Daily Prayer
September 4th, 2010
“What do you possess that you have not received? But if you have received it, why are you boasting as if you did not receive it?”
1 Cor 4 : 7
At the end of his ‘Confession’ in which St. Patrick tells the story of his early life and mission to Ireland, he concludes: “Do not attribute to me in my ignorance the little I achieved or pointed out that pleased God. Let your conclusion and the general opinion rather be the real truth, that my success was the gift of God.
To be humble requires great inner resources – the ability to touch the goodwill of others in order to involve them in the project of building greatness. There is no greater humility than to know and feel oneself to be the pure realisation of grace: Mary, in her moment of jubilation in her Magnificat proclaims: “He that is mighty has done great things for me.”
Thomas Merton, refers indirectly to this lovely virtue of humility when he says: “I must be very careful and timid about those innumerable affirmations that tend to destroy God’s weakness and littleness in me.”
Humility is truth – the truth that acknowledges that all is gift.
Prayer
Lord, I thank you for the many gifts bestowed on me. May I always use them for your greater glory and for the good of others. Amen.
The prayer for each day has been prepared by various members of the Holy Family Association. All who visit our website are remembered in prayer. If you would like us to pray for a particular need, simply complete and submit the form on the right hand side of this page. You may wish to leave a comment in the space below.
Just a Thought
How the Holy Family prayer: A Reflection by Pope Benedict XVI
“I would like to invite you to reflect on the place of prayer in the life of the Holy Family of Nazareth. The home of Nazareth, in fact, is a school of prayer where we learn to listen, to ponder and to penetrate the profound meaning of the manifestation of the Son of God, drawing our example from Mary, Joseph and Jesus.
Pope Paul VI during his visit to Nazareth said “we come to understand the need for a spiritual discipline, if we wish to follow the teaching of the Gospel and become disciples of Christ.” And he added: “First, it teaches us silence. Oh! That there would be reborn in us the esteem for silence, that wonderful and indispensable atmosphere of the spirit: while we are deafened by so many noises, sounds and clamorous voices in the frantic and tumultuous times of modern life. Oh! Silence of Nazareth, teach us to be resolute in good thoughts, intent upon the interior life, ready to listen well to the secret inspirations of God and the exhortations of the true masters.”
We can glean several insights on the Holy Family’s prayer and relationship with God from the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ childhood. We may begin with the Presentation of Jesus in the temple. St. Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph, “when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, brought the child up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord”(2:22). Like every observant Jewish family, Jesus’ parents go up to the temple to consecrate the firstborn son to God and to offer sacrifice. Moved by fidelity to the law’s prescriptions, they set off from Bethlehem and go up to Jerusalem with Jesus, who is now forty days old. Instead of a one-year-old lamb, they present the offering of simple families; that is two young pigeons. The Holy Family’s pilgrimage is one of faith, of the offering of gifts, a symbol of prayer, and of encounter with the Lord, whom Mary and Joseph already see in the son Jesus.”
