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Friday, December 30, 2016

Preparing for our day of retreat on New Year's Eve



Since I am giving the retreat to the community tomorrow, I thought I might share some of my thoughts on prayer as I have prepared for them a handout with several suggested ways of praying. Now, why would I do that? I think that prayer is the expression of our own relationship with God the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, Mary, and then all the saints that we pray to. The point is that when we are in relationship with someone, we are not always the same. So, although I am a firm believer in the way we pray best is the best way for us to pray, I also believe that using some suggestions on a day of retreat may be found helpful. Prayer is really quite simple. As Sister Wendy Beckett says: "If you want to pray, you are praying."  My experience in directing others is that prayer is often helped when we try something a bit different. I personally feel that I go to prayer to let Jesus love me, but sometimes I may find my mind wandering all over and so I will probably try one of my own suggestions today, or a combination of some suggestions.
First, since this is the end-of-year, you may just want to look back and see the story of your year. Usually there are graces that we may not have thanked for, or something we want to beg pardon for, or just look over the year to see how God has been leading us.

That is enough for tonight but I have six suggested ways to pray so I may just be spreading them out as I will be making another guided imagery retreat from January 2-9 and will not be on the computer so will try to schedule ahead.



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