Week Three - Daily Schedule
Theme: Discovering that the living God beholds me with compassion and delight.
Grace/Desire: To know and see more clearly how near and caring is God's love for me.
Prayer Materials for the Week
- Luke 11:1-13 - Lord, teach us to pray.
- Isaiah 54:4-10 - Do not be afraid ... forget the shame of your youth ... though the mountains may fall, my love for you lasts.
- Prayer of Consideration: My Dossier
- Matthew 6:25-34 - Consider the lilies of the field.
- Prayer of Consideration: Lilies of the Field
- Isaiah 62:1-5 - You will be called by a new name ... your God will rejoice in you like a young man in his bride.
- Jeremiah 18: 1-6 - God is the potter; we are the clay.
Prayer
Lord, teach me to be generous, teach me to serve you as you deserve, to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor and not to seek reward, save that of knowing I do your most Holy Will. - St Ignatius of Loyola
More on Prayer - Review of Prayer
Review of the Week
You have been sharing your story and dreams with God and God has been sharing God's story and dreams with you - all the while reminding you about some aspects of your own story which you have never sufficiently appreciated.
- If you could take your deepest desire, your vision for yourself in the world, and express it in a story, what would it be?
- If you were to die five years from now, for what concrete things or ways of behaving would you like to be remembered in an honest obituary about you?
- What images/memories give you life? A sense of freedom? A sense of well-being and deep peace?
- What stories in the recent past capture how you would like to cooperate with God's dream for the world in the next decade?
For Further Reflection and Consideration
Prayer begins with the realization that I am loved by God as I am. God's love is based on nothing and, therefore, is the most basic and secure fact in my life. I simply let myself be loved by God. This is not so much an activity of mine but a passivity in which I let God's love soak in and permeate my whole being. - Adapted from "As Bread That is Broken" by Peter van Breemen, S.J.
More To Ponder
Why might God have called you into these exercises? Perhaps because of the great delight, esteem, honour and profound love in which God holds you? - David Howells
Additional Scripture For Prayer and Reflection
Deuteronomy 1: 29-33
The Holy One goes before you and will personally fight for you ... God carries you as a parent carries a child.
Deuteronomy 7: 7-9
Not because you are the largest of nations, does God love you.
Wisdom 11: 22-26
Before you, the whole universe is like a little seed.
Psalm 19
The heavens declare the glory of God.
More On Prayer: Review of Prayer
After you have finished reciting the Our Father at the end of your prayer time, take a brief time for another exercise: Review of Prayer.
You already know what a Review of Prayer is like. Imagine that you sit alone after a long visit with a great friend. The two of you covered a lot of ground. You might have talked a bit about politics; about other friends; about your own long-established friendship. As you sit remembering, you can recall certain sentences that one of you said, and identify definite feelings you had at certain junctures. You know "what you talked about" and can name the general feeling of your time together-good, or wonderful, or painful. You know there are things still unresolved or unfinished, things still to be said. When you make a Review of Prayer, you do very much that same thing.
- Jotting down in a notebook what occurs to you, look back over your prayer time to see what you did and what you experienced. Understand, you need not do and experience over again; that's a different exercise. You need only note what you did and experienced.
- For instance, note how you started. Note the major idea or ideas that occurred to you. What conviction or convictions did you come to? Did you have any strong feelings or emotions? Were those feelings peaceful, creative, or holy? Were they rather disturbing, or even fearful? Did you feel love for God? resentful toward God?
- You may find only one or other thing to note, or you might find a great deal. God will deal with you variously at various times.
- Try to be careful to note any thoughts, affects, convictions that were particularly strong. Did something make you really fearful? fill you with disgust? make you doubt your belief somehow? Or did something make you feel very happy in God? give you greater sureness in your choices? make you sense how deep your life in Christ goes? Note each of those carefully, particularly the movements that were very strong-the black holes and the volcanoes.
Take the "climate of your prayer: A still summer afternoon? A stormy winter night? A breezy morning/A very, very long and dull afternoon?
Theme: Discovering that the Living God beholds me with compassion and delight.
Preparing for the period of prayer
- Be aware that you are in the presence of the Living God, the One who beholds you with compassion and delight and who is relentless in seeking to bless you with all that is good.
- Ask for the Grace/Desire being sought this week: "I ask that God will uncover my deepest yearnings and desires - as well as God's own deep longing for me."
- Address this prayer of desire, first to God the Father, then to Mary, the mother of Jesus, then to Jesus, himself.
- Continue below.
In a notebook, I jot down all the vital statistics of my life. As I note each piece of data, I raise my mind to God my Maker, and praise and thank the Creator for this detail in my life history and in my self. Note: God chose that I should come to be in a particular place and time, of particular parents and race, and all the rest. Am I content with God's choices for me?
So to begin, I write down my parents' full names, birthplaces, and birth dates (if I know them). I note my own birthday, where I was born, and any significant medical details. I note my sex, race or ethnic group, hair and eye color, and my physical build. I also note my siblings - name, birthdays, significant details; and I note my extended family of uncles and aunts and cousins. I note the places I have lived before I was seven. All this, God chose for me; for all this, I praise and thank God.
Then I note down a half dozen personal characteristics and qualities that were bred into me before I had a choice. Self-assurance or anxiety, intelligence, the language or languages I speak, habits of study, activities I take pleasure in, even my sexual orientation. I note at the same time a half dozen characteristics and qualities that I have inherited from my parents or my extended family, those that I like and perhaps some that I would just as soon not have. All this, too, God chose for me within the human family; for all this, I praise and thank God.
If I have time, I go on to note down five or six personal qualities in myself that I particularly like. Perhaps I am quiet, or outgoing, and I like that about myself. Perhaps I am very thorough, or sensitive to others' feelings, or truthful. Perhaps I have lots of energy, or accomplish a great deal. I note down these qualities and acknowledge them as gifts from the One who makes me. For all this, too, God chose for me within the human family; for all this, I praise and thank God.
Finally, if I still have time, I go on to note down five or six personal qualities in myself that I do not particularly like. Perhaps I am too tall or short, or cannot shake an ugly attitude. Perhaps I have a negative image of myself. Or find it too easy to dislike other people. Or am diabetic. I note down these qualities and acknowledge them as gifts from the One who makes me. For all this, too, God chose for me within the human family; for all this, I praise and thank God.
Whenever my time is up, I recite Psalm 139. But I remember that God did not finish making me once, long ago, when I was conceived or born. I remember that God continues making me and has hopes for me and desires that I keep growing in love until I love as completely as God loves.
Theme: Discovering that the Living God beholds me with compassion and delight.
Preparing for the period of prayer
- Be aware that you are in the presence of the Living God, the One who beholds you with compassion and delight and who is relentless in seeking to bless you with all that is good.
- Ask for the Grace/Desire being sought this week: "I ask that God will uncover my deepest yearnings and desires - as well as God's own deep longing for me."
- Address this prayer of desire, first to God the Father, then to Mary, the mother of Jesus, then to Jesus, himself.
- Continue below.
Jesus called on His disciple to "consider" the lilies of the field, and we should do that.
The lily does not choose in which field it will stand. When it grows from seed or runner, it finds itself in this field, with this hard clay or soft loam. So do I find myself on a "field" - in the twentieth century moving towards the third millennium, USA, county, town or country, community. How much of my life world is my making; how much is God's?
The lily has no control over what grows around it. When it shoots up, it might have to fight for its life with thorns or clumps of crab-grass. Or it might be outshone by great sunflowers. So have I very little control over what surrounds me. I live in social structures, in political processes. I am caught up in studying, learning a living, preparing for illness and old age. I cannot change the economic situation or the banking practices or taxation of the country. I cannot make the ghettos disappear, or dry up the gun violence that seems to grow daily. How much of my life world is my making; how much is God's?
The lily of the field has absolutely no control over the weather - rain or drought, it must simply stand and endure. So have I no control over nations warring on one another, or over international cartels poisoning the air with pollutants, cannot control whether people around me drug themselves and fill the atmosphere of my world with fear and violence. I cannot control people feeling prejudice toward me and my kind. I cannot make male chauvinism or strident feminism go away, or stop people from aborting babies or abusing their children. How much of my life world is my making; how much is God's?
The lily came up a certain kind of lily, of a certain color and shape, and is shapeliness and health depended on the spring and the summer, and whether grazing cattle let it grow. So id I come up a certain kind of person, of a certain color and shape. So were my psychic health and physical shape much influenced by forces around me when I was coming up. And until now, all created things have let me live and even thrive, though many, many threatened and still threaten me. How much of my life growth is my making; how much is God's?
For all that, not even Solomon dressed up in gold-embroidered brocade was any more lovely that that lily. So for all that has shaped and misshaped me, for all that has given me health and inflicted ill health on me - I am precious in the eyes of God, honored, and God loves me as I am. Otherwise, I would not be as I am, though God would be glad were I to slough off my selfish sins. But they are trash compared to God's creating love in me, whose love will burn them away like flakes on the bark of a flaming pine log. How much of me is mine; how much can be God's?
Ending this Prayer
- As you are coming to the end, think about what this all means to you: to your personal history, your life world, you life, your self.
- Finally, end this way: consciously gather up your thoughts and turn to God our Lord. Think of God as "You." Tell God what you thought about, and feel in God's presence what you have felt. What would you give to God? What do you want of God?
- Any part of the reading where you find tremendous meaning, and any section where you find nothing but dust and boredom - you need to return to these until you know you have done with it. Then go on to another.
- Conclude with a prayerful reading of Psalm 139.