Verbum Dei UK

Monday

This week theme is ‘ask and you shall receive’ we continue to journey through the Eucharistic celebration, focusing today on intercessory prayers. It can be a very beautiful contemplative time in the mass, where you have a strong sense of the whole church and of your particular church community being united in prayer. As I was preparing to write these guidelines I found it really helpful to have the verse from Matthew 7:7 in mind as I was in mass and we got to the point of the intercessory prayers, it helped me to focus on praying and what was being prayed for and to drown out any background noise either internal or external. It helped me feel more involved in the process.

For me it is a continual part of my Christian journey to come back to these verses and ask God to help increase my faith and awareness of how he is working in my life and in the world around me. I find that this verse gives me a lot of comfort and faith to keep going even when I don’t sense that my prayers are being listened to and answered in the way and with the speed that I would like them to be.

Tuesday

Luke 11:5-13

I find that these verses really motivate me to pray and to ask God for either small or large things. If human experiences of friendship and parenting highlight how generous we can be to one another, then how much more is God wanting to sustain us through giving us what we need and deeply desire? I found myself really reflecting on the verse ‘If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!’ We are all aware of the many things we have received from parents and friends despite their failings. So God who offers unconditional love wants to give us so much more. The verse suggests to be that the most valuable gift we can pray for is the gift of the Holy Spirit to be our guide and comforter.

Prayer is not about giving God a ‘to do’ list which is sometimes how I can treat it, but it’s about becoming aware of our needs, but also recognising God’s gifts and blessings to us. The more we pray the more our confidence in God and belief and experience of his care for us increases.

I frequently find myself wishing that feeling connected to God was more automatic, but have found that it does require effort because there are so many things that can block that connection. So I hope that these verses inspire you to continue with your journey of faith and to become more aware of God’s involvement and interest in your life.

Wednesday

We now turn our attention to the next part of the mass, the preparation of the gifts. The verses from Luke encourage us to see the process that is happening.

In attempting to understand this part of the mass I found Timothy Radcliffe’s writing in ‘Why go to church?’ very helpful[i]. He writes ‘The procession in which the gifts are brought up to the altar makes visible the turning point in that ‘huge movement’ as we swing back towards home. This is the beginning of our journey of hope, our homecoming. The gifts that are bought to the altar come from God and are now on their way back to God.’ I also found it very helpful that he highlights ‘God’s grace makes us givers…God cherishes our dignity in making us not mere recipients of his gifts but able to put something on the altar to give back to him.’ As we pray with these verses let’s reflect on the cycle of giving both human and divine, this circulation of gifts as Timothy Radclifffe says is like the circulation of blood it keeps us ‘alive in grace.’

Let’s pray for an increase in hope and an increased desire to come home to God.

Thursday

The verse from Psalm 66 seems very alien to our modern mind. However when I was praying with it, I understood it as simply meaning offering up things that are precious to us, be it our time, money, energy. For me this is what the preparation of gifts symbolises, all that we are and all that we have being offered to God. The process of truly abandoning ourselves to God can feel impossible, but the process of continually offering up all that we are to God with thanks giving helps us move forward in this process. As Timothy Radcliffe puts it ‘our lives with their dead ends and botched attempts to love are placed on that altar, part of a story in which everything comes from God and goes to God. Nothing is excluded, because nothing can be as hideous and impure as Good Friday, and that was the turning point in the narrative, the beginning of homecoming…we must place on the altar our resentment, our anger, our bitterness for God’s healing.’

Let’s pray that the preparation of the gifts can really speak to us and that we can become more and more free to offer up all that we are and abandon ourselves to him.

Friday

Hebrews 10

I found this chapter very challenging to pray with, it made me more aware of the beauty of forgiveness and also of a deeper desire to try and live what my faith teaches me, not from a sense of fear, but a desire to receive the freedom and love that God offers.

After the preparation of the gifts we are ready for the Eucharistic Prayer. Timothy. Radcliffe expresses it beautifully when he writes ‘We are like the three wise men who have given their gifts, they are free to accept whatever else God will give them, unlike Herod who sees the child as a threat to his possessions, his kingship and wealth his hands are too full to receive the gift that he too is offered in Christ. We have placed everything on the altar in trust and hope, and so our hands are open to receive God’s gifts, the body and the blood of his son.’

Let’s pray that we would be able to humbly offer ourselves to God and that we would be open to receiving the grace and gifts that he wishes to give us.

©Verbum Dei * 2010

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