Third Sunday of Lent

Thoughts for the Week - Fr. R. Taouk 
8th March 2015

Many souls want God to do their will; they bring their completed plans and ask Him to rubber-stamp them without a change. The petition of the "Our Father" is changed by them to read: "My will be done on earth". It is very difficult for the Eternal to give Himself to those who are interested only in the temporal. The soul who lives on the ego-level or the I-level and refuses to be brought to the Divine-level is like an egg which is kept forever in a place too cool for incubation, so that it is never called upon to live a life outside of the shell of its own incomplete development. Every I is still an embryo of what a man is meant to be.

Where there is love, there is thought about the one we love. "Where your treasure-house is, there your heart is too". (Matt. 6:21.) The degree of our devotion and love depend upon the value that we put upon a thing: St. Augustine says, Amor pondus meum; love is the law of gravitation. All things have their centre. The schoolboy finds it hard to study, because he does not love knowledge as much as athletics. The businessman finds it hard to think of heavenly pleasures because he is dedicated to the filling of his "barn". The carnal-minded find it difficult to love the spirit because their treasure lies in the flesh. Everyone becomes like that which he loves: if he loves the material, he becomes like the material; if he loves the spiritual, he is converted into it in his outlook, his ideals, and his aspirations. Given this relationship between love and prayer, it is easy to understand why some souls say: "I have no time to pray". They really have not, because to them other duties are more pressing; other treasures more precious; other interests more exhilarating. As watches that are brought too close to a dynamo cease to keep time, so, too, hearts that become too much absorbed in external things soon lose their capacity to pray. But as a jeweller with a magnet can draw the magnetism out of the watch and reset it, so, too, it is possible to become de-egotised by prayer, and be reset to the Eternal and to Love Divine. Though prayer is a duty, it is not well done unless the greatest motivation for it is love. The lover always has an overwhelming desire to fulfil the will of the beloved; human hearts find prayer unrewarding if they have too many other desires and wishes besides that of fulfilling God's Will, which is always our perfection. Some would like to please themselves without displeasing God: they do not want to be on "outs" with God, as a clerk does not want to be on "outs" with his boss. When there is such little love as this, religion and prayer are regarded as mere correctives, as something negative and restraining to our wishes. Such people ask of prayer and religion only that they keep them out of mortal sins - restrain them to moderate avarice, to moderate selfishness, and to moderate intemperance. If the heart and mind are lifted to God in such moods of mediocre hopes from Him, it is not to find out what God wants, but to tell Him what we want Him to do - so much, no more.

We pray as much as we desire to, and we desire to in ratio with our love. But the capacity for prayer belongs to every soul, and even those who do not acknowledge any love of God pray under stress.