How’s Your Prayer Life?

Just listened to a keynote by Tucker Carlson at a Heritage Foundation gala. I have never watched Carlson’s show, I don’t have cable, etc. But I have seen clips of his show, and in general I like and appreciate his message. In the keynote, one of the things he calls for is praying for our country. We are in a sad state of affairs these days! There is so much confusion. And so we must pray, but we really need to pray for a whole litany of things: for our own conversion so that we can become a good witness to others, for our family, for our community, for our country, for world peace. That seems like a good start and covers a fairly broad spectrum of the world around us.

A few posts ago, I mentioned the Countdown to the Kingdom website. I love reading the messages from heaven. Yes, most of these visionaries are “unapproved”, but neither are they condemned by the Church. And as St. Paul says, “test everything, hold onto what is good”, from 1 Thessalonians 5:21. These messages largely call for conversion and prayer, while giving us a bit of future prophecies. In the prayer requests, though, the list is huge! And so I get to the point of this post. How is your prayer life and what is it that you are praying for? And, not only what are we praying for, but what is our disposition when we pray? Are we rushed and just getting it done, or are we truly spending time with God?

One visionary in particular, Luz de Maria de Bonilla, receives longer messages that the other visionaries and most of her messages contain a list of petitions that Heaven is calling us to pray for. Both Luz and the other visionaries call us regularly to pray for the priests and bishops and the Church. How often do we do that? Our religious are under constant attack by the devil and his minions. Sure, we hold them to a higher standard, because they chose that life, but in choosing that life they are also bombarded by temptations, more so that the rest of us. They need our prayers! Even the guardian angels of the countries and cities need our prayers. They too are bombarded by demonic attacks, which get stronger as we get weaker and more lost in worldly things.

There are frequent petitions in the messages to pray for various and many countries that will suffer earthquakes; as well as petitions to pray for the man-made chaos that is all around us in every facet of society. We all “feel” that there are big troubles in the world. We need to pray, continuously. The to-do prayer lists are huge. Take some time and just pray, pray for heaven to intervene in the mess that we have made. And at the same time, we have all of the prayer needs of our friends and family who have personal sufferings. Prayer can be a full-time job. I am grateful to our elderly who are stuck at home and spend more time than the rest of us praying. We need their prayers! Thank them for their prayers as well.

So this is a lot of praying. How do we pray this much? Start by turning off the noise around us. Music, TV, podcasts, etc. Clicking on our phones, endless chatter about nothing. Some of these have a time and a place, but God should be higher on our focus. While prayer shouldn’t be rushed, God is well aware of our obligations and knows that we can’t be in the church all day. We can offer moments of heart-felt prayer throughout our day. Something triggers a thought, say a quick prayer for it. You get a request from a friend with a prayer need, say a Hail Mary for them.

What will help us in our prayer effectiveness, is our time with God. How often do you just go into a church and say “hi” to Jesus in the tabernacle? When you go out to get lunch make a stop in the church first. Practice making a holy hour once a week. Whether or not Jesus is exposed in a monstrance, just give Him an hour of your time. “Could you not sit with Me for an hour?” He asked the apostles in the garden of Gethsemane.

We need to learn to live a life of prayer. We need it, our community needs it, our world needs it! God bless us all, and show us the way to eternal life.