The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 352: Summary of The Battle of Prayer

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

Fr. Mike reviews this section of the Catechism, summarizing the battle of prayer and the prayer of the hour of Jesus. We are reminded that prayer is active, and we must engage in grace. The Catechism goes on to state that, “We pray as we live because we live as we pray.” In this, we see that God meets us where we are and wants us to pray always. Finally, Jesus’ prayer to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane exemplifies humility, filial trust, honesty, and perseverance; modeling how we are to pray to the Father. Today’s readings are paragraphs 2752-2758. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and you're listening to the Catechism in your podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in Scripture, and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in your is brought to you by Ascension. In 365 days, we will read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity and God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 352, we reading paragraphs 2752-2758. As always, I am using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the foundations

of faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own Catechism in a year reading plan by visiting AscensionPress.com slash C-I-Y, and lastly, you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications today is nugget day. Congratulations, you guys. It's a 352 reading nuggets 27, 52 to 27, 58. It is a summary and in brief, a recapitulation as I said yesterday of what we just talked

about when it comes to the battle of prayer and also yesterday, specifically prayer of the hour of Jesus. So these are going to be kind of a review, but I think it's well, you know what I'm thinking. I love this section and I'm sad to go. I'm excited to talk tomorrow about the Lord's Prayer. That's going to be incredible. But these nuggets are some of my favorite chicken nuggets, you know what I'm saying? Just, you know, get some good dip in sauce and we're, I'm stopping with this. Okay, we'll say let's launch into prayer right now because we know what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about the battle of prayer today. We're going to look at the obstacles to prayer

and some of the Aronis notions of prayer. Just be reminded of the way that what God is calling us to engage, right? To respond with faith and love and hope and trust and perseverance to his call to pray. So let's do that now in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Father in heaven, we give you praise and glory. Thank you so much. Thank you for bringing us to this day.

Thank you for bringing us almost the entire way through this catacism. Lord God, as we continue to walk, as we continue to learn, to listen, and to respond to your voice, to your call, and your will in our lives, we ask that you please help us to have courage, courage to let this time, not just be a time of information transfer, but a time of transformation, not just a time of information transfer, but a time of transformation. Not just a time of data collection, but a time of conversion.

Oh, God, help us to put into practice the lessons and the teachings that you've imparted to us. Help us to live these. Help us to live the life of a disciple, the life of a beloved son or daughter, the life of a friend of the bridegroom. We've got to help us to live this life by the power of your spirit. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. And the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

It is day 352. We are reading paragraphs 2752 to 2758. In brief, prayer presupposes an effort, a fight against ourselves and the wiles of the tempter. The Battle of Prayer is inseparable from the necessary spiritual battle to act habitually according to the Spirit of Christ. We pray as we live, because we live as we pray. In the Battle of Prayer, we must confront erroneous conceptions of prayer, various currents of thoughts, and our own experience of failure.

We must respond with humility, trust, and perseverance to these temptations which cast doubt on the usefulness or even the possibility of prayer. The principal difficulties in the practice of prayer are distraction and dryness. The remedy lies in faith, conversion, and vigilance of heart. Two frequent temptations threaten prayer, lack of faith and acedia, a form of depression stemming from lack-assetical practice that leads to discouragement. Filial trust is put to the test when we feel that our prayer is not always heard. The gospel invites us to ask ourselves about the conformity of our prayer to the desire

of the Spirit. Pray constantly. It is always possible to pray. It is even a vital necessity. Prayer and Christian life are inseparable. The prayer of the hour of Jesus, rightly called the priestly prayer, sums up the whole economy of creation and salvation. It fulfills the great petitions of the hour's father.

There we have it, paragraph 27, 52 to 27, 58, a couple nuggets in there. Man, so good, it's just beautiful. This is a review, so let's review. It's incredible. So, 27, 52, reminds us that prayer pres. Let's just, this is a review. So let's review. It's incredible. So 20, 752 reminds us that prayer presupposes an effort, a fight against ourselves and the wilds of the temper. Remember that here we, ah, man, we get so easily distracted. We get so easily put off course.

I mean, even when we have our priority straight, we have such concupacence, right, such weakened wills and a darkening of the intellect that at any given moment we can just be blown off course. And so one of the things we realized is we have to fight to stay on course. I mentioned before, I think was with three days ago, I don't know, three or four days ago, we first started talking about the Battle of Prayer. I mentioned that when I was growing up, you know, I'd read stories and this is the thing I'd read stories about, you know, saints going into prayer and they'd they'd park themselves in front of our Lord in the Eucharist.

And the description was, I've said this so many times. And the description was that hours would feel like minutes. So I thought, okay, great, I've read these stories. That's where I should be. I heard all about how Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist that transformed my life and how all of these saints would make at least a holy hour. And so I decided that one point when I was, I guess, high school that I would make one

holy hour a week. So I go in front of the Lord and the pluses sacrament, at least one hour a week, 60 minutes. And I remember going there and kneeling or sitting down. And whereas it was a scribe, those other saints, yeah, hours would feel like minutes, mind with the opposite. Minutes felt like hours. I was just, oh my gosh, am I doing something wrong? I remember because I said, what I imagine would be is if you're praying well, it's super easy.

If you're praying well, it's just like slipping into a hot tub. And it wasn't like that. There was all these distractions, like it says here, there's always all this dryness, like I don't know what's going on, I don't know what to do. I didn't realize that in many ways prayer is very active. You're engaged with grace. So the image that kind of stemmed from this was rather than slipping into the hot tub and just floating there and soaking in this grace, maybe it's a little bit more like swimming.

Like here's a pool and the pool is filled with water. That's grace. Now in order to float in order to move, you have to engage with the water. You have to, I mean, if you know how to swim, you know this. And a lot of times, sometimes you're just like, you're your calm. You're just kind of treading water really easily.

Maybe just, maybe if you're really good at floating, you just kind of like have to kind of hover your hands a little bit, kind of fan them out a little bit, maybe kick a little bit. But it's not a lot of effort, but you're engaging with, you're engaging with the water. And if you want to move, what do you have to do? You have to engage more, you have to work.

And that became kind of an image of, okay, that's what prayer is. If there was no water, right? If there was no grace, there'd be no swimming. There's no swimming, if there's no water, and there's no prayer, if there's no grace. At the same time, I have to interact with the grace. I have to interact with these gifts that God is giving me. And so I have to sometimes I can be calm in prayer and it's just that contemplative

prayer sometimes where it's merely just this kind of, you know, fanning the hands back and forth. You're engaged with it, but it's minimal effort. It's a gift. It's easy. And sometimes it's, okay, we're doing some kicking drills right now, you know, right? Sometimes it's, all right, we're wrestling in this prayer. We're wrestling in this pool. We're wrestling in this moment. And I really like that image because sometimes you do rest, right? Sometimes in the pool, it is warm and it's just calm and relaxing, but you have to engage with the water and sometimes purrs like that.

Sometimes you enter into prayer and it's just, oh, Lord, I'm just resting here in your presence, but you're engaged with this presence. You're engaged with his grace. And sometimes it is, it's just, hey, we're going to pick the rosary up and we're going to pray the rosary, right? We're going to do laps here. We're going to pick the, breathe, re up. We're going to pray the liturgy of the hours. We're doing laps here. And I think there's something, I like the analogy. And so if I sufficiently beat that analogy to death, I'm okay with that because I think it works. And I think that we're on to something here.

The Battle of Prayer in paragraph 2752 is inseparable from the necessary spiritual battle to act habitually according to the Spirit of Christ. We pray as we live, because we live as we pray. If there's another note that we just need to be reminded of, we pray as we live, because we live as we pray. Remember that line that says that we don't want to act habitually according to

the Spirit of Christ. We can't expect to pray habitually in his name. So we have to let our hearts be converted. That's one of the necessary requirements for prayer. Now at the same time, God meets us in our weakness. This is this is important. God meets us in our weakness. You don't have to be perfect before you start praying. You don't have to have all your life sorted out before you start praying. In fact, that's kind of like, you know, we've heard people say this. It's like saying, I'm gonna wait until I'm not sick anymore to go to the doctor. I'm gonna wait until I'm past this illness in order to go to the doctor.

Like, no, we go to the doctor when we're sick. And so you do not have to wait until you, everything is in order. You don't have to wait until you're holy to start praying because, actually, it doesn't work that way. And secondly, because God just wants your heart. He just wants your heart. At the same time, He does also desires our conversion. And so that's it. I can't think that I can approach the Lord in humility and trust and love if I don't actually try to walk in His name in humility and trust and love. I'm striving to do these things even if we don't do them perfectly. We have to strive to do them.

It's so important. Then paragraph 2753 reminds us that in the Battle of Prayer, we have to confront erroneous conceptions of prayer, which you know, various currents of thought, our own experience of failure, and so the three critical ingredients, the three critical elements that are necessary in our hearts are humility, trust and perseverance. All three of them are absolutely necessary. Humility of just, okay, God, you're God, I'm not. And I'm coming back to you as a beggar. I'm coming back to you as someone who needs you. I need what you're offering. I'm not coming to you as the boss. I'm not coming to you as the one who has the answers. I'm coming to you as the one who needs you. The next part is I trust you

and I'm going to keep you going back. Perseverance. This is so important. Humility, trust, and perseverance. I will say this. I will say that I said it before. I'm going to say it again. Prairie Gough 2756 reminds us, filial trust. Filial trust is absolutely necessary. The trust of a son or daughter with their father. That that if I don't have this gift, and I pray that every one of us has the gifts of trust of the father, if I don't have trust, I will even accept God's gifts with suspicion. I'll even accept God's blessings with maybe some cynicism or with hesitation. And this is so key for us. If you've heard the phrase, waiting for the other shoe to drop, I used the phrase recently

and some of our students in college had never heard that. They're like, what does that even mean? But you know what it means. You're waiting for the bad news to come. You're waiting for that thing to happen. And sometimes, we're out of Christians and we don't trust the Lord. That's how we are. We're waiting, or constantly, even the midst of blessings, even the midst of good seasons in life. We're waiting for the other shoe to drop. We're waiting for that bad thing to happen. We're waiting for the bottom to fall out. We're waiting for God to just forget about us. That goes directly against how he reveals himself. But if we have trust,

not only will we receive gifts with gratitude, but if we have trust in the Father, if we have this trust, then we can even receive our crosses. We can even receive dryness and distraction. We can even receive suffering. We can even receive death. And we. We can even receive suffering. We can even receive death. And we know that he is a good dad.

It's one of the reasons why I think in so many ways Jesus in the garden his prayer to his father is the Image right it's the model for all of our prayer. Why? Because here's Jesus in the garden and he says, Father, Abba, right? Dad, let this cup pass for me. Yet not my will, but your will be done. Now, in the first part of the prayer, he reminds, he talks to God as father, as dad, he remembers, like, nope, not tyrant, not someone I can't trust. Someone who I know I can trust and I know loves me.

Abba, dad. Then he says, he's, then he's honest. Let this cup pass from me. I don't want this. He's honest in his prayer and this is what we need to be, we need to be honest in our prayer. So we know we're talking to the father, Abba. And then we're honest.

Let this cup pass from me. He doesn't say, oh, this is fine. it's good. It's it's okay. Now, Jesus is incredibly direct. He is honest with his Father. Let this cup pass from me. And then this is the key. He trusts him when he says, yet not my will, but your will be done. If our prayer could look like that, If our prayer could look like that, we're, we remind ourselves who we're talking to, we're talking to our dad in heaven. And then, where we're honest, God, here's where I'm actually at. And then, we have this trustful surrender. Yet not my will, but your will be done. If we pray like that on a regular basis, we will be more and more like the Son of God who prayed like that in the last hours of his life. And it's so important for us to have that.

Abba, we talk to God as our dad. We are honest with him, and then we trust him. If we can pray like that, we will pray like the Son. And that's what he wants us to do. He wants us to pray like he prays. Hmm, so good. You guys, I'll tell you what, I'm praying for you. Please pray for me. My name's Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.

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