Week #19

Forty Weeks ~ Sacred Story

Week 19 Prayer Exercises

Encouragements & Wisdom

In addition to this week’s prayer materials, there are Encouragements and Wisdom (PDF).

Part Two
Building Sacred Story Prayer Practice

1 As I engage the Sacred Story prayer this week, I will make a point of reviewing my prayer discipline and make any necessary changes to be more faithful to the daily disciplines I have committed to. I also resolve to spend no more and no less than 15-minutes in each formal prayer period.

2 For week nineteen I am combining meditations one and two in the Sacred Story prayer: Creation and Presence. I will enter my prayer at least once daily as St. Ignatius suggested.

3 Meditations One and Two—Creation & Presence: I will commit to reviewing the prayer structures from Week 16.

I will awaken to the present moment.
I will awaken to my spiritual nature.
I will not make any decisions based on fear.
I will practice Sacramental Reconciliation monthly.

Focus Affirmation for Week Nineteen

I will say this affirmation aloud once daily:

There are just two ways to cope with my difficulties.
One leads to life, one to death.
I will choose life.

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Read this at the beginning of the week

Review the structure of the 15-minute prayer sessions. You will find these at the bookmark you left in Week 16. For this week, you are combining the first two meditations in Sacred Story Prayer: Creation and Presence. Use your 15-minute prayer sessions this week to pray these two meditations together, following the wisdom you learned in Week 16 for this practice.

Awakening to Sacred Story—Creation, Presence

Prayer Exercise: Creation, Presence

CREATION
I believe God created everything in love and for love; I ask for the grace of a heart-felt knowledge of God’s love for me, and for gratitude for the general and particular graces of this day.

Prelude: God created the universe—all persons and all things—in love and for love. Every thing, and every person in creation is linked in Love, through Christ, in whom and for whom everything was made. We are made to reverence God and each other, and to delight in creation as both Divine gift and support for our lives. The God of All knows me personally and loves me, even before I was knit in my mother’s womb. So fearfully and wonderfully made am I! (Ps. 139:13-14). My gratitude increases as my awakening to these truths is illuminated.

Illuminative Grace: Here I ask for what I desire: to know and feel God’s tender and passionate love, and to know myself as beloved—a treasure of God’s heart in the grand symphony of creation. I pray for the grace of gratitude. In particular, I pray to know by whom I am created and why I am loved. I pray to know and believe that I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

PRESENCE
I believe God is present in each moment and event of my life, and I ask for grace to awaken, see and feel where and how God is present.

Prelude: The eternal God can only be experienced in the here and now, for everything in the universe is sustained by God’s love in the present moment. When I worry about the past, or fret about the future, my consciousness of God, of creation, and of my deepest desires, is blocked. My challenge is to anchor both heart and mind firmly in the present: in each thought, word, and deed, as the story of my life evolves, in each moment, in God’s presence.

Illuminative Grace: Here I ask for what I desire: to be present and awake to every feeling, thought, word and deed—in the present moment. I beg for the grace to wake up to God’s presence in every person, experience, event—good or ill—that I encounter in my day.

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How lovely your dwelling,
LORD, who may abide in your tent?
Who may dwell on your holy mountain?
Whoever walks without blame,
doing what is right,
speaking truth from the heart;
Who does not slander with his tongue,
does no harm to a friend,
never defames a neighbor;
Who disdains the wicked,
but honors those who fear the LORD;
Who keeps an oath despite the cost,
lends no money at interest,
accepts no bribe against the innocent.
Whoever acts like this
shall never be shaken.

(Ps 15)