Suggested Time Mon Feb 28th – Tues Mar 01st

Create the space and the time.

In prayer speak to God as you would to another person, as you would to a friend using your own words. What do you speak about when you meet your friends? When you’re on a sleep-over? When you meet a friend for coffee or lunch? That’s the stuff of prayer, talk to God as you would to a friend.

Don’t be afraid to speak audibly (out loud) if it helps.

Tell him all that’s going on in your life… in your own words. Adults might like to tell him all the gossip… then watch your attitude change!

It may help if you’ve got something to focus on, an image or a statue, or from wherever you are situated, to turn toward the tabernacle in your local church and empty out your heart and mind… over time this will lead to a profound silence in which the soul and God communicate without and beyond words.

When using images remember there’s an order, Jesus first, Mary second; an order that Mary herself respects.

For this reason I recommend turning toward the tabernacle in your local church although this orientation doesn’t exclude the use of a statue of Mary in your prayer space, it just means that if you’re asking Mary for something at least you can look away from her toward her Son because this is the totality of all that she can do in response to you asking her in the first place.

You see anything Mary obtains for us, she obtains by praying to her Son, so as we move our gaze away from her and toward her Son, we’re uniting our gaze with that of Mary, a combined look toward her Son.

In prayer it’s vital to grasp that God has shown himself in Jesus and all that God wants us to know is to be found in Jesus.

Therefore, we must pay close attention to the teachings of Jesus which are found in the four books of the Gospels.

A convenient way to access the teachings of Jesus is by paying close attention to the Sunday Gospels – a good reason to go to Mass on Sundays!

Read them over and over, sit with them, through them Christ will teach you about the inner workings of Heaven, of God Himself.

If we persist in prayer God will begin to trust us with himself and his inner world, with Heaven, and even a few scraps from Heaven are worth more than everything the world has to offer!

When you’ve learned to speak with God in your own words you will find it easier to pray using the traditional formulas.

Remember, the traditional prayer  formulas were once someone’s own words based on their experience of God.

Now go make that experience your own!