Prepare For Lent With Prayer

Prayer – A Great Way To Get Ready For Lent

Well Lent 2014 is fast approaching, and for those persons who take their Christian walk, and their walk in the Catholic faith seriously.  Here’s a tip that will help you really enter into Lent.  It is prayer; and by prayer, I don’t just mean a lot of words.  So let us take a look first of all to see what prayer really is, and for us Catholics, the place to look is the Catholic Catechism.

So What Is Prayer?

In answering this question, the Catechism Of The Catholic Church says:-

For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.

Prayer as God’s gift

²⁵⁵⁹    “Prayer is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God.” But when we pray, do we speak from the height of our pride and will, or “out of the depths” of a humble and contrite heart? He who humbles himself will be exalted;  humility is the foundation of prayer. Only when we humbly acknowledge that “we do not know how to pray as we ought,” are we ready to receive freely the gift of prayer. “Man is a beggar before God.”

²⁵⁶⁰    “If you knew the gift of God!”  The wonder of prayer is revealed beside the well where we come seeking water: there, Christ comes to meet every human being. It is he who first seeks us and asks us for a drink. Jesus thirsts; his asking arises from the depths of God’s desire for us. Whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God’s thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him.

²⁵⁶¹    “You would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” Paradoxically our prayer of petition is a response to the plea of the living God: “They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water!” Prayer is the response of faith to the free promise of salvation and also a response of love to the thirst of the only Son of God.

So let us apply this to our lives and more specifically to preparing for the season of Lent.  Prayer is a gift from God – God who loves us far beyond what our minds can ever comprehend.  Everything about the Catholic faith; everything about truly being Catholic; is not about what we can offer or give to God – neither is prayer.  God is God!  He owns everything and needs nothing from us.  So it’s not about us at all.  Rather, it’s all about Him and His incredibly amazing love for us all.  Prayer is another of God’s many expressions of His love for us.  With this in mind, prayer is not about us babbling on and on, and when we’re done, we just leave.  Game over!  Prayer is a two way conversation between God and us, where ideally, our hearts do all the listening.  In our prayer conversation with God, it is far more important for us to listen to what God is saying than it is for us to off load a heap of words to God.

Prayer is therefore not something that can only be done at certain times per day.  rather, the more we are drawn into the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus, the more we want to commune with Him, and the more our lives become a prayer.

Lent is meant to draw us all into a deeper relations with God, who undoubtedly, because of His great love, has tremendous blessings for us. To better prepare for this very beautiful and important season, we should start by seeking to better our prayer life.  Some great ways to do this include:-

1. Daily reading of, and meditating on the bible.  To make this easy and to be in sync with the rest of the Catholic Church, I recommend the Mass reading for the day

2. Try to go to Mass more often than just weekends, and try to sustain this throughout the entire year.  During Lent, there is often an increase in attendance at daily Mass, but when the season of Lent is over, it is back to business as usual.  Please, really try to keep up this habit throughout the year.  You will be richly blest.

3. Attend confession as often as possible.  There is a Grace that is poured out when ever we earnestly seek God’s mercy for our sins. He waits, He waits for our hearts.  He waits for us to come back to His after we’ve strayed, not to chastise us, but rather to love us and to tell us how much He has missed us.

4. Go to adoration of the Blessed Sacrament as often as you can.  Here is where you can just sit in the presence of God.  You need not say a word.  In fact, words are not necessary. Just sit there and allow Him to love you.