Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Prayer for purity

By Raul Nidoy

O most loving Father, we need you to attain purity and the joy it brings, for without you we can do nothing.

Teach us your children to reverence our bodies and the bodies of our sisters and brothers in Christ. Help us to recognize in each human body an incarnate spirit, an image of God, a sacred temple of the Holy Spirit, a person worth all the blood of Christ, a child of God to be loved with your benevolent Love.

Teach us to reverence the sacredness of human sexuality, an icon of your divine self-giving and creative power.

Deliver us, Father, from the evil of seeing the bodies of your daughters and sons as mere things and objects, and the evil of using them for our own selfish ends.

Forgive us our sins which destroy our friendship with you, the source of all our happiness.

O most beloved Mother, through your all-powerful prayer, help us to live with the dignity of a child of God. May our reason and free will be the masters our feelings and desires. And may Jesus, God who is Truth and Love, be our one master and Lord. Amen.

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John Paul II’s theology of the body has been called “a kind of theological time bomb set to go off with dramatic consequences ...perhaps in the twenty-first century.” This prayer is a way of helping set off that time bomb.

This prayer is based on insights found in a little book, Achieving Chastity in a Pornographic World, written by Fr. T.G. Morrow who based his insights on John Paul II’s theology of the body. The prayer is intended to facilitate the practice of a method that Fr. Morrow suggested to uproot sexual addiction and to build a sturdy habit of chastity.

In a nutshell, the method means repeating the values and reasons of chastity (several times a day) so as to convince the sexual appetite, permeating it with reason, until it is converted and is at peace.

I thought of integrating the reasons into a prayer which can be said three times a day (morning, noon, nighttime) because, as Mother Teresa said, "purity is a fruit of prayer." The Catechism also stated: chastity is "a gift from God, a grace, a fruit of spiritual effort."

Also, vocal prayer that is well said has a role of attuning our mind to the truth, thus liberating us. To explain this, Benedict XVI quoted St. Benedict of Nursia's Mens nostra concordet voci nostras, our mind must be in accord with our voice. "The word, the voice, goes ahead of us," explained Pope Benedict, "and our mind must adapt to it. For on our own we human beings do not know how to pray as we ought." This prayer has that intention: to help the mind, our reason, to be shaped by truth, in its role of regulating the sexual appetite, while at the same time acknowledging our powerlessness in achieving the virtue of chastity.

On this St. Augustine has personal experience and clear doctrine: "I thought that continence arose from one's own powers, which I did not recognize in myself. I was foolish enough not to know . . . that no one can be continent unless you grant it. For you would surely have granted it if my inner groaning had reached your ears and I with firm faith had cast my cares on you."

St. Josemaria put it succintly: "It is not possible to lead a clean life without God's assistance. He wants us to be humble and to ask for his aid."

This prayer is a sample of what people can personally compose, as a way of doing what Fr. Morrow suggested, i.e. to make a list of reasons which one reads and reflects on several times a day. You can also give me feedback so this particular prayer can be of more help in bringing back purity to this pornographic world.

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Fr. Morrow's book has been praised by eminent theologians and spiritual writers:

Dr. William May calls this book “eminently practical,” one that gives “great hope” to people struggling with sexual temptations and addictions.

Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR said, the book “effectively brings spirituality and morality together with the best contemporary psychological thinking.”

Father John F. Harvey, OSFS, the Founder of Courage said: “Father Morrow concentrates on presenting a spiritual strategy which will help the person on the long road back to inner freedom. That strategy includes not only deep honesty with one’s self but also a life of reflective prayer, known as prayer of the heart.”

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According to Fr. Morrow, these are the basic values or the goodness of chastity, which are we can remind ourselves of frequently "so as to alleviate any interior resentment and find peace in the chaste decision":

1. Sex is holy, not a plaything. It should never be trivialized.

2. Created in the image of God, I can live by reason, not just by
urges (as the animals do).

3. Persons are to be loved, not merely used as objects of enjoyment.

4. I must not treat persons as objects, even in the mind, lest I
become a user of persons in practice.

5. Unchaste activity destroys my most precious friendship, that with
God, the source of all happiness.

6. Unchaste activity brings pleasure but not happiness.

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Further reading:

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/sexuality/se0109.html

http://www.cfalive.org/ChastPornW506.pdf

Monday, February 8, 2010

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Saints know they are sinners but ceased to gaze at their wounds

"Let us accept; may you accept to offer yourselves to him who has given us everything, who came not to judge the world, but to save it, accept to recognize in your lives the presence of him who is present here, exposed to our view. Accept to offer him your very lives," the Pontiff said in his short address.

Benedict XVI noted that some 2,000 years ago Mary accepted "to give everything, to offer her body so as to receive the Body of the Creator."

"Everything came from Christ, even Mary," added the Pope. "Everything came through Mary, even Christ."

He reflected on Mary's presence with those gathered in Lourdes, as well as the "crowd of saints in heaven" composed of "all those men and women who have contemplated, venerated, adored the real presence of him who gave himself to us even to the last drop of blood; the crowd of all those men and women who have spent hours in adoration of the Most Holy Sacrament of the altar."

Look to Christ

"This evening, we do not see them," the Pontiff continued, "but we hear them saying to us, to every man and to every woman among us: 'Come, let the Master call you! He is here! He is calling you! He wants to take your life and join it to his. Let yourself be embraced by him! Gaze no longer upon your own wounds, gaze upon his.

"'Do not look upon what still separates you from him and from others; look upon the infinite distance that he has abolished by taking your flesh, by mounting the Cross which men had prepared for him, and by letting himself be put to death so as to show you his love.

"'In his wounds, he takes hold of you; in his wounds, he hides you. Do not refuse his love!'”

The saints, said the Holy Father, "have allowed themselves to be embraced by his Love," and they "never cease to intercede for us."

Benedict XVI continued, "They were sinners and they knew it, but they willingly ceased to gaze upon their own wounds and to gaze only upon the wounds of their Lord, so as to discover there the glory of the cross, to discover there the victory of life over death."

"Remain in silent adoration of your Lord," the Pope urged the crowd. "Remain silent, then speak and tell the world: We cannot be silent about what we know.

"Go and tell the whole world the marvels of God, present at every moment of our lives, in every place on earth."