PRAYER

13.01.2016

Saint Agnes: The second thing about which I wanted to tell you is prayer. Prayer for a Christian is not a duty, but an air. Without prayer, the soul suffocates and dies. I can not imagine how one can consider oneself a Christian and not pray. Prayer is necessary. It is the first thing that the soul needs from the very morning till the very evening. A pious recitation of prayer is one thing, but the living contact with the Person of the Savior is a fundamental prayer, which is essential to the soul. Without it, the prayer seems dead. The miracle of our faith lies in the fact that we can talk to God Himself, whenever we want and how we want, on any subject. Turning to God is already in itself a form of worship and thanksgiving.

For us, the Christian of the first Church, this living prayer was a discovery of life, and we drew great strength from it. Then, there were not as many forms of prayer as in this day and age. Nor there was such a universal access to the Holy Scriptures. Prayer was rather based on faith and the individual adoration of the soul. I made myself a prayer that I prayed often and that I dictated to you earlier. But prayer was before all the words of the soul spoken with faith and joy, because the awareness itself that man can speak with God Himself, who became man and spoke our language, gives such great joy to the soul.

Your prayer is very rich in words and different beautiful forms, but often it is completely devoid of faith and the appropriate meaning. The most important is the purpose of the prayer and the intention. The awareness that I speak to God Himself and He listens. After, He speaks and I listen. For you, it is rather a monologue, but without true faith in the fact that you speak with a living Person. Thanks to faith, prayer is never boring. It is a meeting with a Friend, to whom one confides everything. Faith also brings God’s answers. These answers are often immediate. Sometimes you have to wait for them, but they always are. If you do not listen to the answer, which is a prayer without faith, you can not say that you are truly searching for God, because He is always a living Person who desires dialog. He desires to give, and not only to take.

Pray with the faith that you are being listened to. This is the most important. Then one can obtain everything and the awareness of a living contact with the Person of God gives great strength and joy from the possession of faith. Man learns to rely on God in everything and lives with the awareness of great grace as a child of God. It is precisely the awareness resulting from the living contact with God Himself in prayer that gives the great courage and strength, which characterized the Christians of the first centuries. Today, you lack courage and joy, because your prayers lack faith. But the Holy Spirit gives all this. It is sufficient to ask Him. Thank you for listening to me. I will come tomorrow. May God bless you.

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Translated from: Życie sakramentalne pierwotnego Kościoła według św. Agnieszki, na podstawie Orędzi na Czasy Ostateczne które własnie nadeszły, Grzechynia 2017, p. 76-79