E&W 4-21-13

Sacred Story

Encouragements & Wisdom: April 21, 2013

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Encouragements and Wisdom: April 21, 2013 (PDF).

E & W reflections are additional helps for your Sacred Story prayer journey. Reflect on them at the beginning of the week or outside of your fifteen-minute prayer windows.

Memory

In the last two reflections, we have explored the science and the mystery of memory. For this lesson, we reflect on the challenge of taking time, daily, to listen to our memories (our hearts). C.S. Lewis reminds us that a major tactic of the one St. Ignatius calls “the enemy of human nature” is getting people to forget that God exists. This is accomplished by creating a world of noise and overwork. Thomas Merton also speaks of the “violence of hyper activism” as a major evil in the modern world. We have technology that is supposed to save us time, yet it appears to makes us more scattered and distracted—and it creates more work! We have a very hard time slowing down to do the one thing in life that produces the most fruit: listening to God speak to us in the silence of our hearts. Even Jesus reprimanded Martha for her overwork and commended Mary who was sitting at the feet of the master (Lk 10:38-42).

The purpose of the once or twice daily Sacred Story prayer is to slow down, and attune to our memories—our hearts. We are invited to step out of our hyper-active and distracted lives, and enter the stream of the eternal. In reflecting back over our day, we are asking for grace to “see, feel and understand” in our memories (our hearts) where God was present, and where we have been tempted to depart from the ways of God. The goal in this contemplative rest is to allow Christ to grow, daily, in our own lives. What a small cost for a pearl of such value: fruit that endures to eternity!
 
 

Oh God, we ask you for the grace slow down and open our hearts to you, so we can find you in the memories from our day. Open us to see, feel and understand where we turn to you, and turn from you, so that our whole being might reveal your
Creation, Presence, Memory, Mercy and Eternity.

Sing joyfully to the LORD, all you lands;
serve the LORD with gladness;
come before him with joyful song.
Know that the LORD is God;
he made us, his we are;
his people, the flock he tends.
The LORD is good:
his kindness endures forever,
and his faithfulness, to all generations.

(Psalm 100: 1-2: 3-5)

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