Contemplatives Corner

I see this was posted a while ago but I will still comment. Sounds good to me!! Your on the right path. I did my Consecration on the Annunciation this year and it was so great!! I feel truly blessed
Yep, Catholicism sure is the way to go!!
God bless you +++

I Am sure prayers help and so does our time in contemplation. Anyone who finds peace in prayer; who seeks God through prayer, needs incouragement from time to time. Non-judgemental shared experiences of the difference prayer has made in their lives is needed... Thank you, poor_clare, for this group.
I am sad that nobody has prayed or shared experiences in the group for so long...

PSALM 100:4-5
Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him, bless his name for the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As is was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. – Amen.

And so will yours and so does our time in contemplation, so, we help so many people when we pray, not just you and I, but everyone. I have to find this encyclical that explains it, but we create something, I call it "spiritual money" that God uses for the good of the Church, in the persons of those in need.

It's like if you saw a hungry child you would feed him, but when do we ever see that? So we give money to a charity like Save the Children, and they translate that into food in a far away land. God does that with our prayers, by which, I have come to believe through the study of physics and theology, we transform matter into energy and into some kind of spiritual energy we cannot understand. In recent years science has confirmed that the palms of our hands and foreheads (maybe other places) give off electromagnetic energy - all of which we can just call "light."

The great faith we must have, the acceptance of Mystery, is that we are literally helping people in a very material way through our practice. We hear the stories of Saints doing great works or hear of people starting food banks or whatever and we want to go do something. But we are doing something. Remember the story of Martha rushing about to serve everyone while Mary sat at Jesus' feet. Jesus said, "Mary chose the better part."

BTW, I understand how we can find words and concepts outside the church that really help give us a vocabulary for what we experience. I never found that led me away from the Church, but more directly into the Church, more directly to Christ. Maybe we should make up our own jargon!

Maybe we could start sharing our stories here and see what happens. Find a few others to invite as we go along? I'm going to start a new thread titled "Sharing Our Stories" and we can see what happens? I'll go do that now.....

Thanks for such an informative link, poor clare.
I have always been taken with the story of Martha and Mary, in
Luke 10 : 38 - 42.
'' And the Lord answering, said to her :
Martha, Martha, thou art careful and art troubled about many things.
But one thing is necessary. Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her.
( Douay - Rheims english translation ).

In Cloud of unknowing, Chapter 17 the author states that Mary was in the ' best and holiest part of contemplation, that may be in this life,'
that is, to be silent and still and taken up in the contemplation of the Lord's words.
When troubled by many things, important words are not heard !

Peace and grace.

Here is a great series on contemplative prayer that you can listen to online (or download to an iPod or burn to CDs to listen in your car. . .)

Contemplation with Fr. Thomas Dubay

Hi everyone,

A recent post on the Catholic Spiritual Direction blog spoke to me, and I thought I'd share Fr. Edward McIlmail's advice on aids to spiritual growth:

To stay on track, stick to the basics:

1. Make frequent use of the sacrament of confession, and worthily receive the Eucharist as often as possible.

2. Keep up your interior life. Foster a sense of recollection, of interior and exterior silence.

3. Mortify the senses — no need to see and hear everything around you.

4. Develop a healthy detachment from earthly things.

5. Nourish a profound gratitude toward and love for Our Lord.

6. Cultivate a devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

7. Dedicate time to prayer; if you feel drawn into infused contemplation, be open to it.

8. Stay close to your spiritual director; this helps to stave off the devil, who does his darnedest to isolate us and get us discouraged.

9. Be confident of the Holy Spirit’s assistance.

Click here for the entire post.

Dear All,

I find myself more and more drawn to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament each day. I was with a Religious Community and the Lord called me out for health reasons. Now, though I am sad, I spend more and more hours with Him and my latest meditation was being curled up in the tabernacle with Him and holding Him to my heart, hearing His Sacred Heart beat with mine...strange visual I know, but somehow is comforting.

In Christ Our Life,
sbmp

This site provides Scriptural Rosary which I find helps me with meditation on the mysteries:
http://www.scripturalrosary.org/
You might find it useful. You can choose to pray along with male or female voice leading the Rosary recitation. To order the cds:
http://www.scripturalrosary.org/audiointro.html
Love of Christ,
Sidhe54

Your welcome, I became interested in a much deeper prayer life, largely due to his teaching so, I feel indebted to him. One of the many things I love about being Catholic is that we can even better enjoy and benefit form his friendship, now that he has joined the Church Triumphant!

Peace
Irishquad