FRIDAY FAVORITES FOR PRAYER AND WRITING

Posted on by Lisa Deam

Welcome to Friday Favorites! Here at The Contemplative Writer, one of our favorite “tasks” is rounding up each week’s collection of posts, videos, and podcasts. We hope today’s selection will provide encouragement and opportunity for reflection.

Blessings,

Lisa and Prasanta

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How I Use My Prayer Rope via Rich Lewis (a short video with helpful ideas for using a prayer rope with the Jesus Prayer)

Your Suffering is Sacred (with K. J. Ramsey) via Marc Alan Schelske (on learning how to hold suffering as believers in Jesus Christ)

Just For Today via John Blase (a poem about life, loss, and wanting to run away)

Celebrate the Ignatian Year With a Spiritual Treasury via Father Raymond J. de Souza (learn about the Jesuit Year of St. Ignatius and Ignatian spirituality)

Twelve Ways to Approach Christian Mystical Spirituality via Carl McColman (a helpful overview of mysticism in the Christian tradition)

Choosing to Replant our Trees of Knowledge via Deborah Beddoe (on the call to consider something again)

WEEKLY PRAYER: CESAR CHAVEZ

Posted on by Lisa Deam

This week we’re praying with Cesar Chavez (1927-1993), a Mexican American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist. The prayer below reflects his belief in the dignity of all people and the need to come together in prayer, justice, and community. Cesar Chavez Day is coming up on March 31.

Chavez’s prayer is a good one for the season of Lent, when we reflect on where we are going in our spiritual lives and how we might be more present to the suffering and needs of those around us.

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Show me the suffering of the most miserable;
So I will know my people’s plight.

Free me to pray for others;
For you are present in every person.

Help me take responsibility for my own life;
So that I can be free at last.

Grant me courage to serve others;
For in service there is true life.

Give me honesty and patience;
So that I can work with other workers.

Bring forth song and celebration;
So that the Spirit will be alive among us.

Let the Spirit flourish and grow;
So that we will never tire of the struggle.

Let us remember those who have died for justice;
For they have given us life.

Help us love even those who hate us;
So we can change the world.

Amen.

Source

BOOK OF THE MONTH: NO MAN IS AN ISLAND BY THOMAS MERTON

Posted on by Lisa Deam

Week 3: Suffering and Contemplation

No Man Is an Island

This month, we’re reading a spiritual classic, No Man Is an Island by Thomas Merton. In chapter five, Merton explores the theme of suffering. Suffering, Merton observes, comes to us because of the fall. He writes: “The Christian must not only accept suffering: he must make it holy. Nothing so easily becomes unholy as suffering.”

How, then, is suffering made holy? Merton spends the chapter unpacking this and related questions. Again and again, he relates our suffering to the cross and also to contemplation. The chapter is so rich that I can’t do it justice here. I’ll share a few quotes with you — and then I encourage you to go read it yourself!

 

 

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To know the Cross is to know that we are saved by the sufferings of Christ; more, it is to know the love of Christ Who underwent suffering and death in order to save us. . . This explains the connection between suffering and contemplation. For contemplation is simply the penetration, by divine wisdom, into the mystery of God’s love, in the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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We cannot suffer well unless we see Christ everywhere—both in suffering and in the charity of those who come to the aid of our affliction.

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In order to face suffering in peace: Suffer without imposing on others a theory of suffering, without weaving a new philosophy of life from your own material pain, without proclaiming yourself a martyr, without counting out the price of your courage, without disdaining sympathy and without seeking too much of it.

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In the end, we should seek God everywhere, even in the darkness of suffering.

You can read No Man Is an Island here.

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For reflection:

 

Merton week 3