 So, what I'd like to do is just to talk a little bit about the big picture of prayer, what that looks like. Just maybe some types of prayer, personal prayer, communal prayer, and then liturgical prayer. That's one of the things I want to talk a little bit differently. What does it look like to pray with the church, and not just pray on our own? So, we're going to do both of those things. And we'll also have a time where we're going to just pray a little bit, and just read through the scripture, do a little, it's called lexio, I'm sure we've all just done that before, and hopefully have an encounter with God. Amen? Okay, so catechism, I love what the catechism says, article 2558. And it says prayer is a vital and personal relationship with the living and the true God. I mean, let's just break that down for a second. If prayer is vital, then it's probably something we should pay attention to. I love the fact that it says personal, and it's a personal relationship. And I think that that's really key, that at the heart of this, and honestly I think it's the thing that we often lose, it is a relationship with Christ that I want to have my life animated by. It's a relationship with the Holy Spirit. It's a relationship with the Father. I mean, the nature of the incarnation and the nature of the Trinity is a God who has a relationship as the Triune God with himself, and in himself, between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And that Triune God wants to have a relationship with you and me. So the nature of the incarnation is to be able to reveal that relationship, right? That God becomes one of us. He's not a distant God. He's not a foreign God. Actually, he's a God who is intimately close to us. And at the heart of prayer is that, is a vital and personal relationship. And I love the fact that Catechism says with the living true God, not just a power, not just a force, not just an influence, but with a relationship with a very personal God. And all of the things that you said, I found some of the responses interesting about being embarrassed and frightened. And those are real things to think about, because there's something about that, right? And if, and this is actually a good thing, if our relationship is so intimate and personal and vulnerable that there's a sense of embarrassment, there's actually something that could be quite beautiful about that, right? The sense of being seen and being known. Catechism says in 2744, prayer, and this is fantastic, prayer is the lifeblood of your faith. Without prayer, without prayer and faith, without prayer, your faith will die. Catechism 2744, prayer is the lifeblood of your faith. Without prayer, your faith will die. If we think that we're going to be able to be faithful to the gospel, if we think we're going to be able to love the Lord, if we think that we're going to be able to be faithful and patient with your spouse and you're not praying, it's just wishful thinking. I mean, it's a nice idea. Everybody here ever, and again, probably not with this type of group, ever been impatient with your spouse or your children? No? What is with you guys? Clearly, clearly you're not praying, right? But, okay, or religious community sisters or brothers. I love my brothers, some of them, sometimes, right? If I think that I'm going, ultimately, the gospel commandment is to love. If you think you're going to be able to love without prayer, I mean, how is that supposed to happen? Is it just, you're supposed to wake up one day and magically it happens or like Dorothy, you just click your heels a couple of times and you're going to be able to love? How do we love? I mean, we live in a world and a culture that says love is love and all love is equal. Especially this month, honestly, you see all of these billboards and these bumper sticker that says all love is love. It's not simply not true. I hope it's not true. I hope the Lord loves much better than I do. Let me put it that way, right? And too many kids that I've had in my office over the years have been forced to do things out of love, right? If you love me, you will fill in the blank. If the commandment is love, then I need to learn how to love and I need to learn how to love from the one who loved perfectly. I need to learn how to love as Father Contola Mesa, the preacher to the papal household, says that at the heart of the gospel, bottom line, narrow the entire scriptures to three words, it would be God is love. Well, I mean, that's a nice sentiment, but what does it mean? What does it mean to love? And it's ultimately in prayer that we discover that. When we're prayer, when we're quiet, when we're still, or when we're gathered as a community pray that we discover that. I love John says in Romans 8.26, the spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes through us with sighs too deep for words. On another day on another talk, I could talk about what some of the parts that Paul's talking about this intercessions in sighs too deep with words and the charisms and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But I like the beginning of this text. The Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray. When the apostles go to Jesus and they ask Him, Lord, teach us to pray what they're asking is Lord, we've been paying attention to you and we notice that when you get away and you spend time with the Lord and you're still, things happen. Something happens. You seem to be different. I just, I find myself thinking about that very thing during COVID. I mean, COVID was just a crazy, crazy time. And I found myself just going to the chapel often and just trying to pray and trying to be quiet and trying to be still and with everything crazy, really my goal for, especially at the beginning, with everything going crazy is that I would just try to be calm. I mean, even if I was acting like I was calm to everybody else, right? Because everything was going crazy and the last thing that they needed was the President to be going crazy too. So it was just, Lord, just let me be calm and just measured, tempered. It just magically happened. It doesn't magically happen, but it takes time for us. Catechism in 741, again, they just, just some really, really beautiful words that the Catechism use. It says the Holy Spirit is the artisan of God's work and is the master of our prayer. I love that, the artisan, the one who's creating something, the one that's creating something beautiful, the one that's taking what seems to be clay that just looks like the lump of clay in the hands of an artisan can create something profoundly beautiful and valuable. This is what the Catechism is saying is prayers, is the Holy Spirit becomes the one who's going to mold you and form you and at times chip away. I love the story of Michelangelo and David. Michelangelo says, I just chipped away everything that wasn't David. It was already there. I just needed to get rid of that which wasn't him. I mean, isn't that what prayer is? It is that I go before the Lord and there's just kind of this big block and hopefully the Lord would chip away something so that, please Lord, what comes out of this can be beautiful. I don't think that there's ever been a day that I didn't pray. I'm absolutely certain it was because the example and the witness of my mom and my dad. I'd love to have a dollar for every time I'd walk into my mom's room and she's sitting on her bed praying to Rosary. It was just part of life. It was something we saw all the time. When we traveled, we're going to pray the Rosary together, right? I tell the story that was very moving as a kid, about a 12 or 13-year-old kid with my dad. It was a doctor working in a hospital and I walk in a small chapel in the hospital and I walk in in the middle of the afternoon one day because I was a profoundly virtuous child. Boy, I didn't actually think that was a joke. I see. You know me better than I thought. No, my dad was in the chapel and he was praying. He was taking a few minutes between patients and my dad was just spending some time in the chapel. As a kid, that has a profound impact on us. I think one of the beautiful things of the side note to her parents, me and my brothers and sister knew that my mom and dad prayed. Like I remember often, we had conversations even like little things about going on vacation. Mom and dad would say things like, well, we were praying about this. Or mom and dad, I remember, again, a time getting in trouble. Mom and dad saying, actually, this particular time was my mother saying, Dad and I prayed about this and about what my punishment was going to look like. So it wasn't just that I had this idea, this feeling that mom and dad prayed, but I saw mom and dad prayed and I heard that mom and dad prayed. And it had an impact on me. So I think there's prayed every day of my life. I don't think there's ever been a day that I haven't prayed. There was also days that I came back in high school from a party and had too much to drink and I knelt down next to my bed and I said my prayers. God's probably like, you're missing this. Or maybe he's saying, you know, 70%, it's passing grade, but it's not great, right? Yeah, I've talked about this. But as a kid, as a teenager, I would kneel down next to my bed and I would say my prayers before I went to bed. Long after mom and dad were paying attention on whether or not it was saying my night prayers, right? They had long trusted that this was now up to me. I remember one particular time I was in bed, hadn't said my prayers yet. And I was just laying in my bed and I said, oh, Lord, I don't feel like getting out of bed and kneeling down and I heard the Lord say to me and I didn't feel like dying on the cross. I got out of my bed and I knelt down next to my bed, right? I remember again also, when I was newly ordained, prayer was prayer, but it was also like I was trying to manage and figure out life as a priest, life as a friar and for me, in many ways, prayer became just kind of going through the motions. We just, we get it in, I check off the list, right? Did this, did that, kind of off the list, right? So I remember one time I was at an event and this bishop was preaching. And he said something that was really, it really struck me. He said that God will give you gifts and if you choose not to use them, he will take them away from you and give them to somebody else who will. And as soon as he said that, it seared my heart because I knew what he was talking about was, for me personally, was to pray. Is that for me, the catechism when it talks about relationship, that was at the heart of prayer for me. It was about relationship. It wasn't just about going through the motion. If I were to put in one sense of what is prayer for me, prayer is me making myself available to God so that I can be seen and so that I can see, right? And sometimes that making myself available is there's a billion things that are going through my mind and the actual possibility of actually being quiet and still sometimes seems beyond reach. But I'm there. I'm available. And I'm sitting there and listening to this bishop talk about that and when he said he'll take the gift away and give it to somebody else. For me, I knew that was prayer. And I actually, I kind of began to weep because there was this longing for this intimacy and just this closeness that didn't become just functional work. I go to my office, I do my emails, I say my prayers and something has to change. And it was the Lord in His grace and bringing me to that place and just putting me in that place at that time that allowed me to refocus again to what does it mean to pray? Prayer is ultimately, and again, it doesn't, it depends on who you're talking to or what they're saying or what their focus is. But maybe just two areas or two ways. There's the prayer of the intellect. And many of you mentioned that in the prayer of the mind. And this is really, really important is that we do all of those things that you just mentioned. What do we pray for? Why do we pray? Well, we pray for our family. We pray for our friends. We pray for our difficulties. We pray for the weather. We all of these things, but oftentimes, and again, I want to be clear that this is a good thing and it's a part of it. But prayer is this active remembering, this active thinking, this engaging of the intellect. It's obviously what separates us from animals, this intellect that the Lord has given to us that allows us to engage the Lord in our mind, in what we think about, what we pray about, what we read in the scriptures, and all these kinds of things that this is at the heart of prayer. Now, it's also one of the things that's difficult. Anybody ever been distracted in prayer? Good. This is a great group. We're a good company. Does anyone want to share what you're most often distracted by? Your to-do list. No, that's absolutely right. Your to-do list. What else? Work. OK. What else? Family. Family. Family? OK. Yell it out. Sounds good? Sleep. Yeah, amen. Is it OK to pray with coffee? That's a metaphysical question we're going to have to wrestle with. I think that it is. Is it OK to take the coffee in the chapel? That gets a little stop judging. Some of you are really. What a harsh group, I tell you. Wow. What was someone else back there? I remember I was a student, actually, here at the university. And my spiritual director, a really lovely, kindly old friar. I was complaining about distractions. And he said, he goes, I'll help you never have a distraction in your prayer again. It's like, OK, this is something I'm going to pay attention to, right? And he said, if you want to make sure you're never distracted in prayer, then just quit praying. And you'll never be distracted in prayer. He thinks he's so wise, right? But his point is well taken. And that is distractions is a part of the reality of prayer. I remember before I was going to be ordained, I was going before prayer. And I was distracted by a million things about ordination, about lists, and invitations, and actually being able to confect the Eucharist and hear confessions, and all these kinds of things. And my prayer was so distracted. And I remember on two occasions, I actually had dreams. One of the dreams was actually ordained here in this field house. One of the dreams was I came to the ordination, and they forgot I was going to be there, right? That's nice. So I walk in. It's like, oh, we don't have a seat for you. Isn't that lovely, right? My own ordination. And then the next one was my first Mass. And they didn't have vestments, right? So I said my first Mass in an Italian suit, which was fantastic, right? And this may not seem like a big thing to you, but so this is our divine office. I'm going to be talking about this in a minute. But there's these little ribbons. And in the Mass, the missile, it has the same ribbons. In this dream I had, there were no ribbons in the missile. So I'm up there dressed in a suit and tie, looking like an idiot. It's like, I knew we shouldn't let this guy get our day. And this was a huge mistake, right? So I was praying. I said, Lord, Lord, what's going on? And in a moment of grace, in a moment of silence, I heard the word control. All of my distractions were surrounded around control, right? Like, I want this to go perfect. I want it to be exactly how I want it to be. I want everybody in just this list. And just praying and saying, Lord, Lord, invite me. He said, would you give up control? Yes. Yes, I will. The distraction was gone. A danger is that we can be too dismissive about our distractions in prayer. And the reality is, it's possible that God wants to actually speak to us through our distractions, if we would let him. Oftentimes, our distractions are revolved around things that we wanna control, things that we're afraid of, things that we are ashamed of, things that we regret, things that fill in the blank. For me, one of the exercises that I find helpful, particularly in the prayer of the intellect and the prayer of the mind when I'm distracted, rather than trying to ignore the distraction because I think that that's simply impossible, right? I used to think, well, I'll create this force field around me. I love the fact that this is a little bit older group, right? Get Smart. Remember the movie, the show, Get Smart. Best TV show in the world. And if you're too young, those of you who don't know what it is, you've lived a sheltered life, right? So they go into the cone of silence. And we all know what the cone of silence is. This is such a great group. This is why I love you guys and not the teenagers, right? So you go into the cone of silence and that's my thought is that's prayer, is I'll go into the cone. Those of you who don't know what the cone of silence is, right? It's this big plastic shield that would go around you and the distractions would come and they would just bounce. Well, what I found is that I focused on this cone of silence rather than, and I spent my time, sounds weird, but being distracted by not being distracted, right? So what I found is profoundly helpful is to let the distractions come, to recognize it and to let it go. Whatever that looks like for you. You know, for me, it's sometimes just this simple like, okay, I see it, I give it to you, Lord. And you just, in my mind, I see it, I give it to you, I see it, I give it to you, I see it to you. And sometimes in our holy hour, I'll do that for 55, 56 minutes, right? I'm just this wrestling with trying to be quiet and trying to be still. And every now and then you can be quiet. Every now and then. I think, and it needs to be stressed that that quiet is a grace. It's something that we can make ourselves available to. It's something that we can get better at. It's something through practice we're able to, but it's a grace that's present to us. You can't just make it happen. So this prayer of the intellect is all of these things. We're gonna go through it in a couple of minutes, praying through the scriptures in Lexio and how do you do that? These are all very intellectual, very thoughtful that are really, really wonderful. But there's also what the church would call a prayer of the heart or the prayer of the soul. And we'll actually do this. If you've been with me at a conference before, it's always something that I, a part of our holy hour tonight that I'll spend some time focusing on. But if in the prayer of the mind and the intellect, I'm trying to hear the Lord and I'm trying to speak to the Lord and I'm trying to engage the Lord. The prayer of the soul is actually just trying to be present to him. We all know this, right? But within each one of us there's a soul and that soul is eternal. There will never be a time that you, in your person and who you are, your body is gonna be dust, but you, your soul is gonna live forever. So there's a way that we are in communion and the image of God because that we are created in his image of God and we have a soul that will always be. Well, there's something pretty powerful that can happen when we can begin to pray and encounter the Lord there. That the God who is eternal and I who am eternal can encounter one another at that place. There's a union. There's a communion that happens in that. My experience is that when I'm able to pray like that I don't generally hear the Lord say anything but I know that he's there. And there's something really transformative about that. There's a comfort about that. It's the child who's afraid at night and the mother or the father just goes and sits on the edge of the bed for a little while. The child can be at peace because mom's there. There's something about being able to really be quiet and encounter the Lord from the depths of our heart and the depths of our soul even though we don't hear anything but we know that he's there and that's enough. So this ability to pray from the soul is an ability and again this takes practice and it takes time but to be able to move out of our head, out of our head and into that place of silence and stillness of our soul. Amen. Thoughts, comments, questions? All right, we're gonna keep on going then. As a Franciscan, maybe I'll have one of the Dominican sisters come up. Yeah, so if I get the question over here, the stillness and silence and quiet can it be done through music and through art and all that? Yeah, okay and this is the thing about prayer. You get 100 people and they'll probably give you 100 different answers but for me when I'm really being silent still it's apart from all of that. That might facilitate me to help get to that place but I can't listen to chant, I can't listen to music, I can't, it's gotta be just still and nothing and even, I mean this sounds silly but even the way I sit and all of that stuff because we are flesh and bone, right? All of that stuff matters. I mean, silly things like how well arrested I am, how tired I am, all those kinds of things impact on whether or not I can really get to that place that is a union of quiet, yeah, yeah, cool. Okay, so a little bit about maybe one of the sisters, Dominican sisters, they will give you how Dominicans pray because they really know how to pray. We Franciscans, we're just shooting from the hip and we're okay with that, right? But just a couple of things, like if we were to focus on some images or some things about Franciscan is that for Francis, Francis really wrestled with the call to be active and the call to be quiet and still. So they estimate almost 50, 60% of Francis' time you would actually go to the caves that are around to see it. Who's been to Assisi? Okay, next year we do this in Assisi. So the caves and Francis, if you go around Assisi in the Umbrian Valley, there are all these little areas and caves that Francis would often go to and pray. And he was wrestling with that being active and working but then also feeling this call to prayer and that's a fantastic thing for a friar to be wrestling with, right? That my life is I'm not a cloistered, I'm not a carmelite, I'm not a trappist, I'm not called to be contemplative, right? Strictly contemplative life, right? That's just not my call, I wouldn't do well with that. But there is a contemplative part of life to the Franciscan. And a danger, I think especially for those of you who are married and live in a life is that oftentimes you look at religious or you look at and say, I need to pray like that. You don't need to pray like that. You need to pray in the manner with which the Lord is calling you, right? So if you were actually praying like a trappist, my opinion there's probably something disordered about that. And your kids may be hungry, right? So feed them, okay? But for the Franciscan there's this tension that always exists between solitude and quiet in the works that the Lord is asking us to do. For Francis at the heart of this is an incarnational spirituality. That Francis understood and believed 110% that God reveals himself to us through stuff, right? So Francis is the one who starts the nativity scene. That's a Franciscan image, right? So Francis is saying if the people could just see what God had done, they would be moved. So he does this nativity scene, the stations of the cross, right? Many of these things that Francis was about, if people could just see it, they would be touched by it. So it's very incarnational. Franciscan's like things to look at and to hear and to smell and all these, that's again one of the things that makes us Catholic. That we as Catholics believe that God can mediate grace through stuff and through people and through smells and tastes and all these one of things. And that's very, very Franciscan. Francis would focus on three fundamental things in his prayer, the crib, the cross and the Eucharist. I mentioned last night for Francis the greatest feast is Christmas. The God takes on flesh. So that when you go in places that Francis were, you see these images of the cross and the cribs and the Eucharist, all of these things are central to Francis's life. For Francis, can the prayer is not about building or adding. It's actually about getting rid of. For the Franciscan, the greatest sin is appropriation. We take things to ourselves that don't belong to us. So for Francis, prayer is actually about letting go and getting rid of and being emptied. There's a text that we read every Saturday evening those of you who do the divine office. And it's called the Canotic text. It says, though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped, rather he emptied himself and took the form of a slave being born in the likes of some men and it was thus that he humbled himself obediently accepting death, death on a cross. This text is called the Canotic or Canosis. And in what that means, I only know like, I have a dozen Greek words, but I always like to use them when I do because it sounds really good, right? That Canosis is self-empty. God who empties himself and takes on flesh, that isn't the heart of prayer for the Franciscan. We empty ourselves. Everything that's present in me that's not of the Lord, or take this away. So again, my prayer is take this, take this, take this, so that the only thing that remains is you. Whereas a Carmelite might be building something or building something for the Franciscan, it's actually about getting rid of, being empty, being small, being little. And in that place being able to find the Lord. Again, you could talk about Dominican spirituality, Benedictine spirituality, Ignatian spirituality, and they all have some differences and some similarities, but what I would encourage you to do is, again, to pray it's about practice. It's about finding something that works for you. A danger, and I've seen too many people, and this is a pepiva of mine, who give a talk on prayer that say, this is how you should do it. And I'm not gonna tell you this is how you should do it because I don't know your heart, and I don't know your story, and I don't know your background, and I don't know what's gonna work for you. But what I do challenge you to do is figure it out. It's pretty important that we figure it out. If prayer is the lifeblood as the Catechism, it's pretty important that you figure it out. If the one who we worship prayed, I mean, if Jesus is praying, how can we not pray? I mean, if the Almighty omnipotent incarnation, oh, holy God feels that he needs to get a few minutes away, maybe we do too, amen? And a common thing of this, and I'll just go through this, and at the end we're gonna talk about the lexio, but there's a common thing amongst all the religious communities about being able to pray with the scriptures, and it's a term you've probably heard, lexio divino, this idea of holy reading. And it's a way that you can take a look at the scriptures and you read a story and you put yourself in the story, you meditate on it, you think about it, you pray, contemplate, and then what is the Lord saying to you? We're gonna do a little exercise when we're at the end of our time together, just allowing the Lord to be able to do that, for him to be able to speak to us through the word. A couple of qualities that I think are absolutely necessary for life of prayer. One is, and this sounds obvious, but you have to have a plan. Prayer has to become a priority and you have to make a plan for it. We always make time for priorities, right? My suspicion is, is you guys are gonna eat something today, because it's a priority. We always make time for priorities and I don't wanna sound mean or harsh, but if we're not praying, it means it's not a priority in our life. And you have to wrestle with that. I mean, we just have to be really honest. If we're not praying because we don't have time, then it's not a priority. We need to pray that it is. So there has to be a plan for prayer. Number two, you have to be patient with yourself. I tell my students, I don't care how long you pray, I just care if you're praying. You know, I love the kids who come in, they're freshmen, they've never prayed before and there's a lot of, the word that came to my mind was pressure. I think a positive pressure at the university to pray. So the freshmen come in and they say, I'm gonna pray an hour every day. It's like, well, do you pray at all? No, not really, but I'm gonna start. Well, that's good. But maybe just kind of have some plan that's gonna get you there, right? So you have to have a plan and then you have to be patient with yourself. There's gonna be lots of stops and starting and that's okay. You have to have the gift of perseverance. Is that prayer, some of the saints and church fathers would speak of prayer as the discipline, right? The prayer is the discipline. That thing that we're just gonna work at, we're just gonna keep on going so we have to persevere. And then the next thing is that we have to have discipline. Is that we're not gonna be able to pray if it just seems like a good time but there has to be a sense of discipline to it. And then finally, a desire for it. And if you don't have that desire, that's the place to start. Just go before the Lord and ask for that desire. Over the years, it's been a very wonderful thing to me. People have come and they said, you know, Father, I heard you talk years ago about prayer and I made that a part of my life. And then they began to talk about how their life has changed because of that. I believe that that's fundamentally true. That if you wanna grow in the spiritual life, there has to be occasion where you're spending some time in praying. Amen? So a couple of ways we pray. Devotions, Navinas, prayer groups, rosaries. I always have a rosary with me, mom was praying. These are all private devotions and they're great things. Now again, there are people, I love being Catholic, amen? Amen, love being Catholic, amen? There are some weird Catholics, amen? Yes, yes, yes, yes. I remember I was praying a rosary one time and somebody told me it wasn't a valid rosary. I didn't know there was a valid rosary and apparently the way it wasn't a valid rosary was because I wasn't kneeling down when I prayed it, right? These are all private devotions and some people are so passionate about particular devotions that on one level they make it sound like everybody has to do it and they have to do it the same way they do it, right? And I would caution that. I think the rosary is a beautiful, beautiful devotion and it's a part of my life and I would highly encourage you to pray the rosary every day. But this is between you and the Lord and between you and the Blessed Mother and what does that look like and how does that work? I will admit that I've had many rosaries. I blame this on my mother but she told me when I was very young, if I fell asleep praying a rosary, the angels finish it, all right? Now, I'm really careful when I'm driving praying the rosary, that can be awkward, right? But again, these are personal devotions and I remember a student who came to me and she was struggling praying the rosary. She wanted to pray the rosary every day but she was just getting frustrated and it was, I said, then don't pray the rosary today. I mean, and she gave it up for, I don't know how long, for a little while and she came back to it but there was this freeing experience it was prayer is not, while it's important, it's not supposed to be this weight that weighs it down. It's just a devotion. If it speaks to you, great, if it doesn't. But I mean, that's one of the beautiful things I love about being Catholic is we have the devotions and then the venus and the consecrations and all of these kinds of things that are really important but they're all private devotions. And to the degree that they speak to you and help you get in relationship with the Lord or with the Blessed Mother with the saints, that's great. But they ought not cause you to feel guilt or fear or superstition. I remember one kid I was, we were in a locker room where we just got through playing, I think we're playing racquetball actually and he was really nervous taking off his scapular as he was gonna go take a shower. It's like, what if I die and the scapular is not on? It's like, I just relax, you know, relax. God's bigger than that, amen? So all of those are personal prayer, personal devotions, personal prayer. I want to talk a minute or two about communal or liturgical prayer. The liturgical prayer is public worship. So the church has, there are two official liturgical prayers of the church. And they are the Eucharist, the Eucharistic Liturgy and the Divine Liturgy. Everything else is private devotions. The wonderful good things but the prayer of the church is liturgy and liturgy is, by its nature, it is public. Liturgy itself means public worship. Catechism 1136 says the liturgy is the action of the whole church. To talk a minute or two about the liturgy of the hours because I think it's a beautiful prayer. This is, I remember I was at a conference one time and I was walking in to actually check in to the registration table at the hotel and I had my divine office with me and somebody came and said, oh, you brought your bride with you. I thought that was nice, right? This bride, right? This is my bride that she's with me at all times. The church has what's called the Divine, the Liturgy of the Hours. And I would highly suggest, I heard Bob talking about the DVD or the CD that he and the Brewer sisters did and it's called the Hours and it's taken from the Divine Hours, the Liturgy of the Hours. I'd suggest you get that, it's really beautiful. But the Liturgy of the Hours divine office that it's called is us sanctifying the day, right? So we pray this for five different times a day. What I would love to get across by the end of this is that this is for you as well. That I think that there's a way that people says the divine office is for the priests or for the religious but it's for you. This is the prayer of the church. So that when we're praying the divine office, when we're praying the Liturgy of Hours, same thing, you are praying with the church. There is never a moment in the day, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year that the Liturgy of the Hours isn't being prayed somewhere in the world, right? This is always being prayed somewhere in the world at any given moment, in any given day. And when you pray that, when you pray the Liturgy of the Hours, you are praying with the church. And it's one of the beautiful things that about praying the Liturgy of the Hours is that I know that the sisters are doing theirs, the whatever other group, whatever diocese and they're praying this. I know that my mother, my mom prays the Liturgy of the Hours, she's doing the same thing that I'm doing. Everywhere around the world, we're reading the same things, although sometimes we have some feasts that are a little different, but it's basically the same, amen? I had an occasion one time, I was doing some ministry in Dubai and I was in the mall, particularly in the afternoon or something. Dubai is a crazy, crazy country. I mean, in one area, you feel like you're back 500 years and then another year at the most modern, beautiful mall you've ever been to that has an indoor ski area because they have a lot of money in Dubai. Heard this thing over the loudspeaker, this kind of call, right? And all of the men left the mall into the prayer space in the middle of the mall. And it was myself and all the Westerners and women. There was something awkward about it I would admit, but there was also something really beautiful about it. That in the middle of the day, all of the men quit working, they gathered together and they prayed. There's something really powerful about that. This is exactly what the Liturgy of Hours is about. It's about sanctifying the day. There is a prayer time, which is important, but what the Liturgy of the Hours does is through five times a day that we continue to check in through the office of readings or through morning prayer or mid-afternoon or anything like that. So having that available to you and recognizing that you pray with the church, it's the church militant, which is us, and it's also the church triumphant. Again, when we enter in and pray the church, we're never praying alone. I can be in my room alone praying in this, but I'm praying with the church. And I'm praying prayers that the Psalms that have been prayed, the same Psalms that Jesus spent time praying with, I'm praying with that. So there's this connection of something greater than I in the Liturgy of the Hours. And it's actually not that complicated, right? I mean, there's a few ribbons, but you can figure it out. Or you can figure it out, right? So there are apps, iBrievery's one. I don't use Apple products or anything like that. Apple, Eve, Apple. Coincidence? I don't think so. There's also one called Divine Office, which is actually the app that I use. Now a question that people have asked me, is it all right or do, what do I think about people using their phones for prayer and that kind of thing? I will say that I'm slow to it. I'm just trying to get used to celebrating Mass and having the kids on the phone because I know that they've got the readings on their phone in there. So I'm slow to it. But if it helps you to pray, it helps you to pray, right? I mean, there are times that it's more convenient sometimes when I'm traveling and if I would have to take two books, I'll often just take, I don't actually use my phone very often. I've got a little, what's it called, a Kindle, where I don't have internet on it and all that, it's just my prayer stuff. If it's helpful, great. If it's not, it's not. I don't have, a lot of people have opinions. I don't have a huge opinion on it, although I think at times it can be distracting to have it on your phone. Amen? Okay, lastly, and then we're gonna pray for a couple of minutes. Lastly is again, that the church's official prayer, the liturgy, the communal prayer is the liturgy of the hours and then the second is the liturgy of the Eucharist that we celebrate every day. There is never a time, 35,000 times a day, the liturgy is being offered, Eucharist is being offered. There is never a time the liturgy is not being offered in the world. There's something profoundly beautiful about that. Catechism says in 1140, it is the whole community, the body of Christ, united in the head that celebrates the liturgical service are not private functions, but they are celebrations of the church, which is a sacrament of unity, namely the holy people of God united and organized under the authority of the bishop. For this reason, the liturgy is to be celebrated in common with the faithful present and actively participating. The same thing in that when we celebrate the liturgy, the hours that we celebrate the Eucharist, that we are doing that together. When we pay attention to the words that we use, and I did a real quick thing on this, so the opening prayer on Sunday. Oh God, you and your wonderful sacrament have left us. So the priest says, say, has left me, has left us a memorial of your passion. Grant us, we pray, we may experience in ourselves the fruits of this redemption. The prayer over the gifts, we pray that you will accept our offering, the preface, it is truly right to ingest our duty and our salvation, the closing prayer. Grant to the Lord, we pray, you get the point. That the prayer of the liturgy is a common prayer. It's a prayer of the people of God. Everyone has a different role. The priest has the role, the congregation has the role, but it is the prayer of the community. And I think ultimately that was one of the destructive things about COVID is that it separated the community. Liturgy, we are supposed to come together and to worship. Now, if I'm celebrating Mass by myself, which I am able to do, I prefer not to do. There are times that I don't have an option. Even when I'm praying Mass by myself, I'm praying with a community in the same way because the liturgy is the celebration of the church, but it is meant to be that we come together and that's why the prayers that we use are us, we, for. It is the people gathered here. What COVID did is it taught us or tried to teach us that we actually don't have to be together. Now, on one very supernatural level, that's true, but on the functional level, it's not true, is that the community is supposed to come together. And unfortunately, too many people now go to Mass virtually. Now, some people aren't able to, they don't have a choice because of infirmities or whatever, right? And it's a great blessing that they're able to do that, but it is better that we're able to gather together, right? Gather together in relationship because this celebration of the Eucharist is a communal event. So let's just take a real look at it really, really quickly that at the beginning of the liturgy, we gather to pray, right? The community, we gather to pray there's something about that. At the beginning of the liturgy, I love it, but I think oftentimes we just flow through it. We each one of us repents and it's like, I confess to Almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters that I have greatly seen in my life, right? That at the very beginning of the liturgy, we as individuals repent to one another, we repent to the community to gather it. And we say, pray for me, brothers and sisters, you know, we do that all the, it's important that we understand that this is a communal gathering that's taking place. It's important that when Jesus gathered at the last supper, it wasn't just by himself and there was a stenographer paying attention. It was a community gathered for a meal. Amen. So that's what this liturgy, this prayer is this public liturgical prayer, this communal gathering where we come together and we pray. I remember one of the friars tells a story that he was ordained in the mid-60s and he went home and the church is inviting us to gather as a community and pray together and everyone has their own roles, right? So his mother was praying the rosary and he said, mom, during mass, maybe could you just pay attention? Her response was, this rosary got you to where you are. Keep going, right? Some battles are not worth fighting, okay? But it is this community gathering, everybody engaging the scripture, everyone engaging masses it ought to be. The next is we repent, we gather, we pray for one another. We all gathered, we hear the word of God. God speaks to us through the scriptures and we reflect on that in the homily. A challenge I invite you to is to take a look at the scriptures before you go to mass and ask yourself, if I were to preach, what would I preach on? It challenges you to engage in the word of God and to pray about it before you get there. It also helps you realize that sometimes it's not the easiest thing in the world. Okay, after that we gather, we pray with our intercessions. We come before the Lord and we place before him our intercessions. The next thing we do is we gather and we offer our gifts. It's important that the gifts, it seems like a little thing, but the gifts are processed up and they come from the community, right? It's the offering of the community. I've told this story before, forgive me if you've heard it before. When I was in Africa, when they do the procession of the gifts, it's really powerful. It's not just bread and wine, right? It's bread and wine and it's the crops and it's the blanket that the lady made and they literally, they're bringing me up a live chicken. They give me this chicken at the office and I don't know what to do with this. All right, they're no laughing because father, and they give me a baby. They literally process up with a baby and they give me one which is great because I always wanted one, right? So what are they doing? It's so powerful because what you realize that it's not just the bread and the wine that's being offered, but everything is being offered on that altar. That's why it's important that the priest knows his congregation because he is not just offering bread and wine, but he's offering you. And he's offering your fruits and your difficulties and your struggles and your brokenness and your fears and all of that. And it's not just the bread and wine that's being transformed, but it's the people of God that's being transformed. Right? And we focus unfortunately only on the bread and wine which is obviously important. It's, we don't have Eucharist without it. It's a horrible thing that happened in Kansas City. Do you hear about this? This total side note. This one particular church that we're using an invalid wine. It was really quiet. They just, they didn't realize it there for a couple of years that we're using this wine that was invalid matter. That's a whole nother side note that I don't know why it went there. Be that as it may. So this offering that's taking place is the, this gift that is being given is not just bread and wine, but it's me. And as a side note, if Jesus can change bread and wine into his body and his blood, what can he do with me? Or with you, right? What can he do with you, right? Something pretty profound. Augustine would say the total Christ is not just the bread and wine. You would also also go on to say, oh, this is challenging, right? Oh, Christian, you are so, Augustine saying, oh, Christian, you are so careful not to drop Christ in your hand, but you'll drop him in the brother or sister next to you. Thank you, Augustine. We participate in the sacrifice, right? The priest, we all have a different role. The priest takes the bread and the wine and he offers this eternal sacrifice. Tomorrow is the feast of the body and blood of Christ. I'm looking forward to this liturgy, right? That we all enter into that. And then we receive, right? It's not just the priest. It's we receive. We receive. I think one of the tricks of the evil one is he causes us to believe that we're not worthy. Now, for immortal sin, we shouldn't be going to confession, but unless it's mortal sin, that's why we begin the liturgy with the repentance, right? You probably know this, but one of the marks of Eucharist is the forgiveness of sin. Is that when we come to mass, as long as it's not mortal sin, we are forgiven of our sin. It makes us worthy only because of Christ's grace that we're able to go to communion. But what the evil one says is, you're not worthy. Actually, the evil one's really tricky, really sneaky he is. Because some people he'll say, you're not worthy and they won't go to communion. And then other people will say, I go to communion, it's not that bad. And they probably shouldn't go to communion. The evil one, depending on the person's heart can manipulate both of them. That's why we need to be attentive to his workings. Amen. We take and eat. I love in the scripture, Paul is saying, you broke the bread, take this and eat this. And then ultimately we are sent. I love when you go to St. Peter's in Rome, when you walk out of the church, if you look at the mosaic that's above the exit of the church, it's Peter walking on water. And what he's saying is, what the church is saying is, when you leave this church, that's the way we're supposed to leave, right? That we are sent. It's not just the print, but we are sent. This Eucharistic liturgy that we come together and we praise the church and we encounter the Lord and we encounter one another in that celebration of prayer. Amen. Amen. So let's pray for a moment. What I'd like to do is just pray for a minute or two with the scriptures and just being present to that. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna read the scripture and I just want you to hear it and just kind of some initial reactions in your own mind and your heart. And then we'll go through it again just on a little bit of a deeper level. So do me a favor. Put both of your feet on the ground. Take a deep breath. Romans 8, in our weakness we don't know how to pray. Come Holy Spirit. Imagine this scene. Early in the morning, Jesus arrived to the temple area and all the people came to him and sat down and he taught them. Just imagine that for a second. Temple area, a lot of people, it could be mostly men in a particular area where Jesus was. The women maybe in the front but not in the temple area where Jesus was. They come and they sit down and Jesus is teaching them. What's he wearing? What's he look like? Can you hear him? Then the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who'd been caught in the very act of adultery and made her stand in the middle. They said to him, teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such a woman. So what do you say? They said this to test him so that they could have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger. But when they continued asking him, he straightened up and he said to them, let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her. Again, he bent down and wrote on the ground. And in response, they went away one by one beginning with the elders so he was left alone with the woman before him. Then Jesus straightened up and said to her, woman, where are they? Is no one here to condemn you? She replied, no one, sir. Then Jesus said, neither do I condemn you. Go and from now on do not sin anymore. I chose this gospel because I think it's one of the most visual. Yeah, I just, when we go through, when I go through it, there's so many things that says it's early in the morning. So I've grown to be older. I've appreciated and loved early mornings much more. It's early in the morning and the people are gathering. There's a commotion, obviously. I mean, maybe the woman is screaming as they're dragging her. Again, it's all men, the scribes and the Pharisees, they don't care about her at all. This is just, they're trying to prove the point. This woman that the scripture says was caught in the very act of committing adultery. I mean, there's just so much to that that's so messed up. It's not unreasonable to think that she's dressed profoundly and appropriately and being humiliated and being used. What do you see in that? Where do you find yourself in that scene? Jesus bends down and begins to write on the ground with his finger. One time I was praying through the scripture just like we're doing now and it was maybe one of the first time this occurred to me, but I was just picturing this image, hopefully like you just were, and Jesus bent down to write in the sand and hopefully you were watching that and you were seeing that. What is he writing? I mean, theologians for 2,000 years have debated about what he was writing. As far as I'm concerned, he could be playing tic-tac-toe because what I realized when I was praying and praying through this scripture and meditating on it, when he bent down and began to write, I was paying attention to him, looking at him, not the woman who was being humiliated. Maybe that's the only thing Jesus just did this to get the attention off of her. Where are you in the scene? The crowd's going crazy in their beginning to have stones. I mean, the law said that she should be stone. Where are you in that? Jesus says, he looks up, those who have not sinned. One by one, they begin to walk away. We use the word imagination and at times we use the word imagination in a negative sense. But I think when we're praying, the Lord can speak to us through our imagination. Imagining the scene, seeing it, hearing it. One by one, they begin to leave and it's just Jesus and the woman. Can only imagine how vulnerable that was. She was anxious, probably frightened. Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? She replied, no one, sir. And Jesus said, neither do I condemn you. I mean, what a relief that must have been. Gone from now on, don't sin anymore. Just for really, really quickly, what is the Lord saying to you in that scripture? What does he want you to see? What does he want you to hear?