July 28, 2026 • 31 mins
In this final meditation of our 3-part series on St. Josemaria's homily, Getting to Know God, Msgr. Martin Schlag reminds us that to truly know God is to love him more deeply. As we grow in friendship with Christ and recognize ourselves as beloved children of the Father, we are invited to become contemplatives in the midst of our daily lives, allowing God's love to transform every thought, action, and relationship.
Msgr. Schlag encourages us to establish a spiritual plan of life to deepen our prayer and to respond generously to the Father by loving him above all things.
Listen and reflect on:
- Growing in friendship with God
- Loving God with an undivided heart
- Holiness through daily fidelity
- Responding to the Father's love
- Establishing a spiritual plan of life
Read the full text of St. Josemaria’s homily, “Getting to Know God”, online here.
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SPEAKER_00 (00:10):
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit, my Lord and my God,I firmly believe that you are
here, that you see me, that youhear me.
I adore you with profoundreverence.
I ask your pardon for my sinsand grace to make this time of
(00:33):
prayer fruitful.
My Immaculate Mother, SaintJoseph, my father and Lord, my
guardian angel, intercede forme.
In our Lord's presence I inviteyou to accompany me in prayer,
in a meditation on the desire toknow God.
(00:56):
Getting to know God is not firsta matter of learning many, many
ideas about Him or studyingtheology.
Not everyone can do that.
We all can acquire basicknowledge of God and we need
that.
But everyone can enter intofriendship with God.
(01:17):
Everyone can have a relationwith God.
And Saint José Maria spokeconsistently of prayer as such a
living relationship.
He said, prayer is aconversation with God, unratico
de charla in Spanish, as uh likea chat, a conversation with a
(01:38):
friend.
Uh yet we all know thedifficulties.
Uh we we desire God, but we getdistracted or we don't feel like
it, and um and and we beginagain and again, we make
resolutions and we fail.
But the encouraging truth isthat God is not waiting for us
(02:01):
at the end of perfection.
Uh, like we have to be perfectbefore we can relate with God.
He comes looking for us where weare.
And um it helps me to meditateon the scene where uh the
disciples are in the boat andJesus approaches them walking on
the lake, and they uh get reallyscared and they they cry out uh
(02:27):
because they think he's a ghost,and uh Jesus calms them down and
Peter said, Lord, if it is you,command me to come to you on the
water.
And Jesus said, Come.
So Peter got out of the boat andwalked on the water and came
toward Jesus.
(02:49):
But when he saw the wind he wasafraid, and beginning to sink he
cried out, Lord, save me.
Jesus immediately reached outhis hand and caught him, saying,
O man of little faith, why didyou doubt?
Well as long as Jesus sorry, aslong as Peter looked at Jesus,
(03:14):
he was able to walk on thewater.
As soon as he looked at himselfand at the wind and the waves,
he began to think.
But the the point I want to makehere now is that Peter meets
Jesus or can touch Jesus notwhile he is walking on the
water.
So he's not he doesn't reallyencounter Jesus while he is
(03:37):
successful, so to say, butprecisely while he's thinking,
the Lord's hand reaches him atthe moment of failure.
Many of us discover God'stenderness not in our strength,
but in our poverty, in ourfears, in our recurring
(03:59):
weaknesses and limitations, inthe darkness.
Perhaps the places where we mostdeeply encounter Christ are
precisely those parts ofourselves we wish were
different, but are unable tochange, or we feel unable to
(04:20):
change them.
That's that is where we canencounter Christ.
But to do that we we we justneed to persevere in prayer.
And uh the Lord teaches us thatwith a parable, and he's uh Luke
reports this, that Jesus toldthem a parable to the effect
(04:40):
that they ought always to prayand not lose heart.
He said, In a certain city therewas a judge who neither feared
God nor regarded man, and therewas a widow in that city who
kept coming to him and saying,Vindicate me against my
adversary.
For a while he refused, butafterward he said to himself,
(05:05):
Though I neither fear God norregard man, yet because this
widow bothers me, I willvindicate her, or she will wear
me out by her continual coming.
And the Lord said, Hear what theunrighteous judge says, and will
not God vindicate his elect whocry to him day and night?
(05:31):
This is perhaps the gospelpassage that best supports Saint
Hosematius' insistence on whatthe spiritual tradition calls a
plan of life and fidelity toprayer.
A plan of life is not a plan forlife for the whole of our life,
what we'll do when we're uhthirty, what we'll do when we're
(05:54):
sixty, what we'll do inretirement, and so on.
It's the daily plan of devotionsthat we have made.
And uh that it's important thatthe Lord doesn't say, pray when
you feel like it, or pray whenyou feel inspired.
But he says, pray always and donot lose heart.
(06:15):
So perseverance in prayer isalready a form of love.
You know, and I I always, when Imeditate on this scene, I I kind
of ask God, well, um, will notGod vindicate his elect who cry
to him day and night?
Well, Lord, we cry to you dayand night for so many things,
and we want peace in the worldand justice and in our own uh
(06:38):
lives, we we pray for things, wepray for health, for friends and
family members, we pray forconversions, and sometimes you
seem to be silent.
And and I think what the Lord issaying is, look, when when you
persevere in prayer, that isalready the faith and the that I
(07:00):
seek in you, and it's already agift of mine.
So we need to create space forGod in our life in our lives.
And and that we do with um theplan of life.
Because uh it's a practicaltruth that prayer doesn't happen
by accident.
(07:21):
Uh uh, it's not like um ourdigestion or our heartbeat that
kind of goes by itself withoutour being aware of it.
But it's it's very beautiful toread the fourth part of the
catechism of the CatholicChurch.
In my theology classes in Rome,we had a teacher who later
(07:41):
became an archbishop, and hetold us that when the catechism
was put together, the differentauthors, most of them, or some
of them were bishops, otherswere theologians, sent their
sections in beautifully printedon beautifully printed paper,
(08:03):
and they added the floppy disksat the time uh and uh they were
put together.
Uh but the section on the prayerarrived without a floppy disk,
and it was on crumpled, smudgypaper, uh written on one of
these uh travel typewriters, anduh you could see that uh it had
(08:25):
been written with difficulty anduh without technical means
because things were x'd out.
There was no, you know, at thattime you couldn't just delete
what you had written, you had tokind of um put a white lacquer
on it and let it dry, and noteven that was available, so he
just uh uh X'ed it out and wroteagain.
(08:48):
And it was written by a Maronitebishop in the bomb shelters of
Beirut during the Civil War.
And the the author uh uh kind ofwrote that he was he hadn't
studied this text with a librarybecause there was nothing
(09:09):
available, but he prayed it.
This whole part is is a fruit,an immediate fruit of prayer.
And in it we read, prayer is thelife of the new heart.
It ought to animate us at everymoment, but we tend to forget
(09:33):
him who is our life and our all.
We must remember God more oftenthan we draw breath.
These are the words of thecatechism.
So we must remember God moreoften than we draw breath.
(09:54):
That's a powerful image.
We can live without eating forquite some time, many days
actually, I don't know how many,but uh definitely uh some days.
Uh we can also live withoutdrinking uh or significantly
fewer days than remainingwithout food, uh, but we can't
(10:19):
uh stop breathing.
Uh I don't know what the worldrecord is now in holding your
breath, but it's it's uh a fewminutes.
If we stop breathing, our brainshuts down, we we die, and and
so we must remember God moreoften than we draw breath.
(10:44):
Prayer is the breathing of thesoul.
Uh without it we collapse, wedie.
And um it's it's it's acomparison that can be
misleading because breathinggoes semi unconsciously and it
(11:04):
goes automatically.
We just breathe.
Um it's one of those activitiesin us that we can control
consciously, we can breathe moreslowly, more deeply, we can
meditate by controlling ourbreath, but we we can't stop
breathing.
It's it's it's uh uh a naturalinstinct, an impulse, it's
(11:29):
irrepressible.
But not so prayer.
Prayer is uh actually somethingwe don't like to do by nature.
We want to uh do things, we wantto touch things, we want to hear
things, we want to see things,we want to experience things,
but in prayer we need to closeour eyes and shut out the noise
(11:51):
and be still with our God,listen to God, uh stop the
chatter or try to stop thechatter which is going on in our
in our brain.
So it needs training.
And the catechism goes on tosay, but we cannot pray at all
(12:12):
times if we do not pray atspecific times.
So we we often say that God isimportant, and you know I preach
it and I I I try to tell others,but what place does God actually
occupy in the structure of ourday, of your day, of my day?
(12:36):
Um is it something I have to do,like a task, or is it really a
relationship?
And uh let me read this passagefrom a homily by Saint Jose
Maria in the in Friends of God.
(12:56):
Try to commit yourself to a planof life and to keep to it, a few
minutes of mental prayer, holymass daily if you can manage it,
and frequent communion, regularrecourse to the holy sacrament
of forgiveness, even though yourconscience does not accuse you
(13:20):
of mortal sin, visiting Jesus inthe tabernacle, praying and
contemplating the mysteries ofthe Holy Rosary, and so many
other marvelous devotions youknow or can learn.
And he adds, please don't forgetthat the important thing does
(13:42):
not lie in doing many things.
Limit yourself generously tothose you can fulfill each day,
whether or not you happen tofeel like doing them.
So that's uh uh a nice way ofputting it.
Limit yourself generously.
(14:03):
So be realistic, uh, but at thesame time be generous.
Let yourself be stretched, letyourself be challenged, um let
yourself uh be a little bitmaybe overwhelmed and say, how
can I how can I get everythinguh uh done?
(14:25):
You know, how can I how can Icommit to this?
Uh it's got to be realistic, butit's got to be generous because
love requires appointments.
Uh you know, a boy and a girl,they they date, they um and
they're sure to prepare thatdate, they're nervous, they want
(14:45):
to make a good impression.
And um why don't we do somethingsimilar with God?
From its its Jewish roots, thechurch has proposed rhythms that
have taken shape over thecenturies, and St.
Osmaria mentions them.
You know, there's uh theEucharist, Holy Mass, the center
(15:07):
and root of Christian life, uhmorning prayer, mental prayer,
spiritual reading, the Angelus,the rosary, the examination of
conscience.
You know, these are like uhreally um reliable devotions
that have been tested over timeand have proven to be uh really
(15:30):
uh necessary or at least very,very helpful for a Christian
life, for for a life, for arelationship with God.
It's not that God needsschedules uh or a plan, but we
need we need it.
So uh a plan of life is not aprison or a straitjacket, it is
(15:52):
a trellis or a scaffolding thatallows the vine to grow.
You know, Jesus is the vine, weare the branches, and uh um this
our day needs these thestructure.
And we can also compare it witha bridge.
A bridge over a river needspylons, and we can't put all the
(16:16):
pylons on one side of the river,but we have to distribute them
uh uh throughout the whole thebreadth of the river so that the
bridge holds and can support uhweight and and connect the two
sides.
The the one side our activitiesuh in work and family, in
(16:37):
friendship, in rest, and God onthe other side.
So Saint Osumaria repeated thatuh we become contemplatives in
the middle of the road, in themiddle of the world, not through
uh extraordinary experiences,but but by these small
(17:00):
aspirations, by short prayers,and through ordinary practices.
And there's there's a story Ilove.
Uh he was in the central houseof Opus Day in Rome, where there
are several chapels, and someonewas curious, they wanted to know
what his favorite chapel was.
And he went straight to thewindow that overlooks a noisy
(17:23):
street, opened the window, andpointed to the street, and he
said, That's my favorite chapel.
Because in the noise of theroad, in the noise of the
traffic, we can be asrecollected as in a chapel.
But of course, again, you know,we we won't be recollected in on
the road or in our activities ifwe don't have these moments of
(17:47):
exclusive dedication tomeditation and prayer and the
sacraments.
So let me ask us, uh, you know,what are the non-negotiable
moments of prayer in my day?
And probably it won't be alwaysat the same time of the day.
(18:08):
That's very difficult.
We're not we don't live in aconvent, probably, you know, we
live uh in in a setting that hasvery unstable uh schedules and
emergencies and requests, and uhwe need to answer changes, you
know.
(18:28):
So uh but we can keep the uh thetime of prayer stable.
unknown (18:35):
St.
SPEAKER_00 (18:35):
Rosemaria used to compare it with chain mail.
The the chain mail uh protectsus very flexibly to our
movements, but each chain has tobe very strong and immovable.
So what are the non-negotiablemoments of prayer in my day?
(18:56):
Have I become casual about them?
Have I allowed holes to developin this chain mail?
Um do I protect them, you know,uh with the same seriousness
with which I protect meetingsand obligations in my
professional work.
So as I as I have already said,prayer is built through small
(19:20):
daily acts in every day.
Uh our temptation is to imaginethat holiness requires heroic
spiritual feats.
But Pope Leo XIV reminds us in adocument he wrote on the sacred
heart, on the solemnity of thesacred heart of Jesus in 2026,
(19:43):
said the union of our heart withChrist's heart is not an
experience reserved for a selectfew.
Rather, it is a sacramentalEucharistic journey that unfolds
each day of our lives.
Each day, not not only once ayear during a retreat or not
(20:08):
during exceptional moments.
Each day is an encounter withChrist.
Prayer is like a plant thatgrows, like a tree that needs to
have soil and uh to to expandand and to grow.
And it's like friendship.
Friendship grows by dealing witheach other, by meeting each
(20:31):
other, by thinking of eachother, by reaching out, by
talking with each other, by s byspending time together.
And now as we pray, perhaps ourprayer is is dry, or perhaps
we're tired, perhaps we aredistracted, you know, perhaps we
are annoyed with something, orangry about something, or hurt
(20:57):
by someone, uh, but Christ isthere.
The sacred heart teaches us thatGod loves not only our strength,
but our poverty.
Jesus reaches out to Peter whenhe was thinking, we can
encounter Christ in ourweakness.
And as Saint Paul speaks of thisparadox, we carry this treasure
(21:20):
in earthen vessels.
Um we we often think, or wemight think, you know, I um if
only I were more recollected, ifonly I were less distracted, if
only I were holier.
Um but Jesus says, Come as youare, uh I love you as you are.
(21:41):
Um so how many times today can Isimply raise my heart to God?
If you're listening to thismeditation in the morning, you
know how many how many timeswill I do this, or uh if it's in
the evening, how many times haveI?
And don't be discouraged.
You know, you can still usethere's still minutes to the
(22:03):
day.
Uh and we we can th raise ourheart to God before we begin
work.
When we walk down a hallway,when we drive, when we wait, uh
before we open an email, beforewe have a difficult
conversation.
And these little acts ofawareness of God's presence,
(22:27):
these short arrows of love, theykeep the fire of our love alive.
Most importantly, they help usto be contemplative, to abide
always in Christ.
Remember the parable of the vineand the branches which we've
(22:48):
already mentioned in the gospelaccording to Saint John, our
Lord says, Abide in me and I inyou.
As the branch cannot bear fruitby itself unless it abides in
the vine, neither can you,unless you abide in me.
(23:09):
I am the vine, you are thebranches.
He who abides in me and I inhim, he it is that bears much
fruit.
For apart from me you can donothing.
Apart from me, you can donothing.
So Lord I I surrender thismeditation to you, and it is up
(23:32):
to you to speak into the heartsof uh the people who are
listening, uh but but also intomy own heart, because I I too
want to pray.
And so I want to abide in yourlove.
And and this this passage of thegospel uh is something which
(23:53):
resonates with what Leo XIVteaches, namely that holiness is
is not the result of an isolatedeffort, but of simply being
united with Christ.
The branch on the vine doesn'tstrain or or or kind of or is
(24:15):
intense to produce life initself.
It simply receives life byremaining attached to the vine.
And prayer is fundamentallyremaining with Christ, allowing
his life to flow into ours.
And it's it's more lettingourselves be found in our
(24:37):
weakness.
We often seek God in success, inclarity, in virtue, in strength,
and all these things are good,but but scripture repeatedly
shows God revealing himself inour weakness.
Peter is thinking, Thomas isdoubting, the disciples are
(24:58):
frightened.
Uh Paul speaks of a thorn in theflesh.
The heart of Christ is pierced.
Uh the sacred heart is not thesymbol of invulnerability or of
independence.
It's the symbol of vulnerablelove.
Leo the 14th writes, the sacredheart of Jesus is an
(25:21):
all-powerful love preciselybecause it is capable of being
vulnerable.
So maybe the place where we mostwant to hide from God, maybe
that is the very place where Hewishes to meet us.
And in one of the Psalms, theLord says, harden not your heart
(25:46):
when you hear my voice today.
And maybe we say, Of course Iwouldn't harden my heart when I
hear your voice, but maybe it'sthe other way around.
Maybe I have hardened my heartsomewhere, and that is where I
should have heard the voice ofGod.
That was exactly the voice ofGod.
So perhaps it's it's an oldwound or a new wound, and an
(26:10):
anger, a recurringdiscouragement, loneliness,
impatience, temptation, apersistent limitation of ours.
And the Lord doesn't say, youknow what, go away and come back
when you have solved that, andthen we can talk.
No, he says, Let me enter here.
(26:34):
Again, you know, Peter uh feltthe hand of Jesus when he was
about to die, when he wassinking.
So what weaknesses do I mostwish I didn't have?
And have I allowed Christ intothat place?
Do I believe that grace can befound right there in that in
(26:59):
that spot?
Well, just uh uh a word aboutsomething that Saint Osumeria
warns against.
It's routine, you know.
Um when prayer is real, it itcannot be routinary.
(27:19):
Um but on the other hand, everysoul who prays for years faces
routine, uh, which SaintOsumeria calls the sepulchre of
true piety.
Um prayer can become mechanical,words lose freshness, practices
feel repetitive, and the remedyagainst that is not abandoning
(27:43):
prayer.
The remedy is recovering ourfirst love.
It's it's so as I said, trueprayer cannot become boring.
What can become boring are ourpractices.
Uh we can become boring, butprayer can't become boring.
Uh we can never get bored orroutinary when we touch the
(28:07):
living flame of love.
Um so the value lies in uhreviving the relationship, uh
realizing that the rosary, thebreviary, mental prayer, visits
to the blessed sacrament, thoseare all uh encounters with the
(28:29):
love of our life.
So the the problem is not thatwe repeat these acts, the
problem is that we forget who weare meeting.
Uh, the catechism describesprayer as the remembrance of
God.
So we overcome routine when weremember whom we are meeting.
So when we enter prayer, I thinkit's always good to ask myself,
(28:53):
do I consciously place myselfplace myself before a living
person, or am I merelycompleting a task?
Uh so and and we might start outjust saying, well, it's my duty,
I will, I will stick to my plan,but then we need to break
through that cross.
Like like the men who carriedthe paralytic uh to Christ, they
(29:17):
didn't they didn't reach him,and they just broke through the
roof of the house.
And they placed Jesus uh rightin front, uh placed the
paralytic man right in front ofthe Lord.
So that's what we should do withourselves when we uh when we
enter prayer.
And and also beware ofdiscouragement.
(29:37):
You know, we we like to compareourselves with with others, with
the saints, but uh if youcompare, you despair, you know,
because you take your eyes offChrist and um you look at
yourself.
And then we needn't be surprisedthat we sink as as Peter sank.
(29:58):
So as Peter in thosecircumstances we we say, we cry
to the Lord, Lord, save mebecause I am perishing.
And and so uh at the end of thismeditation, Lord, I renew my
here I am, you know, here I am,Lord, and uh teach me to find
you in every part, in everymoment of my life, especially in
(30:24):
the places where I am weakest,and teach me to begin again
every day.
And we do so.
We ask this, trusting in theintercession of our Mother Mary.
She is the teacher of interiorlife, and she uh guides us
always to Christ.
I thank you, my God, for thegood resolutions, affections,
(30:47):
and inspirations which you havecommunicated to me in this
meditation.
I ask your help to put them intoeffect.
My Immaculate Mother SaintJoseph, my father and lord, my
guardian angel, intercede forme.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit, my Lord and my God,I firmly believe that you are
here, that you see me, that youhear me.
I adore you with profoundreverence.
I ask your pardon for my sinsand grace to make this time of
(00:33):
prayer fruitful.
My Immaculate Mother, SaintJoseph, my father and Lord, my
guardian angel, intercede forme.
In our Lord's presence I inviteyou to accompany me in prayer,
in a meditation on the desire toknow God.
(00:56):
Getting to know God is not firsta matter of learning many, many
ideas about Him or studyingtheology.
Not everyone can do that.
We all can acquire basicknowledge of God and we need
that.
But everyone can enter intofriendship with God.
(01:17):
Everyone can have a relationwith God.
And Saint José Maria spokeconsistently of prayer as such a
living relationship.
He said, prayer is aconversation with God, unratico
de charla in Spanish, as uh likea chat, a conversation with a
(01:38):
friend.
Uh yet we all know thedifficulties.
Uh we we desire God, but we getdistracted or we don't feel like
it, and um and and we beginagain and again, we make
resolutions and we fail.
But the encouraging truth isthat God is not waiting for us
(02:01):
at the end of perfection.
Uh, like we have to be perfectbefore we can relate with God.
He comes looking for us where weare.
And um it helps me to meditateon the scene where uh the
disciples are in the boat andJesus approaches them walking on
the lake, and they uh get reallyscared and they they cry out uh
(02:27):
because they think he's a ghost,and uh Jesus calms them down and
Peter said, Lord, if it is you,command me to come to you on the
water.
And Jesus said, Come.
So Peter got out of the boat andwalked on the water and came
toward Jesus.
(02:49):
But when he saw the wind he wasafraid, and beginning to sink he
cried out, Lord, save me.
Jesus immediately reached outhis hand and caught him, saying,
O man of little faith, why didyou doubt?
Well as long as Jesus sorry, aslong as Peter looked at Jesus,
(03:14):
he was able to walk on thewater.
As soon as he looked at himselfand at the wind and the waves,
he began to think.
But the the point I want to makehere now is that Peter meets
Jesus or can touch Jesus notwhile he is walking on the
water.
So he's not he doesn't reallyencounter Jesus while he is
(03:37):
successful, so to say, butprecisely while he's thinking,
the Lord's hand reaches him atthe moment of failure.
Many of us discover God'stenderness not in our strength,
but in our poverty, in ourfears, in our recurring
(03:59):
weaknesses and limitations, inthe darkness.
Perhaps the places where we mostdeeply encounter Christ are
precisely those parts ofourselves we wish were
different, but are unable tochange, or we feel unable to
(04:20):
change them.
That's that is where we canencounter Christ.
But to do that we we we justneed to persevere in prayer.
And uh the Lord teaches us thatwith a parable, and he's uh Luke
reports this, that Jesus toldthem a parable to the effect
(04:40):
that they ought always to prayand not lose heart.
He said, In a certain city therewas a judge who neither feared
God nor regarded man, and therewas a widow in that city who
kept coming to him and saying,Vindicate me against my
adversary.
For a while he refused, butafterward he said to himself,
(05:05):
Though I neither fear God norregard man, yet because this
widow bothers me, I willvindicate her, or she will wear
me out by her continual coming.
And the Lord said, Hear what theunrighteous judge says, and will
not God vindicate his elect whocry to him day and night?
(05:31):
This is perhaps the gospelpassage that best supports Saint
Hosematius' insistence on whatthe spiritual tradition calls a
plan of life and fidelity toprayer.
A plan of life is not a plan forlife for the whole of our life,
what we'll do when we're uhthirty, what we'll do when we're
(05:54):
sixty, what we'll do inretirement, and so on.
It's the daily plan of devotionsthat we have made.
And uh that it's important thatthe Lord doesn't say, pray when
you feel like it, or pray whenyou feel inspired.
But he says, pray always and donot lose heart.
(06:15):
So perseverance in prayer isalready a form of love.
You know, and I I always, when Imeditate on this scene, I I kind
of ask God, well, um, will notGod vindicate his elect who cry
to him day and night?
Well, Lord, we cry to you dayand night for so many things,
and we want peace in the worldand justice and in our own uh
(06:38):
lives, we we pray for things, wepray for health, for friends and
family members, we pray forconversions, and sometimes you
seem to be silent.
And and I think what the Lord issaying is, look, when when you
persevere in prayer, that isalready the faith and the that I
(07:00):
seek in you, and it's already agift of mine.
So we need to create space forGod in our life in our lives.
And and that we do with um theplan of life.
Because uh it's a practicaltruth that prayer doesn't happen
by accident.
(07:21):
Uh uh, it's not like um ourdigestion or our heartbeat that
kind of goes by itself withoutour being aware of it.
But it's it's very beautiful toread the fourth part of the
catechism of the CatholicChurch.
In my theology classes in Rome,we had a teacher who later
(07:41):
became an archbishop, and hetold us that when the catechism
was put together, the differentauthors, most of them, or some
of them were bishops, otherswere theologians, sent their
sections in beautifully printedon beautifully printed paper,
(08:03):
and they added the floppy disksat the time uh and uh they were
put together.
Uh but the section on the prayerarrived without a floppy disk,
and it was on crumpled, smudgypaper, uh written on one of
these uh travel typewriters, anduh you could see that uh it had
(08:25):
been written with difficulty anduh without technical means
because things were x'd out.
There was no, you know, at thattime you couldn't just delete
what you had written, you had tokind of um put a white lacquer
on it and let it dry, and noteven that was available, so he
just uh uh X'ed it out and wroteagain.
(08:48):
And it was written by a Maronitebishop in the bomb shelters of
Beirut during the Civil War.
And the the author uh uh kind ofwrote that he was he hadn't
studied this text with a librarybecause there was nothing
(09:09):
available, but he prayed it.
This whole part is is a fruit,an immediate fruit of prayer.
And in it we read, prayer is thelife of the new heart.
It ought to animate us at everymoment, but we tend to forget
(09:33):
him who is our life and our all.
We must remember God more oftenthan we draw breath.
These are the words of thecatechism.
So we must remember God moreoften than we draw breath.
(09:54):
That's a powerful image.
We can live without eating forquite some time, many days
actually, I don't know how many,but uh definitely uh some days.
Uh we can also live withoutdrinking uh or significantly
fewer days than remainingwithout food, uh, but we can't
(10:19):
uh stop breathing.
Uh I don't know what the worldrecord is now in holding your
breath, but it's it's uh a fewminutes.
If we stop breathing, our brainshuts down, we we die, and and
so we must remember God moreoften than we draw breath.
(10:44):
Prayer is the breathing of thesoul.
Uh without it we collapse, wedie.
And um it's it's it's acomparison that can be
misleading because breathinggoes semi unconsciously and it
(11:04):
goes automatically.
We just breathe.
Um it's one of those activitiesin us that we can control
consciously, we can breathe moreslowly, more deeply, we can
meditate by controlling ourbreath, but we we can't stop
breathing.
It's it's it's uh uh a naturalinstinct, an impulse, it's
(11:29):
irrepressible.
But not so prayer.
Prayer is uh actually somethingwe don't like to do by nature.
We want to uh do things, we wantto touch things, we want to hear
things, we want to see things,we want to experience things,
but in prayer we need to closeour eyes and shut out the noise
(11:51):
and be still with our God,listen to God, uh stop the
chatter or try to stop thechatter which is going on in our
in our brain.
So it needs training.
And the catechism goes on tosay, but we cannot pray at all
(12:12):
times if we do not pray atspecific times.
So we we often say that God isimportant, and you know I preach
it and I I I try to tell others,but what place does God actually
occupy in the structure of ourday, of your day, of my day?
(12:36):
Um is it something I have to do,like a task, or is it really a
relationship?
And uh let me read this passagefrom a homily by Saint Jose
Maria in the in Friends of God.
(12:56):
Try to commit yourself to a planof life and to keep to it, a few
minutes of mental prayer, holymass daily if you can manage it,
and frequent communion, regularrecourse to the holy sacrament
of forgiveness, even though yourconscience does not accuse you
(13:20):
of mortal sin, visiting Jesus inthe tabernacle, praying and
contemplating the mysteries ofthe Holy Rosary, and so many
other marvelous devotions youknow or can learn.
And he adds, please don't forgetthat the important thing does
(13:42):
not lie in doing many things.
Limit yourself generously tothose you can fulfill each day,
whether or not you happen tofeel like doing them.
So that's uh uh a nice way ofputting it.
Limit yourself generously.
(14:03):
So be realistic, uh, but at thesame time be generous.
Let yourself be stretched, letyourself be challenged, um let
yourself uh be a little bitmaybe overwhelmed and say, how
can I how can I get everythinguh uh done?
(14:25):
You know, how can I how can Icommit to this?
Uh it's got to be realistic, butit's got to be generous because
love requires appointments.
Uh you know, a boy and a girl,they they date, they um and
they're sure to prepare thatdate, they're nervous, they want
(14:45):
to make a good impression.
And um why don't we do somethingsimilar with God?
From its its Jewish roots, thechurch has proposed rhythms that
have taken shape over thecenturies, and St.
Osmaria mentions them.
You know, there's uh theEucharist, Holy Mass, the center
(15:07):
and root of Christian life, uhmorning prayer, mental prayer,
spiritual reading, the Angelus,the rosary, the examination of
conscience.
You know, these are like uhreally um reliable devotions
that have been tested over timeand have proven to be uh really
(15:30):
uh necessary or at least very,very helpful for a Christian
life, for for a life, for arelationship with God.
It's not that God needsschedules uh or a plan, but we
need we need it.
So uh a plan of life is not aprison or a straitjacket, it is
(15:52):
a trellis or a scaffolding thatallows the vine to grow.
You know, Jesus is the vine, weare the branches, and uh um this
our day needs these thestructure.
And we can also compare it witha bridge.
A bridge over a river needspylons, and we can't put all the
(16:16):
pylons on one side of the river,but we have to distribute them
uh uh throughout the whole thebreadth of the river so that the
bridge holds and can support uhweight and and connect the two
sides.
The the one side our activitiesuh in work and family, in
(16:37):
friendship, in rest, and God onthe other side.
So Saint Osumaria repeated thatuh we become contemplatives in
the middle of the road, in themiddle of the world, not through
uh extraordinary experiences,but but by these small
(17:00):
aspirations, by short prayers,and through ordinary practices.
And there's there's a story Ilove.
Uh he was in the central houseof Opus Day in Rome, where there
are several chapels, and someonewas curious, they wanted to know
what his favorite chapel was.
And he went straight to thewindow that overlooks a noisy
(17:23):
street, opened the window, andpointed to the street, and he
said, That's my favorite chapel.
Because in the noise of theroad, in the noise of the
traffic, we can be asrecollected as in a chapel.
But of course, again, you know,we we won't be recollected in on
the road or in our activities ifwe don't have these moments of
(17:47):
exclusive dedication tomeditation and prayer and the
sacraments.
So let me ask us, uh, you know,what are the non-negotiable
moments of prayer in my day?
And probably it won't be alwaysat the same time of the day.
(18:08):
That's very difficult.
We're not we don't live in aconvent, probably, you know, we
live uh in in a setting that hasvery unstable uh schedules and
emergencies and requests, and uhwe need to answer changes, you
know.
(18:28):
So uh but we can keep the uh thetime of prayer stable.
unknown (18:35):
St.
SPEAKER_00 (18:35):
Rosemaria used to compare it with chain mail.
The the chain mail uh protectsus very flexibly to our
movements, but each chain has tobe very strong and immovable.
So what are the non-negotiablemoments of prayer in my day?
(18:56):
Have I become casual about them?
Have I allowed holes to developin this chain mail?
Um do I protect them, you know,uh with the same seriousness
with which I protect meetingsand obligations in my
professional work.
So as I as I have already said,prayer is built through small
(19:20):
daily acts in every day.
Uh our temptation is to imaginethat holiness requires heroic
spiritual feats.
But Pope Leo XIV reminds us in adocument he wrote on the sacred
heart, on the solemnity of thesacred heart of Jesus in 2026,
(19:43):
said the union of our heart withChrist's heart is not an
experience reserved for a selectfew.
Rather, it is a sacramentalEucharistic journey that unfolds
each day of our lives.
Each day, not not only once ayear during a retreat or not
(20:08):
during exceptional moments.
Each day is an encounter withChrist.
Prayer is like a plant thatgrows, like a tree that needs to
have soil and uh to to expandand and to grow.
And it's like friendship.
Friendship grows by dealing witheach other, by meeting each
(20:31):
other, by thinking of eachother, by reaching out, by
talking with each other, by s byspending time together.
And now as we pray, perhaps ourprayer is is dry, or perhaps
we're tired, perhaps we aredistracted, you know, perhaps we
are annoyed with something, orangry about something, or hurt
(20:57):
by someone, uh, but Christ isthere.
The sacred heart teaches us thatGod loves not only our strength,
but our poverty.
Jesus reaches out to Peter whenhe was thinking, we can
encounter Christ in ourweakness.
And as Saint Paul speaks of thisparadox, we carry this treasure
(21:20):
in earthen vessels.
Um we we often think, or wemight think, you know, I um if
only I were more recollected, ifonly I were less distracted, if
only I were holier.
Um but Jesus says, Come as youare, uh I love you as you are.
(21:41):
Um so how many times today can Isimply raise my heart to God?
If you're listening to thismeditation in the morning, you
know how many how many timeswill I do this, or uh if it's in
the evening, how many times haveI?
And don't be discouraged.
You know, you can still usethere's still minutes to the
(22:03):
day.
Uh and we we can th raise ourheart to God before we begin
work.
When we walk down a hallway,when we drive, when we wait, uh
before we open an email, beforewe have a difficult
conversation.
And these little acts ofawareness of God's presence,
(22:27):
these short arrows of love, theykeep the fire of our love alive.
Most importantly, they help usto be contemplative, to abide
always in Christ.
Remember the parable of the vineand the branches which we've
(22:48):
already mentioned in the gospelaccording to Saint John, our
Lord says, Abide in me and I inyou.
As the branch cannot bear fruitby itself unless it abides in
the vine, neither can you,unless you abide in me.
(23:09):
I am the vine, you are thebranches.
He who abides in me and I inhim, he it is that bears much
fruit.
For apart from me you can donothing.
Apart from me, you can donothing.
So Lord I I surrender thismeditation to you, and it is up
(23:32):
to you to speak into the heartsof uh the people who are
listening, uh but but also intomy own heart, because I I too
want to pray.
And so I want to abide in yourlove.
And and this this passage of thegospel uh is something which
(23:53):
resonates with what Leo XIVteaches, namely that holiness is
is not the result of an isolatedeffort, but of simply being
united with Christ.
The branch on the vine doesn'tstrain or or or kind of or is
(24:15):
intense to produce life initself.
It simply receives life byremaining attached to the vine.
And prayer is fundamentallyremaining with Christ, allowing
his life to flow into ours.
And it's it's more lettingourselves be found in our
(24:37):
weakness.
We often seek God in success, inclarity, in virtue, in strength,
and all these things are good,but but scripture repeatedly
shows God revealing himself inour weakness.
Peter is thinking, Thomas isdoubting, the disciples are
(24:58):
frightened.
Uh Paul speaks of a thorn in theflesh.
The heart of Christ is pierced.
Uh the sacred heart is not thesymbol of invulnerability or of
independence.
It's the symbol of vulnerablelove.
Leo the 14th writes, the sacredheart of Jesus is an
(25:21):
all-powerful love preciselybecause it is capable of being
vulnerable.
So maybe the place where we mostwant to hide from God, maybe
that is the very place where Hewishes to meet us.
And in one of the Psalms, theLord says, harden not your heart
(25:46):
when you hear my voice today.
And maybe we say, Of course Iwouldn't harden my heart when I
hear your voice, but maybe it'sthe other way around.
Maybe I have hardened my heartsomewhere, and that is where I
should have heard the voice ofGod.
That was exactly the voice ofGod.
So perhaps it's it's an oldwound or a new wound, and an
(26:10):
anger, a recurringdiscouragement, loneliness,
impatience, temptation, apersistent limitation of ours.
And the Lord doesn't say, youknow what, go away and come back
when you have solved that, andthen we can talk.
No, he says, Let me enter here.
(26:34):
Again, you know, Peter uh feltthe hand of Jesus when he was
about to die, when he wassinking.
So what weaknesses do I mostwish I didn't have?
And have I allowed Christ intothat place?
Do I believe that grace can befound right there in that in
(26:59):
that spot?
Well, just uh uh a word aboutsomething that Saint Osumeria
warns against.
It's routine, you know.
Um when prayer is real, it itcannot be routinary.
(27:19):
Um but on the other hand, everysoul who prays for years faces
routine, uh, which SaintOsumeria calls the sepulchre of
true piety.
Um prayer can become mechanical,words lose freshness, practices
feel repetitive, and the remedyagainst that is not abandoning
(27:43):
prayer.
The remedy is recovering ourfirst love.
It's it's so as I said, trueprayer cannot become boring.
What can become boring are ourpractices.
Uh we can become boring, butprayer can't become boring.
Uh we can never get bored orroutinary when we touch the
(28:07):
living flame of love.
Um so the value lies in uhreviving the relationship, uh
realizing that the rosary, thebreviary, mental prayer, visits
to the blessed sacrament, thoseare all uh encounters with the
(28:29):
love of our life.
So the the problem is not thatwe repeat these acts, the
problem is that we forget who weare meeting.
Uh, the catechism describesprayer as the remembrance of
God.
So we overcome routine when weremember whom we are meeting.
So when we enter prayer, I thinkit's always good to ask myself,
(28:53):
do I consciously place myselfplace myself before a living
person, or am I merelycompleting a task?
Uh so and and we might start outjust saying, well, it's my duty,
I will, I will stick to my plan,but then we need to break
through that cross.
Like like the men who carriedthe paralytic uh to Christ, they
(29:17):
didn't they didn't reach him,and they just broke through the
roof of the house.
And they placed Jesus uh rightin front, uh placed the
paralytic man right in front ofthe Lord.
So that's what we should do withourselves when we uh when we
enter prayer.
And and also beware ofdiscouragement.
(29:37):
You know, we we like to compareourselves with with others, with
the saints, but uh if youcompare, you despair, you know,
because you take your eyes offChrist and um you look at
yourself.
And then we needn't be surprisedthat we sink as as Peter sank.
(29:58):
So as Peter in thosecircumstances we we say, we cry
to the Lord, Lord, save mebecause I am perishing.
And and so uh at the end of thismeditation, Lord, I renew my
here I am, you know, here I am,Lord, and uh teach me to find
you in every part, in everymoment of my life, especially in
(30:24):
the places where I am weakest,and teach me to begin again
every day.
And we do so.
We ask this, trusting in theintercession of our Mother Mary.
She is the teacher of interiorlife, and she uh guides us
always to Christ.
I thank you, my God, for thegood resolutions, affections,
(30:47):
and inspirations which you havecommunicated to me in this
meditation.
I ask your help to put them intoeffect.
My Immaculate Mother SaintJoseph, my father and lord, my
guardian angel, intercede forme.
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