Thought for the Week - Pray More, Worry Less!!

Spreading the word of positivity

IT IS DIFFICULT to live in and enjoy the present moment when you are thinking about the past or worrying about the future. A quote from St. Padre Pio I love to hear or pray goes as follows, “Pray, Hope, and Don’t Worry.” I can’t tell you exactly how I heard this quote for the first time. I think it was part of a homily a while back by a Franciscan Friar about the life of St. Padre Pio in the Poor Clares church I like to go to, but I remember my initial thought was, “Don’t worry? It’s useless?! How?! I need to worry!” Then I realized how useless worry actually is. I’ve always known it’s useless, but I still feel it regardless. I don’t want to feel worried, but I still do. I realized this is a symptom of anxiety. I never knew I had anxiety, and never defined myself as having it. The symptoms of anxiety, like being in a constant state of worry or having restless sleep cycles, were never symptoms to me, it was just life and how I survived life.

I AM HUMAN

In today’s day and age, I think everyone has some form of anxiety. If not now from the worries of the past pandemic and the various living crises and conflicts in our world, then from how we interact and respond to societal pressures. I hated admitting I experience anxiety, because admitting it means I’m broken. Well, of course I’m a little broken after all I am only human. We are all flawed in some way or other.

PRAY

So as we start into another week, remember that the anxieties of our lives can steal away the moments of our joy, so I want to write in this week’s thoughts about ways that we can guard our hearts against anxiety no matter what it is that you or I are facing. The best way for me and you to face any worry is to pray. When we cast our cares upon the Lord, He hears and answers our prayers. He knows the deepest desires of our hearts. He knows everything about the situation that you and I are currently facing, what is overwhelming us, what is causing anxiety in our life’s, and He wants to help us with it. He wants to be present to us. So how is our Lord present to us?

Well, He’s present in the Eucharist. So go to Adoration and Mass. Pray. Sit with Him a while. Let Him bring you peace. Rest within Him. Another way, through prayer, is holy scripture. Prayer is our way of talking to our Lord, holy scripture is His way of talking to us. While at times all of my life problems were upsetting me, as each one occurred, I kept remembering the simple, short objectives and easy to remember messages from my prayers, “One Day at a Time. I have no control. Lead me God.” I keep repeating the Serenity Prayer to myself and If I cannot find the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, or the wisdom to know the difference, I will keep remembering to take it “one day at a time. I have no control. Lead me God.” If I can make it through this day, I pray that I can face whatever situations may arise.

“ONE DAY AT A TIME”

I have put together some thoughts that might help us to walk with Our Lord and to take “One Day at a Time” and relook at some of our life choices and help us refocus on this journey called life. Each day we get up from our rest is a time for giving thanks for blessings received, asking forgiveness for transgressions committed, forgiving those who have aggrieved us, and asking grace and strength for the future as we face into what we now call the “new normal”. We are aware of needing to make decisions about both our past and future. We cannot reject the past, but we can allow it to be redeemed. We cannot determine the future, but we can allow it to be permeated with the love and the mercy of God. I can look back on the first part of the year and the resolutions or new beginnings that I made and see how often I have failed to live up to those. I can look forward in hope that I can try to live my resolutions or new beginnings better, but, most of all, I can decide, here and now, to try to live today as it should be lived, because ‘today’ is all we ever really know. So, for me, let’s continue with our life journey and a renewed sense of purpose about what I am called to be and do and to try and love and pray deeply from our hearts.

Try Loving And Prayer

When trying to truly love and pray always it will entail many hardships and costs. But you have to keep trying. I know myself for I have failed miserably at times. True love when it’s for real gets its hands dirty. It takes a chance. It goes out on a limb. It takes a gamble. Love makes a statement and leaves a legacy. It does the unexpected, surprising, and stirring. It performs acts that steal the heart and will leave an impression on our souls. Often these acts or legacies are never forgotten. I recently read a moving story about Bob Pierce, the founder of an international charity. He had advanced leukemia, but he chose to visit a colleague in Indonesia before he died. As he and others walked together through a small village, they came upon a young girl lying on a bamboo mat next to a river. She was dying of cancer and had only a short time to live. Bob was indignant. He demanded to know why she wasn’t in a clinic. But his friend explained that she was from the jungle and wished to spend her last days next to the river, where it was cool and familiar. As Bob gazed at her, he felt such compassion that he got down on his knees in the mud, took her hand, and began stroking it and started praying. Although she didn’t understand him, he prayed for her. Afterwards she looked up and said something, “What did she say? Bob asked his friend. His friend replied, “She said, ‘If I could only sleep again, if I could only sleep again.’” It seemed that her pain was too great to allow her the relief of rest. Bob began to weep. Then he reached into his pocket and took out his own sleeping pills, the ones his doctor had given him because the pain from his leukemia was too great for him to sleep at night. He handed the bottle to his friend. “You make sure this young lady gets a good night’s sleep,” he said, “as long as these pills last.” Bob was ten days away from where he could get his prescription refilled. That meant ten painful and restless nights. That day his love and prayers cost him greatly. But even in the midst of his suffering, God infused him with a supernatural sense of satisfaction that he had done the right thing. Real love and prayer inevitably carries costs and true love and prayer always costs. If there is no cost there is no love.

Thought For The Week

As your thought for the week, don’t ever forget for even a second how very important and how very special each and every one of us are. Please try to love and pray deeply from your heart always and for the good of everyone. In the end, the goal of real life is love. The measure of our maturity is our love for God and our love for others. If we fail in our love we have missed what it means to be a truly good person. To anyone who also may be struggling like me at this moment with questions and worry right now, I offer again the simple words of St. Padre Pio: “Pray, hope, and don’t worry.” Our God is massively bigger than any problem we perceive. Our God is working all things for our good (Romans 8:28). Our God is merciful (Ephesians 2:4). Our God loves us beyond measure (Ephesians 3:18), and it is impossible for our God to lie. Unlike so many things in our world, He is truly trustworthy (Hebrews 6:18). “Pray, hope, and don’t worry” is probably Padre Pio’s most famous saying. However, we cannot forget about the second part of his prayer statement, which is: “Worry is useless. God is merciful and will hear your prayer.” We can be certain God knows what we need even before we ask him. I feel Padre Pio’s peacefulness as he listens to my worries now as I pray to him, as he listened to many during his life, and he reassures me daily that all my worries are in God’s hands. Let me leave you with this prayer I say everyday, “Heavenly Father, When I feel crushed by my own worries, Lift my mind and help me to see the truth. When fear grips me tight and I feel I cannot move, Free my heart and help me to take things one step or one day at a time. When I can’t express the turmoil inside, Calm me with Your quiet words of love. I choose to trust in You, each day, each hour, each moment of my life. I know deep down that I in Your grace, forgiven, restored by Your sacrifice, You have set me free. Amen.”