StariGazers: Prayer and the Principal Exercises of Piety

Favorite Business Quotes:

A wise man will desire no more than what he may get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully and leave contentedly. --Benjamin Franklin

A champion needs a motivation above and beyond winning. --Pat Riley

If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception. It is a prevailing attitude. --Colin Powell

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. --Will Rogers

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds. --Francis Bacon

Franklin's Formula for Successful Living

We stand at the crossroads,

Each minute,

Each hour,

Each day,

Making choices.

We choose

The thoughts

We allow ourselves to think,

The passions

We allow ourselves to feel,

And the actions

We allow ourselves to perform.

Each choice

Is made in the context

Of whatever value system

We’ve selected

To govern our lives.

In selecting that value system,

We are,

In a very real way,

Making the most important choice

We will ever make.

Those who believe there is one God

Who made all things

And who governs the world by his providence

Will make many choices different

From those who do not.

Those who hold in reverence

That being who gave the life

And worship Him through

Adoration,

Prayer,

And thanksgiving

Will make many choices different

From those who do not.

Those who believe

in the future state

in which

all that is wrong here

will be made right

will make many choices different

from those who do not.

Those who subscribe

to the morals of Jesus

Will make many choices different

From those who do not.

Since the foundation of all happiness

Is thinking rightly,

And since correct action

Is dependent on correct opinion,

We cannot be too careful

In choosing the value system

We allow to govern

Our thoughts and actions.

And to know that God governs

In the affairs of men,

That he hears and answers prayers,

And that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him,

Is indeed,

A powerful regulator

Of human conduct.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Prayer and the Principal Exercises of Piety

True prayer is only another name for the love of God. Its excellence does not consist in the multitude of our words--"for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him."

The true prayer is that of the heart, and the heart prays only for what it desires. To pray, then is to desire--but to desire what God would have us desire. Those who ask for what is not from the bottom of their heart's desire are mistaken in thinking that they pray. Let them spend days in reciting prayers, in meditation, or in inciting themselves to pious exercises; they do not once pray truly if they do not really desire the things for which they ask.

Oh, how few there are who pray! For there are few who desire what is truly good! Crosses, external and internal humiliation, renouncement of our own wills, the death of self, and the establishment of God's throne upon the ruins of self love, these are [the things that are] indeed good. Not to desire these is not to pray. To desire them seriously, soberly, constantly, and with reference to all the details of life, this is true prayer. Not to desire them, and yet to suppose we pray, is an illusion like that of the wretched who dream themselves happy.

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The above excerpts were taken from Francois Fénelon's "Christian Counsel on Various Matters Pertaining to the Inner Life".

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A word to the wise...

One can pay back the loan of gold, but one dies forever in debt to those who are kind. --Malayan Proverb

Choose being kind over being right, and you'll be right every time. --Richard Carlson

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. --Aesop

Go, then, and learn what this means, 'I want mercy, and not sacrifice.' --Matthew 9:13

"What shall I do to you, O Ephraim? What shall I do to you, O Judah, when the loving-kindness of you people is like the morning clouds and like dew that early goes away? That is why I shall hew [them] by the prophets; I shall have to kill them by the sayings of my mouth. And the judgments upon you will be as the light that goes forth. For in loving-kindness I have taken delight, and not in sacrifice; and in the knowledge of God rather than in whole burnt offerings. --Hosea 6:4-6

bringing sight to the blind:

...[T]wo blind men followed him, crying out and saying: "Have mercy on us , Son of David". After he had gone into the house, the blind men came to him, and Jesus asked them: "Do you have faith that I can do this"? They answered him: "Yes, Lord". Then he touched their eyes, saying: "According to your faith let it happen to you". And their eyes received sight. Moveover, Jesus sternly charged them, saying: "See that nobody gets to know it". But they, after getting outside, made it public about him in all that region. --Matthew 9:27-31

Love Commands Friends: John 15:10--17

10) If you observe my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have observed the commandments of the Father and remain in his love.

11) “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you and your joy may be made full. 12) This is my commandment, that you love one another just as I have loved you. 13) No one has love greater than this, that someone should surrender his life in behalf of his friends. 14) you are my friends if you do what I am commanding you. 15) I no longer call you [servants], because a [servant] does not know what his master does. But I have called you friends, because all the things I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 16) you did not choose me, but I chose you, and I appointed you to go on and keep bearing fruit and that your fruit should remain; in order that no matter what you ask the Father in my name He [may] give it to you.

17) “These things I command you, that you love one another.

G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936) on Courage:

"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. 'He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,' is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. The paradox is the whole principle of courage, even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity and I certainly have not done so, but Christianity has done more. It has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living, and him who dies for the sake of dying, and it has held up ever since, above the European lances, the banner of the mystery of chivalry, the Christian courage, which is a disdain of death."