Here we are in the middle of Advent. Christmas is soon and right afterwords is the coming of a new year. It's the time of year when we start new beginnings, spending quality time with family and friends. Maybe for a lot of us it's a chance to breathe after a hard semester of school. I know for me, it's the time when I start looking forward with a renewed sense of hope while also reflecting over the past year. For the past week, give or take, I have been thinking about how much of God's grace I take for granted, Not just what I receive but also what I could have received and have missed out on all because I don't take the time to pray enough. Whether praying the rosary, just spending time in adoration or just devoting a specific amount of time each day reflecting and talking to God, I flat out don't do it enough. It's so easy to get caught up in the busyness and hectic schedule of life. I don't know why its so hard to do this as simple as it sounds in theory, because after all prayer is our lifeline! I mean if your parents want you to do something, how do you find out what it is? Do you go to your friends and talk to them about what your parents want? Do you go to people that know your parents well to find out? You can do that, but you won't get close to a good complete answer. The only way you can know clearly and fully what is desired of you, is to go directly to your parents and talk to them. It's the same thing with our Father in Heaven. The only way to know what His specific plan for you is to talk to Him directly. You can get good advice from others like faithful people you know, priests, family what have you. But unless you are talking directly to God, it's only advice and not actual answers. That isn't to say that God doesn't speak through these people because He does, but that is where discernment comes into play. It's also why it is vitally important to talk to God first and foremost.
There is this prayer guide tool that you may have heard of called A.C.T.S. It stands for adoration, confession, thanksgiving and supplication. In Adoration we are to proclaim and recognize who God is and what kind of characteristics He has. With Confession we have a personal cleansing, repentance and through that we put on the nature of Christ. Thanksgiving is for us to recognize and remember everything that God has done for us and what He will do. We offer praise and meditation keeping humble because we receive such an abundance of Grace and the least of which we don't deserve. With Supplication we are humbly asking, interceding and petitioning according to His will.
In thinking about prayer, it's important to remember that living a prayerful life isn't just speaking to God. It's making our life itself a prayer, offering everything we do in a physical sense, as well as mentally and spiritually, as a sacrifice and worship to God, for God, with God and by God.
How do we live out a life of prayer? In our pursuit of the invitation to Holiness, we are called to daily lay down our lives for Christ. We are called to take up our cross and follow Him. We do this by offering ourselves for His glory when we wake up. When we go to work, or school we recognize that we aren't doing it for men. We do it for His glory as witnesses and testimony to His goodness. On a larger scale, we are reminded of A.C.T.S. when we partake in the Eucharist. In Mass we see the presence of Jesus at the altar. We adore, then we confess that we aren't worthy, then afterwards we pray a prayer of thanksgiving. Mass ends and we are commissioned to go do God's will in our daily life the purpose of which is to draw more people into His fold.
If there is one thing I don't believe in, it's coincidence. Want to see A.C.T.S. in a way you might never have thought of? Look at the Liturgical Year. The Church in Her wisdom established the Liturgical Year as Advent, Lent, Easter and Ordinary time. Of course there are a few weeks of ordinary time in between Advent and Lent but that's the general way it's set up. I think it is nothing short of amazing when you look at the Liturgical Year compared to the regular calendar. The way its set up, I can't help but marvel at the way God works. Even in the midst of a lost secularized world, God calls out. When you line the Liturgical Year with the regular calender year you get New year, Lent,spring, Easter, Ordinary Time (which includes summer and fall), Thanksgiving,Advent, winter, Christmas, end of year. Of course throughout there are various other secular Holidays. Such as ( in America) Memorial Day, Labor Day, July 4th all of which are secular in design yet have a purpose that draws our attention to God.
In lining up the two years, A.C.T.S. becomes quite clear. The start of the new year is a time when we make resolutions. We recognize the need to change things and we try to change them. It's a time of beginning anew, starting over. It is in this time, we should start by seeing who God is. It is the time when we realize our dependency on the Unchanging God to change us, to direct our feet back to the path that we walked away from. Then we have Lent, where we are preparing to celebrate the Passion and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus. It is a time when the overall theme is reconciliation and Confession.We fast, and deny ourselves pleasures of whatever we "give up" to align our suffering with the suffering of Christ. We celebrate the start of spring and Easter where it is by Jesus' resurrection we are empowered to start the work of the kingdom where both literally and spiritually, we plant our seeds and God grows them. Summer comes along and we have to really work the ground and do our part so the harvest grows and is tendered to bear fruits as best as we can.Then fall comes where its time to harvest the fruit of our hard work. We have Thanksgiving [other countries vary on days and traditions of thanksgiving but usually still have a recognized time of observing harvest and such so the idea is still there] where we are thankful for the harvest we just had. It's also a time when we prepare to take what we were given and store it up for our families and others in time of need. Which brings me to Supplication. I am going to include Advent, winter and Christmas all under this. We start in Advent where we prepare to celebrate the single greatest gift we could have ever dreamed of. Our precious Savior, exactly what we needed and yet not what we had expected. They say the best gifts come in small packages, and here we have a precious, precious infant. It took 33 years for our gift to be fully known and unwrapped for what it was, but it started in a tiny bundle in a manger surrounded by animals and strangers in a foreign city. While people debate on when Christ was physically born, I think it is funny ( in an ironic way) that we celebrate His birth at the start of winter. We are called to take care of the poor and the needy every day, but it is in winter when their needs are the most dire. Not that its easier to be homeless or hungry in warm weather, but winter is when the elements are at their worst. The season of most need is when we celebrate receiving what we most needed. Even non believing athiests recognize the needs of others and do what they can at this time of year. Not that they don't any other time, just this is the time of year when it is most visually seen and when others seem to come together more than any other time of year. Even a secular world that doesn't celebrate CHRISTMAS, but celebrate...well whatever it is they celebrate at this time of year, in exchanging gifts (even materially), volunteering to work at homeless shelters and such, they take the time to put others needs and desires above their own. This is the point of supplication and petitioning. Not just asking God to take care of our needs, but really asking Him to provide for others what they need most.
Now all this was on the grand scale of a full year (and I was blown away when I saw it), but to be honest we are called to do it every single day. We are called everyday we wake up to: 1)Recognize who God is, 2) recognize that we have fallen short of our place in relationship to Christ, 3) be humbly thankful that we have received another day to live, and 4) to petition God not just for our needs, but to use us in such a way as to put on the nature of Christ and become the face of Christ as we take care of others as much as we can. I challenge you (myself as well), Implement this prayer guide. When you wake up in the morning, before you go to bed, or take some time out during the day to really talk to God. He wants to hear from you. Then after you have prayed, I challenge you to make your life a prayer and act out the A.C.T.S. of life.
