As I hinted in the last issue of this article, being called to holiness also means being called to a life of prayer. I also suggested that I subscribe to this particular definition of prayer: Prayer is the lifting of one’s heart and mind to God. Prayer means living in the presence of God. The type of prayer that I am speaking about isn’t words or a collection of formulaic words that are, by their very nature, somehow much more powerful to connect us to God. Prayer, for me, is somehow being in the presence of God.
Quite typically, however, we begin to develop our prayer life through the use of formal prayers, that is prayers composed by the Church. If you have never tried it before, simply use a prayer or prayers from the Divine Liturgy in the privacy of your own home. The prayers of the Liturgy are quite powerful. Take home a book and use it for your daily prayer, choosing to recite a prayer from the Liturgy and then think about it and make it your own. One of the prayers I would highly recommend is the priestly prayer before the Gospel.
Being called to holiness means that I am called to make my faith in the Holy Trinity real by making my belief in Jesus Christ and His way of living the center of my own life. This means, however, that I cannot make anything else in my life more important. Recall the Gospel statement that clearly suggests that we cannot make anyone in our life more important than God (I find that many good people are frightened when they hear this since they have children and others that are important to them). It is interesting how God works, however. When we make Him the most important person in our life, He actually finds a way to make others also important. He is not a jealous God. He wants us to love others and even suggests that by loving others we actually demonstrate our love for Him. It is all about how we do it. We can make God first in our life without in anyway diminishing our love for others. When we work at it we become aware of the truth of this statement. It takes, however, some work.
When we make God the most important person in our life, then we realize that we have to unconditionally love others because God is also within them. God is within us no matter how we act. It is all a matter of our awareness. When we do something that is classified as bad, God doesn’t disappear. He can’t because He is the life-force within us. When we do something that is ennoble, we lose sight that God is within us. We are the losers since our minds and hearts are clouded and we cannot understand how much we are loved and how valuable we are to God.
I believe that these are very important things to think about!