep His hand upon him. We, too, in the awareness of our own weakness, should humbly ask God’s help, relying on the richness of His Mercy.
By Prayer Obtain the Strength You Do Not Possess
In another passage, St. Alphonsus says: “We are so poor that we have nothing; but if we pray we are no longer poor” (II, 4). And in the wake of St. Augustine, he invites every Christian to not be afraid of obtaining from God, through prayer, the strength he does not possess and that he needs to do the good, in the certainty that the Lord does not withhold His help from whoever prays with humility (cf. III, 3).
Relationship With God and Daily Prayer.
Dear friends, St. Alphonsus reminds us that our relationship with God is essential for our lives. Without a relationship with God, our fundamental relationship is missing. And a relationship with God develops by talking with God in daily personal prayer, and by participating in the Sacraments; and so it is that this relationship can grow in us, and that the divine presence that directs our path, enlightens it and makes it secure and serene can also grow in us, even amid difficulty and danger. Thank you.