Sunday, October 26, 2014

AFIRE THROUGH PRAYER



Set the Earth on Fire
by Catherine De Hueck Doherty 

The only way to approach faith is on our knees, through prayer. We should not only kneel but be prostrate before him, falling on our faces, imploring, crying, out for growth in faith, so that we may believe ever more firmly, not only in God but also in one another--we who are fashioned in God's image.

Yes, we can reach God very simply when we prostrate ourselves before him. When I come before God like this I am transformed. And I need to be transformed.

Here I am, an arrogant and proud human being, capable of walking on the moon, of making fantastic instruments that send us pictures of other planets. In my arrogance and pride I am once again polishing the apple to eat, so to speak, to prove I am equal to God.

Suddenly, I realize my works are but nothing. God is God, and I am not. I am his creatures, the poor man of the Lord, the poor man of the Beatitudes. I realize that he really meant what he said: "Without me you can do nothing." (Jn. 15:5)

Prostration is humility. It's an acknowledgement of who I am, and who he is. A "prostrated Church" is a Church of what I call the humiliati: the poor, the forgotten, the lonely...

We shall reach God as he reached us, by covering our brokenness with his Incarnation. By incarnating himself, he has made us divine. We partake of this Incarnation through prayer and through the deep silence of the prostrated Church. It is not the silence of passivity, but the silence of fire and flame that possesses any person who approaches the invisible. [Servant of God Catherine De Hueck Doherty (d. 1985) was born in Russia and was the foundress of Madonna House in Combermere, Canada.]

This was quoted from Thursday, 24th October, 2013 of Magnificat pp 330-331, published PO Box 822, Yonkers, NY . 

Love, Jeanne