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#379 Why I Pray: My Journey Into The Power and Purpose of Prayer · Claymore: Become Who You Are

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast, the production of the John Paul Tuvery Null Center.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: I'm Jack Rigard, your host, and I'm so glad that you're with me today.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: I hope you're doing well.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: I was out early this morning and taking a walk and it was quiet and I've got the rosary with me and I thought, you know, I'm going to spend just a little time out here on walking our dog and I look up for the sun and the sun is this beautiful contrast to the rest of the horizon.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: You've got some white and a light blue sky, with this orange ball, a perfect circle, and bringing this incredible spot of beauty up there contrasted.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: We have a lot of green here, we've had a lot of rain, which has really been good for the crops in the Midwest here, and with all the greens and then the blues and the white, and then you have this orange ball and it's just an amazing beauty.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: It's like just drew me and I was just standing there and I just couldn't get my eyes off of that.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: And you realize that God does this.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Why does he do this?
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Why the orange ball up there?
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Why is this perfect circle in this just mesmerizing beauty?
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: And you realize that how much evil that man brings into the world, opening up this right from Genesis, all of our history of man opening ourselves up to evil and bringing sin into the world.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: And I speak about this a lot and we need to and I always say, and I'll continue to bring up this week and next week and a week after probably, there's a lot of evil going on in the world, this attack on marriage and the family, this attack on the church, within the church and outside the church, and also, you know, on our whole nation right now, our whole attack on the Constitution, etc.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: But as I was walking this morning, I thought, you know, god's still bringing all this beauty and this bounty of beauty into this world.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: He's still protecting us.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: He's still raining down, you know, I see the crops all coming up.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, why didn't it?
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Just?
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: There was almost the beginning of a, or there was a beginning of a drought, I guess, earlier on in the season, just after the planning got done and farmers were a little worried about it, and now it's all changed, you know, and God brings this bounty.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: He could have just let it, you know, held back the rain a little bit more and we could have lost all the crops, you know.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: But he didn't.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: And so here I am, finding peace in the midst of all this chaos, and so I had began an article yesterday why I Pray, and I thought you know I'm going to finish that article and share that with you this morning.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: So buckle up and get ready for the rest of today's episode.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Why I pray?
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: I pray because I'm human.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: I pray because I am human.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Prayer is as natural to a human person as his breathing, eating, sleeping and loving.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: For the philosopher, the poet and every human person, prayer is a connection to awe and wonder and to all that is true and good and beautiful.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Prayer opens the individual person, body and soul, to the infusion of grace, the gift of divine life and love, which leads to the potential for human flourishing.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: This potential then becomes efficacious when one then acts upon that gift received and so then turns himself out and becomes a sincere gift of self to others.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: This manifestation of love then builds up the city of God, the body of Christ, and so fulfills the very meaning purpose of our lives.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: On the other hand, the default position of the person who does not pray and rejects the divine gift is a body and a soul closed to the infusion of grace.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: One cannot give what is not possessed, and the potential then for human flourishing is diminished by sin and death.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Living in disconnection, then, like a cut flower, the human person without grace grasps for life in a futile attempt to replace the infinite grace with the finite things of this world.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: Human beings become ravenous creatures, lustful creatures, as all attempts to build a city upon a foundation of sin and death failed to satisfy the deepest desires of the human heart.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: The human heart was made for more.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: That's why I pray.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: St Thomas Aquinas said this.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: The reason, however, why the philosopher may be likened to the poet is this Both are concerned with the marvelous.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: My friend, jimmy Patridge, had come home from Vietnam without his legs.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: The sexual revolution was in full swing.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: The murder of the unborn had become a right that was codified into law.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: On top of this, we had no fault divorce that left me wondering about the meaning of life and love.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: I wondered how the love between two people, once so beautiful and promising, could turn to dislike for one another and even to hatred.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: I saw the negative effect that divorce had on my childhood friends.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Then came the sexual abuse scandal in the church, and we were warned for good reason.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: It turned out that the government itself could not be trusted.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: At 17 years old, I was the oldest of five boys.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: I remember feeling confused.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: I remember feeling boxed in and anxious.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: I was working eight hours a day, three o'clock until 11 o'clock pm most nights, as a chef's assistant in the large hotel kitchen.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: After school, my family needed the money and besides, the world of work brought me a sense of satisfaction and an escape from my troubled mind.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: But then I began to wonder is this all there is?
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: The pain and sorrow and the pain and horror of war, love reduced to sex, marriages that could end Work just to pay the bills and perhaps even to forget?
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: An early interest in philosophy led me to Joseph Piper, who wrote more and more at the present time, common good and common need are identified, and what comes really to the same thing is this world of work that's becoming our entire world.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: It threatens to engulf us completely.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Till, at last, they make a total claim upon the whole of human nature, a world in which there is no room for philosophy or philosophizing in any true sense of the word.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: He went on to talk about Plato and said as everyone knows, plato virtually identified philosophy and eros.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Eros he would define as this innate desire for all that is true, all that is good and beautiful.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: It could be an erotic, sensual desire, but not in the sense to use and abuse, but to search for again what's true, what's good, what's beautiful.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: And in regard to the similarity of philosophy and poetry, there is the little known and curious saying of Saint Thomas Aquinas, which occurs in his commentary on metaphysics of Aristotle.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: He said the philosopher is related to the poet in that both are concerned with wonder, with marveling and with that which makes us marvel.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: Pope, john Paul II, and Phidès and Razzio.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: Faith and Reason would add this.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: The lessons of history show that this is the path to follow.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: It is not necessary to abandon the passion for ultimate truth, the eagerness to search for it or the audacity to forge new paths in that search, it is faith which stirs reason to move beyond all isolation and the willingness to run risks so that it may attain whatever is beautiful, good and true.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Faith thus becomes the convinced and convincing advocate of reason.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Well, as a young man, that was enough for me.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: I need a time to find the truth, if it existed.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Hopeful that I could discover answers.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: I left home at the first opportunity with no plans other than to find space to be, space to think, and I wanted to be in their mountains or the ocean.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: I knew someone in Denver.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: I'd start there.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: I cashed my last paycheck, threw my backpack, my hiking boots, some extra clothes on my 10 speed bike in the back of an old station wagon, sold or gave away everything else and drove away.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: From the song of songs, hark, my lover.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: Here he comes, springing across the mountains, leaping across the hills.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: My lover is like a gazelle or a young stag.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: My lover speaks.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: He says to me arise, my beloved, my beautiful one, and come.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: The song of songs, huh, the love between a man and a woman, but also the saints and the mystics.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: It gave them the vocabulary to express the kind of desire and the kind of thirst that they had for God.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: They wrote more about that little book in the middle of the Bible, the song of songs, more commentary about that than all of the other scripture writings that they wrote about.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: It touches the hearts, huh.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: One time, hiking in the Rockies, I followed a steep animal trail through the trees and brush until I came to a clearing just above the tree line.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: The short distance away, I spotted a lone tree standing along what I hoped was the top of the mountain and I headed up toward it.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Once there, I stood in awe at the scene before me.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Across the valley, rosen, even taller, stunning snow-capped mountain Cascading down from its summit.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Looking like liquid silver, glistening in the Sun, was a waterfall dropping thousands of feet below.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: The song of birds were everywhere, bees and butterflies were moving among the wildflowers in the valley, below, along with a herd of elk.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: The calves were running and jumping, while the adults grazed nearby.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: I took off my backpack and set down my back against the tree to take it all in.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: I Didn't find all the answers to my questions that day, but I sensed that the awe and wonder and beauty before me opened the door that I was invited to enter and I began to pray.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Almost immediately, the small circle of my world where I took up so much space Became much larger.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: I became smaller not because I shrunk, but because I was given sight, and my circle extended outward.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: I had been trying to find the truth in a small circle that had me in the center.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: I was living in a small and cramped eternity, when what I needed were not new arguments as much as to give it fresh air.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Prayer, like a branch Reconnected to the vine, opened a smaller story of my life to the awe and wonder of the larger story.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Cs Lewis wrote this we want so much more, something the books on aesthetics take little notice of, but the poets and the Mythologies know all about it.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: We do not want merely to see beauty, though God knows.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Even that is bounty enough.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: We want something else which can hardly be put into words To become united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it and to become part of it.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: That is why I pray.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: The catechism on a section of prayer starts like this.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: This is from St Tres of the Sue.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: Prayer is an aspiration of the heart.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: It is a simple glance directed to heaven.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: It is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial as well as joy.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Finally, it is something great, supernatural which expands my soul and unites me to Jesus.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: It goes on.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Prayer is the raising of one's mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: But when we pray, do we speak from the height of our pride and will or out of the depths of a humble and contrite heart.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: Psalm 130, verse 1, he who humbles himself will be exalted.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: We read in Luke, chapter 18, verse 9, humility is the foundation of prayer.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Only when we acknowledge that we do not know how to pray as we ought, st Paul said in Romans, are we ready to receive freely the gift of prayer.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: St Augustine said man is a beggar before God.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: Finally, prayer is the place where God's thirst for you meets your thirst for God.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: In the Gospel of John, there's a Samaritan woman who comes to the well to draw water.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Jesus says to her Give me a drink.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: And later, if you knew the gift of God who is standing here, the wonder of prayer is revealed beside the well where we come seeking water.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: There, there, christ comes to meet every human being.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: It is he who first seeks us and asks us for a drink.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: See, jesus thirsts.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: His asking arises from the depths of God's desire for us.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God's thirst with ours.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: This is from Catechism number 2559, 2560.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Go read it, it's so beautiful, and I'm going to end with Catechism 2561.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: If you and this is still pulling from John if you knew the gift of God, jesus said.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: And who it is that is saying to you Give me a drink, jesus said.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: You would have asked him and he would have given you living water.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Paradoxically, our prayer of petition is the response to the plea of the living God, who said this they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters and they've hewn out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns, cisterns they can hold no water.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: So prayer is the response of faith to the free promise of salvation and also response of love to the thirst of the only Son of God.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: That is why I pray.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: It's the point where God's thirst for me meets my thirst for him.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Hey, god bless you.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Thanks for being with me everyone.