Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Tag: Jesus prayer

  • Saturday of the Third Week of Lent

    Saturday of the Third Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

    These are perhaps the most important words of the spiritual life, uttered today by the repentant tax collector in the temple area. These words are so important, actually, that they form the basis of one of the most ancient acts of contrition that we have, called the Jesus Prayer. The Jesus Prayer comes out of the eastern and orthodox Church traditions, and the full version is “Lord Jesus Christ, be merciful to me, a sinner.” I want to put that in your prayer toolbox today: everyone should memorize this prayer.

    The Jesus Prayer, and our readings today, give us one of the great tools of Lent: humility. Humility is that great virtue that recognizes that I need a Savior. That because of my sins, I have no access to God, except for the fact that he loves me beyond anything I have a right to hope for. Humility recognizes that God loves us all so much that he gave everything for us, poured himself out for love of us, and desires to heal all of our sins and brokenness.

    All it takes is a little repentance: realizing my sinfulness, turning back to Christ, letting him love me, and accepting his forgiveness. The prayer that manifests that kind of attitude is not the prayer of the Pharisee in the Gospel reading today: his attitude is the antithesis of what prayer needs to be. The prayer that manifests the attitude we must have is that of the tax collector: “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

    O, that God would grant us the great gift of humility this Lenten day.

  • Saturday of the Twenty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Twenty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I think the readings from St. Paul’s letter to Timothy the last couple of days have been so wonderfully challenging.  Today, in our first reading, he admits his sinfulness, relying on God to save him: he says, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.  Of these I am the foremost.”  This, as anyone who has struggled with addiction will tell you, is a very important first step.  Until we admit to what is dogging us, we will never be able to recover from it.

    And sin does dog us, it is an addiction that will drag us down from our relationship with God and convince us that we are unworthy of salvation.  But, thank God, we couldn’t be more wrong.  We, like St. Paul, merely have to admit that we cannot break free of it all on our own, and trust in God’s mercy.  St. Paul says he is the foremost of sinners.  Well, so am I.  And I hope you’re ready to say that you are too.  Because there is not other way to be saved.

    If we refuse to admit that we are sinners, how can we ever find salvation?  Well this is the question of our time, I think.  So many of us feel uncomfortable admitting sin or confronting it.  But if we are not sinners, then we don’t need a Savior.  That might explain the empty places in our church pews, but are we really ready to take that risk?  Are we really ready to think that our eternal life is something we can take care of on our own?  I know I’m not ready to go there.  The consequences for being wrong about that are just too horrifying.

    Now I’m not saying we are all mass murderers or something horrible like that.  But we all have those times when we’ve turned away from God in little or small ways, times when we have rejected his Lordship or even his love.  And when we’ve done that, we have sinned.  There is no other word for it.  But the good news, as St. Paul says to us today, is that Christ came to save sinners.

    There’s a wonderful little prayer that is deeply rooted in the Eastern churches that helps combat this attitude that sin does not affect us.  It’s called the Jesus Prayer, and it’s meant to be prayed contemplatively, almost as a mantra.  I find it great for calming me down in anxious moments, and focusing myself when I am scattered.  It takes about two minutes to learn it and you’ll remember it the rest of your life. So here it is, the Church’s ancient prayer for sinners, the Jesus Prayer:  “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.  Amen.”

  • Tuesday of the Twenty-eighth Week of Ordinary Time: Let your mercy come to me, O Lord

    Tuesday of the Twenty-eighth Week of Ordinary Time: Let your mercy come to me, O Lord

    Today’s readings

    “Let your mercy come to me, O Lord.”

    I love that there were short verses for the psalm today, and we got to repeat this refrain from the Psalmist over and over.  If you think about it, and if you really enter into it, it becomes a kind of mantra, or Taize chant, or the Jesus Prayer, a way to center ourselves and open ourselves up to the Lord in this Eucharistic celebration.

    “Let your mercy come to me, O Lord.”

    Because we are all in need of the Lord’s mercy, aren’t we?  Whether it is sinfulness, addiction, illness or infirmity, anxiety, worry about a family member, uncertainty about a job or the economy as a whole, we all have to realize that so much of the time we are in desperate need of the Lord’s love and mercy.

    “Let your mercy come to me, O Lord.”

    And we come to the point that we know that the only thing that can help us is the Lord’s mercy.  We may have tried so many times on our own to cure ourselves or make the pain go away or focus on the positive or not cause waves, we know that of ourselves, ultimately, we are unable to fix the things that really vex us.  Sin takes hold, circumstances beyond our control confound us, powerlessness causes frustration.  And then, all of a sudden, we remember the One we were trying to hide from, or with whom we didn’t want to bother with our troubles.  But in the face of our own powerlessness, we must turn to the one whose power can overcome all.

    “Let your mercy come to me, O Lord.”

    And so that powerlessness eventually, inevitably intersects with the loving power of our merciful God, who desires so much more for us than we would settle for.  And then we really do let God’s mercy come to us.  Because it was always there in the first place; never withheld.  We had just to let it come to us, had to be open to it, had to be in the place where we could receive it and come to the point where we could acknowledge our need for it and our gratitude for receiving it.  And when we at last arrive there, and that mercy comes to us, how overwhelmed we can be, how transformed, how loved we can feel, how cared for.  God’s mercy is always there, we have just to let it come to us.

    “Let your mercy come to me, O Lord.”