NEW RELEASE - Oct. 26th

The new booklet is almost here...and it had its humble beginning right here on this blog.

The good folks at En Route Books and Media allowed me to develop those initial reflections into the work pictured at left. What can you expect to find in Marrying the Rosary to Divine Mercy Chaplet ?

The booklet encourages you to intersperse your praying of the decades of the Rosary with a decade from the Divine Mercy Chaplet. I share twenty rosary meditations (and their corresponding chaplet intercessions) that arose during my own marrying of the devotions. In the Joyful and Luminous Mysteries I recognized how our Lord's Cross cast its shadow backward over his entire life. In the Sorrowful Mysteries my understanding of Jesus’ pain was deepened; and in the Glorious our Catholic conviction that the Cross is the precondition of glory was powerfully affirmed. 

When we move from a decade of the Rosary to a decade of the Chaplet we join Mary at the foot of her Son’s Cross, voicing the prayer that filled her Immaculate Heart on Good Friday, “Eternal Father, I offer you the body and blood, soul and divinity of thy dearly beloved Son…” With her we join ourselves to Jesus’ offering and intercede for the fruits of his sacrifice to be generously poured out upon the Church and world. 

Each mystery of the Rosary is introduced by a Scriptural reference that you are encouraged to read. My meditation flows from that verse, weaving in other passages of Scripture. We then allow our meditation to inspire the petitions we pray in the Chaplet. By following this pattern (Read - Meditate - Pray), we engage in the first three elements of lectio divina.

The booklet also contains a QR Code allowing you to download a free audio version to help you meditate and pray as you walk and drive.

Oh, and I am incredibly honored to report that the booklet has a foreword from Fr. Donald Calloway (which can be read here) as well as endorsements from Kathleen Beckman, Dr. Kevin Vost, and Donna-Marie Cooper O'Boyle (here)!

The booklet will be available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.com on Oct. 26th (and your local Catholic bookstore not too long after that), but En Route is offering a special 30% discount for anyone who orders directly from them prior to that date. Hope you will take them up on it!  God bless.

New Lenten Resources from Ave Maria Press

Ave Maria Press and the Apostleship of Prayer have partnered to provide two amazing tools for helping us to go deeper into prayer this Lent. (And at a combined price of $7.70, they're mighty kind to the pocketbook!) One of the themes that has dominated my thought these past five years is the way our sacramental and devotional lives unite us to the human prayer of Christ Himself (CCC 2740). Two of the devotions I discussed in Through, With, and In Him were lectio divina (sacred reading) and the Stations of the Cross. These new resources from AMP not only provide wonderful introductions to both, but lead you step by step to make real progress in their use.

I've decided that Sacred Reading for Lent 2016 by Douglas Leonard, executive director of the Apostleship of Prayer, is going to be my daily devotional this Lent. Beginning on Ash Wednesday and going through Easter Sunday, it provides readers with six simple steps for practicing lectio divina with the Mass's daily Gospel reading:

1) A short prayer for intentionally placing ourselves in God's presence 

2) The text of the day's Gospel reading 

3) Text-specific prompts to help us notice what we think and feel as we read the passage 

4) A prayer starter for speaking to the Lord about what we have read 

5) The words the author felt that Jesus impressed upon his own heart while meditating upon the passage and the invitation for us to listen for Jesus' words to us 

6) A prayerful invitation for God to show us, concretely, how we are to live this day in the light of our reading and listening.

Lectio is such a simple manner of prayer, but it yields powerful results. In His humility the Lord Jesus, the Word Incarnate, listened as the Father spoke to Him through Moses and the prophets (Luke 9:28-31). When we practice lectio, Jesus manifests this aspect of His prayer in us. 

[ALLOW ME TO OFFER TWO BRIEF CAUTIONS. First: If you sense that the Lord is saying something to you during the listening portion of your prayer (#5 in this resource) that is at odds with the Catholic Faith, then it is not the Lord that you are hearing. Second: In the Introduction to Sacred Reading, the author encourages us to speak to the saints in our prayer as well to the Lord. I wholeheartedly agree. Use your imagination as to how the Blessed Mother, Peter, and the other saints in the Gospel reading felt witnessing those events. Speak to them about what you've read and ask them to intercede for you. Do not, however, make the mistake of asking the saints to share his/her thoughts with you. Our communication with the saints is meant to be one-way (unless the Lord should take the highly unusual step of sending them to speak us; and then we shouldn't give the message any credence until we taken it to a trusted spiritual director or knowledgeable priest).]

The Fridays of Lent are of course even more intense times of

prayer, and the Stations of the Cross are a time-honored means for uniting ourselves to our Lord in the midst of His Passion. This new book of meditations from Father William Prosper, however, focuses our gaze on the way that each of the fourteen stations speak to us of the Eucharist, the source and summit of our Faith.

Stations of the Cross with the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus reawakens us to the awesome truth that what Jesus accomplished in His Passion becomes present to us at every celebration of the Eucharist. Each station is introduced by an image and either a passage of Scripture or quotation from a saint. These are followed by a page-length meditation penned by Fr. Prospero and conclude with the prayer, "Heart of Jesus, present in the Most Blessed Sacrament, I offer myself to you for the salvation of all."

William Prospero, S.J.

The book's foreword adds significance to the words of that prayer. It reveals how "Fr. Will," the author, walked the way of the Cross with Jesus, trustfully surrendering himself to the perfect will of the Father as he suffered kidney cancer, chemotherapy, and fungal pneumonia before his death on Sept. 18, 2014. Father Will's meditations bear the stamp of authenticity.

Hats off to Ave Maria Press and the Apostleship of Prayer for such solid resources...and please pray throughout Lent for the repose of the soul of our brother, Fr. Will.

Jesus' Transfiguration - 4 Steps to Hearing God's Voice

You recall Jesus' transfiguration: While Jesus was at prayer on a mountaintop, Peter, James, and John witnessed Him become “more brilliant than the sun.” Moses and Elijah appeared to Jesus, and the disciples heard them discussing his “exodus.” The scene culminated with a cloud (the Shekinah, or cloud of God’s glory) overshadowing the mountain as God the Father proclaimed, “This is my beloved Son, listen to him” (Lk 9:28-35).  We all want to hear God's voice the way Peter, James, and John did; and the narrative of Jesus' Transfiguration gives us a blueprint for doing that - a practice known as lectio divina, "divine reading."

Step 1 - Get yourself "into position" to hear God
We have it easy compared to the apostles.  They had to climb a mountain before they experienced the Transfiguration.  For most of us it's just a matter of finding a quiet place in the house or stepping out onto the porch.  (Alright, depending on your family, a small hike might be in order.) Consciously place yourself in God's presence by making the Sign of the Cross.  Pray the Our Father to ask God for the daily bread of his word.  You need his word so that his Kingdom may more fully come and his will be more fully done in your life.  This bread, like the Eucharist, strengthens us to fight temptation and the evil one (Eph 6:17; Mt 4:3-11). We need the Lord to open the ears of our hearts.

Step 2 - Read his word
Like Jesus, allow the Father to speak to you through Moses (representing the books of the Law) and Elijah (the prophets).  Listen to Jesus himself in the gospels, and the apostles in the epistles.  Accept what you read in a spirit of humility, not intellectual pride or skepticism. By all means, use the study notes in your Bible's margin and commentaries to better understand the text; but never allow your heart to question its truthfulness. Jesus is our model.  As Dr. Scott Hahn pointed out, "Jesus embodies the response of personal humility that the form of the written Word requires. Hearing the Scriptures as the voice of the Father, he allowed himself to be formed by it message in all aspects of his human life" (Consuming the Word, p.99).

Step 3 - Invite the Spirit to "overshadow" you as you ponder what you have read
This is meditation, Christian meditation.  No need to cross your legs or chant "ohm" (although softly reciting ten Hail Marys - a decade of the Rosary - is highly encouraged). Meditation simply means to think things over deeply and prayerfully.  Try to get inside the text by asking questions.  Interact with it the way Jesus interacted with Moses and Elijah.  For example, if you were meditating on the Transfiguration, try putting yourself in St. James' sandals: What would have gone through your head when you saw Jesus' face begin emitting light right there in front of you?  When you heard the Father say, "Listen to him," would your mind have turned to the parts of his teaching you had conveniently ignored? Now ask yourself, "What parts of Jesus' teaching have I been ignoring?"  If you take seriously what you've read, how should your life change?  Can you think of something concrete that you can begin doing today?

Step 4 - "Listen to him" - resolve to live what you have heard
Voice your thoughts and conclusions to the Lord.  Ask him for the grace to live out whatever resolutions you have made.  Allow Jesus to accompany you "down the mountain," as you reenter the business of life.

And there you go - 4 steps to hearing God's voice!  Please let me know how it goes.
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P.S.,  If you enjoyed this post, you might also like the soon-to-be-released book, Through,With, and In Him: The Prayer Life of Jesus and How to Make It Our Own.

Our Prayer: God's Love for God

"This holy Spirit of Jesus is in us, and he is speaking through us when we pray. Basically prayer means that from the depths of my heart, God speaks to God" - Youth Catechism of the Catholic Church, 496

Reread those words.  They probably would not be the first to jump to mind if someone asked, "What is prayer?"  You and I would probably respond that prayer is speaking with God.  And that is true; but at it's deepest level, Christian prayer is something that God - God the Son, Christ - is doing within us.

"But Shane, I don't feel anything like that happening when I pray."  Well no, you wouldn't. God is higher than our feelings; he is beyond our powers of detection. We know this truth because, like so many others, it was revealed by Christ to the Apostles and handed down to us through Scripture and Tradition.

Our Gospel is that we have been made sons and daughters in the only Son (Jn 1:12-13; 2 Pet 1:4).  In Baptism we received the Spirit of Jesus (Acts 2:38; Titus 3:4-5), who reproduces Jesus' prayer within us (Gal 4:6).  St. Paul wrote how it was no longer him who lived, but Christ who lived in him.  And if Christ lives in us, then he prays in us (CCC 2740).

"Prayer" is at the very heart of Jesus' identity.  From all eternity he is the one who makes a perfect return to the Father of the love that has been lavished upon him ... and that love is the Holy Spirit.  When the Son became a man he expressed his relationship to the Father through human thoughts, words, and actions aflame with the Spirit (Lk 10:21).  Jesus' human prayer was unlike any prayer offered since humanity's fall. It was not the prayer of fallen man, a creature making requests or giving thanks to its Creator.  Rather, it was the the prayer of a son, the prayer of the Son - gratefully receiving all that he was and had from the Father, and offering himself in turn through the Spirit.  And Jesus joins us to himself in Baptism and sends his Spirit into our hearts so that he might express his love for the Father through our thoughts, words, and actions!

Any stirring we have to prayer is the action of Christ. Granted, when we start out in the spiritual life, we may petition God for some petty items or experiences. Yet, even when our prayer is lacking in substance, the Spirit is mysteriously at work within us, interceding "according to the will of God ... with sighs too deep for words" (Rom 8:26-27). And if we will open our ears and eyes to the words and actions he has inspired within the Body of Christ, our outward prayer can become a purer manifestation of the prayer of Jesus himself.  

Where should we begin?  The Mass.  The highest point of Jesus' human prayer was at the Cross, where prayer and his gift of self were one (CCC 2605); and that is what becomes present to us on the altar!  We are meant to join ourselves to Jesus' prayer and offering: "Through him and with him, and in him, O God, almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, for ever and ever. Amen.”  The Mass is a school of prayer: 

• we praise and thank God in the words of his angels and saints
• allow him to speak to us in the inspired words of Scripture
• confess our faith in God and what he has revealed when we pray the Creed
• intercede for the needs of the Church and world
• petition the Father for the same needs that Jesus did at the Last Supper
• pray the very words that Christ gave us in the Our Father
• and make a grateful return of the Fathers love by offering ourselves to him in union with Jesus

The Spirit intends for the perfect prayer of Christ that is manifested in the Mass to spill over into our times of personal prayer too.  The Liturgy of the Hours, prayerful reading of Scripture, and the Rosary; devotions such as the Divine Mercy and the Sacred Heart Devotion; and practices like fasting and the wearing of scapulars - the Spirit has inspired all of these to bring our daily prayer and lives into union with Jesus' prayer and offering made present in the Eucharist.  The Church's liturgical prayer, devotions, and practices bring our minds into conformity with Christ's, so that even our most spontaneous prayers are manifestations of his heart.  

Christian prayer:  God the Son, loving the Father, in the Spirit - through you and me.
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P.S., If you'd like to learn more, please keep an eye out for Through,With, and In Him: The Prayer Life of Jesus and How to Make It Our Own.