As a teenager, the book Prayers of life by Pere Michel Quoist was a huge influence on me. Pere Michel was a member of the worker priest movement in post war France. His prayers are so honest and real and over the next couple of weeks I will share with you some favourites.
Hopefully these words will get you in the mood.
If we knew how to listen to God.
If we knew how to listen to God, we should hear him
speaking to us.For God does speak. He speaks in his Gospel;
he speaks also through life - that new Gospel which we
ourselves add a page each day. But because our faith is too
weak and our life too earthbound, we are rarely open to God's message.
To help us to listen, at the beginning of our new intimacy with Christ,
let us imagine what he would say if he himself interpreted
his Gospel for the people of our day.
If only we knew how to look at life as God sees it,
we should realise that nothing is secular in the world,
but that everything contributes to the building of the
Kingdom of God. To have faith is not only to raise
one's eyes to God to contemplate him; it is also
to look at the world - but with Christ's eyes.
If we had allowed Christ to penetrate our whole being,
if we had purified ourselves, the world would
no longer be an obstacle,
it would be a perpetual incentive to
work for the Father in order that, in Christ,
his kingdom would come on earth as it is in heaven.
We must pray to have sufficient faith to know how to look at life.
If we knew how to look at life through god's eyes,
we should see it as innumerable tokens of the love of the Creator
seeking the love of creatures. The Father has put
us int the world, not to walk through it with lowered eys
but to search for him through things, events, people.
Everything must reveal God to us.
Long prayers are not needed in order to smile at Christ
in the smallest details of daily life.
If we knew how to listen to God, if we knew
how to look around us, our whole life would become prayer.
For it unfolds under God's eyes and no part of it must be
lived without being freely offered to him.
At first we communicate with god through words
which may be dispensed with later on.
Words are only a means.
However, the silent prayer which has moved
beyond words must always spring from everyday life,
for everyday life is the raw material of prayer
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| Night prayers at the Shrine |
Hopefully these words will get you in the mood.
If we knew how to listen to God.
If we knew how to listen to God, we should hear him
speaking to us.For God does speak. He speaks in his Gospel;
he speaks also through life - that new Gospel which we
ourselves add a page each day. But because our faith is too
weak and our life too earthbound, we are rarely open to God's message.
To help us to listen, at the beginning of our new intimacy with Christ,
let us imagine what he would say if he himself interpreted
his Gospel for the people of our day.
If only we knew how to look at life as God sees it,
we should realise that nothing is secular in the world,
but that everything contributes to the building of the
Kingdom of God. To have faith is not only to raise
one's eyes to God to contemplate him; it is also
to look at the world - but with Christ's eyes.
If we had allowed Christ to penetrate our whole being,
if we had purified ourselves, the world would
no longer be an obstacle,
it would be a perpetual incentive to
work for the Father in order that, in Christ,
his kingdom would come on earth as it is in heaven.
We must pray to have sufficient faith to know how to look at life.
If we knew how to look at life through god's eyes,
we should see it as innumerable tokens of the love of the Creator
seeking the love of creatures. The Father has put
us int the world, not to walk through it with lowered eys
but to search for him through things, events, people.
Everything must reveal God to us.
Long prayers are not needed in order to smile at Christ
in the smallest details of daily life.
If we knew how to listen to God, if we knew
how to look around us, our whole life would become prayer.
For it unfolds under God's eyes and no part of it must be
lived without being freely offered to him.
At first we communicate with god through words
which may be dispensed with later on.
Words are only a means.
However, the silent prayer which has moved
beyond words must always spring from everyday life,
for everyday life is the raw material of prayer
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