Pray in order to be ready for His action

"We enter His Providence by prayer; we accept His will, sweet or painful, by prayer. We conform our wills to His by prayer and we learn to know His Mind by prayer. Prayer is the link between our finite spirits and God's infinite Spirit. Prayer is the window through which the Divine Light of God's Mind floods into the darkness of our finite minds. In prayer we learn that if we do not get our wills we will get His will which always works better. We may face disappointment in what we planned but if we accept that as His will, we will earn the most precious of all graces: the friendship of God.

Our prayer will not change His immutable will, but we know that in His wisdom He foresaw our future prayers and included them in the mystery of His dispositions of Providence. We pray not that we may change the Divine dispositions but that we may obtain what God has already ordained to be fulfilled by our foreknown prayers. Only God can change the course of events, but in any of the actions of Divine Governance, God has previously taken into account the prayers of His children and though certain things have been decreed to be from all eternity, the means of accomplishing them and the timing in history have been ordained to be dependent on the prayers of weak and fallible creatures. If evil appears to triumph, He is waiting for our prayer. If the course of action that we have pleaded seems to be at a standstill, He may be waiting for our dispositions to be changed as we pray in order that we be ready for His action when it comes... 'for we do not know how to pray as we ought.' (Romans 8:26)"

-- The Pathways of Prayer: Communion with God by Sr Immaculata, ocd

Peaceful abandonment: our greatest gift to God

"Abandonment to the will of God simplifies our whole lives and the interior of our souls. It does not mean leaving aside human effort, common sense, normal foresight or careful planning. It means we give ourselves freely to His Word. It is the surrender to the impression of the Divine Word in our lives as Jesus surrendered to it. Even though He always was the Divine Word from eternity, He became the Word in the flesh of human nature in order to show us how to carry out the word in a world that is always putting up obstacles against it. We can do nothing greater than to give ourselves completely to Him so that He can live again in us to carry out His own will.

Peaceful abandonment; there is no greater gift to God. It is the crowning of our lives and the highest tribute to the Divine Majesty. It is the greatest worship, the worship Jesus asked for 'in spirit and truth.' It makes our whole life an act of worship and adoration no matter what we do. It is what the Lord asked when He said: 'Abide in My love'... remain in it, and you will have done everything to please Me. It is the one thing necessary."

-- The Pathways of Prayer: Communion with God by Sr Immaculata, ocd

Pray that His will become yours and you will do everything

"It is by prayer that we enter into the Divine Plan. Prayer itself is a part of the Divine Government. In His almighty power and wisdom God ordained from the beginning that the men He would create would be like Himself with spiritual powers of intelligence and will. Then He made them His children by grace, desiring that they become capable of assisting Him in governing all creation. He gave Adam mastery over Paradise and thus over the whole world of created nature... so that Adam would be like his Father. God wanted His sons and daughters to take their place in mature government, and become in turn lords of the world.

We govern with God the more we become like Him. We become like Him by doing His will to the extent that it is our will. When His will and ours is one we take on the power of God Himself. The work of making the Divine will ours is the work of faith and prayer. The first devotion of all devotions is to the will of God. We meditate on the works of God in creation and in history in order to see what God has done, and our reflections fill us with images of what He must be like. We mediate on Scripture, especially the Gospel, to understand His work in the redemption and what He requires of us in order to partake of that redemption. We praise Him for His works and for His grace; we adore Him and bless Him in prayer and we then petition Him for what we need... but all our needs can be summed up in one which is the grace of all graces: the grace to do His will, for by that we are doing everything."

-- The Pathways of Prayer: Communion with God by Sr Immaculata, ocd

N.B. A reader asked if Sr Immaculata is in my community. She isn't, but I think most of us cloistered nuns know about her excellent small book.

Abandonment opens the gates of God's treasures

"It is prayer that leads us to such an appreciation of Divine Providence that the soul can reach this state of abandonment. Prayer opens the gates of the treasures of the Divine will. It is founded on Divine Providence because our only reason for living is to do the will of God. We pray, not just for what we want but in order, above all, to be able to accomplish the will of God.

As we pray we begin to see into the transcendent darkness of Divine things. God illumines the soul that prays. When the hand of God seems to deal out only adversities, bitterness and afflictions, we are made to turn to Him for help in our trials.

We learn God and His ways; we learn humility in dealing with Him; we learn to revere His majesty because we see that in our prosperity we were walking in darkness, and if not in serious sin, at least we were living for ourselves, with that dullness to Divine realities which can never be cleared away without the cleansing power of suffering. It is through prayer that we penetrate into the secret and hidden mysteries of the Divine will. We see and experience that we only knew abstractly before, namely, that God's infinite ways are so much above us that we must suffer before we can see.

We learn that there is grace for every trial; that God really is with us in suffering. He never presses down without holding us up with the other hand. No, we may not see where we are going but we need see when we are being led? The light that is given may not be exactly the light that we want, the light that will answer our demands to understand why He is being so hard on us. The light that we are given shows us that we are sinners and we dare not demand to know. We are illumined by a light that will feed us with the sweet peace of humility. we understand that we can trust His desire to do good for us; that what He takes away only seems to take away in order to give us something greater. We learn that what He does not grant in one way He will grant in another. If He closes a door it is to keep us from going through it to our own loss. If He shuts up our path with 'square stones' (Lamentations 3:9) it is to keep us from going astray. If He hinders and brings to nothing all out plans and aspirations, it is to show us how much we were working for our own profit. If He lets our lives turn to failure, it is to keep us from sin.

We come to understand that He wants us to love Him and cling to Him in situations we cannot understand. Peaceful abandonment is always profitable to us. Through it we see that it is His merciful love that is pursuing us through trials and adversities. He wants to bring the proud heart to surrender; He wants to soothe the fearful heart with trust - because the proud one does not want to surrender to a power above himself or to admit his need to depend on God's loving providence... and the fearful one mistrusts his own ability to remain in grace because he has not yet learned by experience that it is God Who keeps him in grace. "

-- The Pathways of Prayer: Communion with God by Sr Immaculata, ocd

Abandonment is the heart of sanctity

"The measure of our abandonment is the measure of our sanctity. Those who are most intimately united to God cannot pray for anything intensely or desire anything ardently except on the condition that it be the holy will of God in which is all their life. The live in it as fish in water.

Whatever their minds conceive or their hearts desire to pray for is always prefaced by: If it be Your will, Lord, because they know that nothing good is done outside of His will.

The difference between a good person and a saint is a simple but continuous 'yes' to Divine Love.

All our merit consists not in what we have done but in the part of our lives that we have surrendered to Christ to live in us. This abandonment of ourselves to Him so that His life is all we have through the will of God, is the heart of sanctity. Abandonment makes us the little children of the Gospel more than anything else. It is both the way up the mountain and the summit. All our prayer must aim at this: to remove the obstacles so that we allow God to act in us, through Christ living in us."

-- The Pathways of Prayer: Communion with God by Sr Immaculata, ocd