Jenny & I have resolved to pray more. In everything I read about some saint, or revivalist or reformer, prayer was the thing that was most instrumental in their lives. One could almost say, as your relationship with God so is your prayer life.

I have been trying to make prayer a constant thing throughout the day. If I’m walking to a different area, or if there is a break in conversation with someone, etc, I try to fill up those voids with prayer. It is a conscious shift in mind, and one that is not the easiest, but must result in a deeper devotion to God.

Blessed Margaret of Castello was deep in prayer at the house in which she was lodging when it caught on fire. This was 700 or so years ago, and the houses weren’t like they are today. Often, what would seem like an insignificant fire today, could easily wipe out a whole city block then. Anyways, the house caught on fire and it got out of hand. Men from the surrounding houses dropped what they were doing and rushed to the scene seeing how they could help, although it was apparent that the house was doomed. The owner of the house rushed inside the doorway and called out to Margaret (who was blind, and deformed) to hurry and get out of the house. The smoke-blurred image of Margaret appeared at the top of the stairway. She threw down her cloak and said she was too busy praying to be really concerned. She made her way slowly back to the room in which she had been praying. Her cloak was thrown onto the fire, and instantly, the fire was extinguished. Dozens of people testify to this wonder.

Much of the powerlessness of individual Christians (and corporate Christianity, for that matter) can likely be traced to a lack of prayer. What should be foundational in our lives has become burdensome, and cast off for thoughts that are much more compromised. Prayer is more important than we will ever know, for our own individual growth, and for the good of mankind. Let’s put prayer to the test; we will be overwhelmed with it’s results. 

The great masters of the life of the Spirit have known and written for ages that one of the first consequences of the loss of personal focus on God and the things of God is the failure to pray - whether the prayer of praise, of thanksgiving, of petition or of intercession. As one's faith weakens and diminishes, one's vision of God in prayer becomes blurred, and the simple, daily converse with Him falls by the way. Inevitably, then, other interests push in to fill the void, and the darker side of human nature comes to the fore in a rush of materialism. "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity; the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned."

Father Charles Fiore
(from The Life of Blessed Margaret of Castello)
 


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