Ability to Pray
Author: Peter Coates | Source: Catholic.net
Praying is something important, more than just difficult and beautiful. There is a story by San Francisco de Sales about a girl who barely knows how to walk and asks her dad: "Let’s go to the garden to pick flowers". As she barely knows how to walk, they go hand in hand, with the one hand she has free, picks up the flowers, wants to pick up more flowers, then releases her father's hand, falls to the ground and loses the flowers she had collected.
Saint Francis de Sales says that this is the story of the life of men. God tells us: to walk, to have fun. But just remember that we have two hands: one is to hold on to me and the other is to grab flowers.The day you let me go, you'll fall on your nose.
When I say ability to pray, I mean the place they give to God in their marriage, which is not accidental, it is not a pious annex, it is the meaning, the support of their married life.
Hopefully and each one of you will love God more than you love each other, because you will love each other so much, it is the rock on which a life is built.
When I speak of God, I speak of an authentic religiosity, not like that girl who takes her boyfriend home to present him. The dad asks "What do you do?" "I study philosophy," replied the boy. "How do you plan to support my daughter?" "God will provide," replied the boy. "How will you keep your children?" "I have a lot of confidence in God," the boy replied finally. Upon leaving, the wife asked him "What did he tell you?" The father replied "The boy does not have a job, nor money, but the worst, he thinks that I am God ...".
To enter the major leagues of marriage, there is a letter from Fr. Maciel for the feast of Christ the King. The theme for this year is "How to form a true Christian life". This letter takes married couples to another level, living the fullness of Christian marriage. He answers it in 3 points:
a) A family where you pray and pray together.
Pray the rosary, you have to pray and pray. To pray is to live in the presence of God. He who builds his house on rock is the one who hears the word of God and puts it to work. To live listening to God, to live, living what God asks of us. In any problem and difficulty or crisis, without instead of listening to selfishness, we listened to the voice of God, how quickly we would solve the problems.
Family should be a school of prayer. Prayer should mold and make its mark on the family. The family that prays together stays together. When there is this, it is impossible for the family to go through a situation that they can not solve.
b) A family in which the faith is lived.
To live and transmit the authentic sense of faith more with testimony than with words, as witnesses of faith. The people whose life reflects their faith is living it authentically. The professional who lives enlightened by his faith is what we are looking for, not going to Mass alone. Where faith is lived in the painful and joyful pages. There can be no true Christian life if charity is not lived inside or outside the family.
To live the faith is to live and transmit generosity. If they want their children to be happy, teach them to be generous, if they are selfish they will never be so. Generosity is part of faith. Not simply convenience. We rarely think of generosity in terms of convenience. Generosity in love does not say how far. We do not see the Pope and our Father saying, "I've done enough ...", but "What else can I do?"
Generosity when children have a vocation. All those who have religious children know perfectly well that they have received much more than they have given, expensively, but they have received much more. God does not win when it comes to generosity. If there is no generosity in our families, we can not say that there is a Christian life.
c) A family that radiates faith.
It is not enough to have faith, we must transmit it. A true Christian family will always be evangelizing, missionary, sharing with others the joy, gift and gift of their faith.
I'm going to end with a story: a couple that was 50 years old married, was in a restaurant. The waiter was admired by the gentleman for the delicate way he treated his wife and approached him to congratulate him. He said: "Sir, I congratulate you for the delicacy as you treat your wife, with so many qualifiers and diminutives after so many years ...". The man replied, what happens young, is that the truth, sometimes I do not remember her name ...