Sometimes you have to pray to
want to give up what you need to give up. Sometimes we are so attached to a certain vice that no matter how much we try, no matter how often we confess it, we keep falling back into it. Then it is we know we have to pray for the grace
to want to give it up. "Give me the
grace to accept and utilize the graces you are offering me." "Give me the grace to
want to give up this sin." "Give me the
grace to want to pray." "Lord, I'm powerless..." You know, stuff like that.
.
Sometimes it takes a long, long time to give it up - but you will if you keep praying. We have to become very little, very humble... very, very humble. Until the Lord actually takes it from us. Sounds like a contradiction doesn't it? It isn't really - because everything is a grace.
"Sounds like a contradiction doesn't it? It isn't really - because everything is a grace."
ReplyDeleteCorrect. Also, these seemingly contradictions aren't contradictions at all. If you go deep into the lives of the mystics you'll soon discover that God often works paradoxically.
Maybe we should also pray to stop blaming Israel for Palestine!
ReplyDeleteThis is regarding Helen Thomas and those who believe her.
Terry - please see this quiz, "Test your Palestine IQ"
It is a pretty good indicator of how much people do NOT know about Israel and her enemies.
Copy and paste the URL...
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/SendMail.aspx?print=print&type=1&item=9250
Denis - I did really well in the test - a few questions dealing with numbers I skipped - but those I answered I checked e - so I think I got it. I guess I'm a right wingnut now. Thanks for the link.
ReplyDeleteThanks Tom - good reminder.
ReplyDeleteAmen, Terry --
ReplyDeleteThere are a couple of vices (I'm sure I have many more, but these two come instantly to mind) where, to be perfectly honest, I really don't want to give them up. I'm too fond of indulging them. So, praying for the grace to want to give them up is the only honest prayer I can make regarding them. Those prayers haven't been answered, but then I'm not very humble, and so I think God is probably going to have to belt me across the face with a 2X4 to beat the grace in...
Austringer - you're doing it right - believe me - it just sometimes takes a long time.
ReplyDeleteA Jesuit priest-friend who administered (walked with?) the Ignatian Exercises over a year's time with me, often encouraged me with that very counsel. He told me to want to want to practice a particular virtue, or want to want to give up a vice. And it IS an ongoing prayer; to want to have the desire to divest myself of the tarry sins clinging to me. (Sorry I've been watching the morning news shows on the BP disaster).
ReplyDeleteWonderful post and comments.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Terry.
Speaking of paradoxes, here's one that is all too obvious and profound: Christ put to death on the cross.
ReplyDeleteWhy, as Pope Benedict once remarked in the book Salt of the Earth, does God rule from such a weakened standpoint? Almighty and yet seemingly powerless. This is not a contradiction of God, but rather an inability of my human noodle to understand He who is both incomprehensible and unimaginable.
Somewhere inside this mysterious paradox lies the answer to suffering.
This is a great reminder.
ReplyDeleteIt is the second time I have heard this today (once in the reading I did during Adoration).
I will take the "nudge" from the Lord...plead, beg to receive the grace to "give up" what obstacles are preventing me from loving Him and others.
"Sometimes you have to pray to want to give up what you need to give up."
ReplyDeleteGood advice, Terry.
As a priest just reminded me:
ReplyDelete"Lord, make me want to want to stop..."
Amen.