In the First Letter to the Thessalonians 5:17, St. Paul implores us as Christians to “Pray without ceasing.” Pray without ceasing? Don’t you and I have bills to pay? Don’t we have dinner to cook and eat? Don’t we have to drive to Starbucks and get our coffee, or in Lakewood to The Press at Belmar?
I am very close to finishing one of the books in the series called the Classics of Western Spirituality. The particular volume I am reading is “The Pilgrim’s Tale.” It is based on a man wandering the land in Russia, trying to live a holy life and precisely trying to figure out this verse from 1Thessalonians.
It is quite a good read, actually. I have found it very edifying. It is a classic of the Orthodox Tradition, which is nevertheless a very close relative (and as I said in a previous post) perhaps very close to reconciling with our own Latin Rite Tradition of the Catholic Church.
The anonymous author quotes a very famous book called the Philokalia. One quote I would like to bring to your attention is from St. John Chrysostom. He states: “No one should offer the excuse that the one taken up in day-to-day cares or unable to go to church cannot possibly pray always. Everywhere, no matter where you find yourself, you can set up an altar to God in your mind by means of prayer. It is easy to pray in the market square [or we might say King Soopers or Safeway, if you like] and on a journey, and for the one hawking goods or plying a trade it is easy to pray too. Everywhere and in every place it is possible to pray.”
I am very close to finishing one of the books in the series called the Classics of Western Spirituality. The particular volume I am reading is “The Pilgrim’s Tale.” It is based on a man wandering the land in Russia, trying to live a holy life and precisely trying to figure out this verse from 1Thessalonians.
It is quite a good read, actually. I have found it very edifying. It is a classic of the Orthodox Tradition, which is nevertheless a very close relative (and as I said in a previous post) perhaps very close to reconciling with our own Latin Rite Tradition of the Catholic Church.
The anonymous author quotes a very famous book called the Philokalia. One quote I would like to bring to your attention is from St. John Chrysostom. He states: “No one should offer the excuse that the one taken up in day-to-day cares or unable to go to church cannot possibly pray always. Everywhere, no matter where you find yourself, you can set up an altar to God in your mind by means of prayer. It is easy to pray in the market square [or we might say King Soopers or Safeway, if you like] and on a journey, and for the one hawking goods or plying a trade it is easy to pray too. Everywhere and in every place it is possible to pray.”
The question I guess I would ask me and you is how committed are we to being on the journey towards Heaven? If the way to heaven lies in prayer, then how valuable is it to you to pray? For certainly, those of us with children know that what we value our children also shall value.
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