The Need for Prayer

Fr. Christopher Foeckler, MJ • St Josaphat Formation Center, Phoenix, AZ

As the domus members of Miles Jesu gather this month for the next Ordinary General Assembly, for the good ordering of our Ecclesial Family of Consecrated Life, a passage from St. John Paul II’s Letter Novo Millenio Ineuntes can be a guide for all the members – both domus and vinculum. As you read it, please join us in prayer for a fruitful Assembly:

“33. Is it not one of the ‘signs of the times’ that in today’s world, despite widespread secularization, there is a widespread demand for spirituality, a demand which expresses itself in large part as a renewed need for prayer?

“…Yes, dear brothers and sisters, our Christian communities must become genuine ‘schools’ of prayer, where the meeting with Christ is expressed not just in imploring help but also in thanksgiving, praise, adoration, contemplation, listening and ardent devotion, until the heart truly ‘falls in love.’ Intense prayer, yes, but it does not distract us from our commitment to history: by opening our heart to the love of God it also opens it to the love of our brothers and sisters, and makes us capable of shaping history according to God’s plan.18

“34. Christians who have received the gift of a vocation to the specially consecrated life are of course called to prayer in a particular way: of its nature, their consecration makes them more open to the experience of contemplation, and it is important that they should cultivate it with special care. But it would be wrong to think that ordinary Christians can be content with a shallow prayer that is unable to fill their whole life. Especially in the face of the many trials to which today’s world subjects faith, they would be not only mediocre Christians but ‘Christians at risk.’ They would run the insidious risk of seeing their faith progressively undermined, and would perhaps end up succumbing to the allure of ‘substitutes,’ accepting alternative religious proposals and even indulging in far-fetched superstitions.

“It is therefore essential that education in prayer should become in some way a key-point of all pastoral planning.”