Given in a good measure, shaken down, overflowing. If you are new to mental prayer, we invite you to visit our page on the ways of mental prayer, Don’t know how to pray to God, to learn more.
We begin Day 10 of our Lenten Challenge with this opening prayer:
TRUST AND BELIEVE...
Holy Trinity,
I believe you want to give me the grace to go deeper in prayer this Lent. Help me to be present to you so that I’ll pray the next 15 minutes with my heart fully open to grace.
I want to contemplate the mystery your holy love that flows from your eternal heart into ours in a good measure, and overflowing. You fill us with abundant holy love, making us living tabernacles.
I thank you and praise you for the holy love you have given me in my life, always sustaining me and giving me my very existence. Thank you for loving me and giving me life. Please guide me by your Spirit to contemplate the meaning of holy love.
Please give me the grace I need as I strive to complete my daily Lenten reflections. Let me humbly follow you all the way to Calvary, returning your holy love with all the love I have in my heart.
AMEN.
Monday 2nd Week of Lent (Liturgical Year II)
Holy Love, Shaken Down, Overflowing
A Reflection for Prayerful Meditation
Join me in a prayerful meditation for your Lenten journey on overflowing holy love.
Holy Love, Shaken Down, Overflowing
Prayer to the Holy Spirit
TRUST AND BELIEVE...
Holy Spirit,
I believe you are truly here and present to me right now. I desire to be present to you. Guide my heart and mind to understand the mysteries of your most holy Love. Speak to my heart today and show me how I might imitate the Eternal Father who loves, the only Begotten Son who is loved, and the spiration of love itself — the Holy Spirit.
I desire to have a heart full of true charity in imitation of your holy Love. Please fill me with your love, Holy Spirit. I want your holy love to pour out of me so that I can better love others in a way that is pleasing to you. I want to grow to love you and my neighbors more perfectly.
Breath on me as I spend these next 15 minutes fixated on today’s Mass readings. Holy Spirit, help me pray with humility, honesty, love and affection. I want to grow in virtue and holiness.
Thank you, Holy Spirit, for every consolation, desolation, time of silence, difficult trial, and temptation of the evil one. I understand that you love me and that everything in my life happens by God’s holy will, whether it be divine providence or God’s permissive will due to my sin and negligence.
Please humble me as I walk with Jesus toward Calvary, contemplating the immeasurable, overflowing love of God in my life.
AMEN.
Say Nothing Just Take Him In
Spend 1-3 minutes in silence gazing at the Lord with love and gratitude, in a prayer of silent contemplation.
Make a Movie in Your Mind...
Now we will contemplate the first reading. Slowly imagine this scene in your mind as you read. Take your time. Pause over a moment that really tugs at your heart. Reread the passage again, this time imagine yourself physically there in the scene. What do you hear? See? Feel? Sense?
Holy Love, Shaken Down, Overflowing
The Mercy of God's Covenant
Daniel 9:4-10
Lord, great and awesome God, you who keep your merciful covenant toward those who love you and observe your commandments!
We have sinned, been wicked and done evil; we have rebelled and departed from your commandments and your laws.
We have not obeyed your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, our fathers, and all the people of the land.
Justice, O Lord, is on your side; we are shamefaced even to this day: the men of Judah, the residents of Jerusalem, and all Israel, near and far, in all the countries to which you have scattered them because of their treachery toward you.
O LORD, we are shamefaced, like our kings, our princes, and our fathers, for having sinned against you.
But yours, O Lord, our God, are compassion and forgiveness! Yet we rebelled against you and paid no heed to your command, O LORD, our God, to live by the law you gave us through your servants the prophets.
Reflection:
Let us take a moment to reflect on the message in the first reading.
What does Daniel say about the nature of the LORD toward the end of the passage?
He is a God of compassion and forgiveness.
What came to mind when you read the sentence: “We have sinned, been wicked and done evil; we have rebelled and departed from your commandments and your laws.”
Now let’s personalize this passage from our first reading…
Have you felt the compassion and forgiveness of God after having sinned and done evil?
Let’s Pray:
Lord, let my heart be filled with compassion and forgiveness in the same way your heart is, so that I may forgive those who have been wicked and done evil. Let me have a holy love for my enemies. Please give me the grace to love and pray for those who have committed treachery against the innocent so their hearts may grow and they may repent and turn away from their sin. AMEN.
Be Completely Real...
Let the Holy Spirit guide your mind…
Is there a person or a situation in your life that the Holy Spirit is pricking your heart about? What is coming to mind?
Ask the Lord about this situation.
Give the Holy Spirit time to respond to you.
Next we will contemplate the Lord by listening to him speak to us in the Gospels:
Visualize Christ
This morning you find yourself among a large crowd waiting for Jesus to come down the mountain peak after ascending there the night before to pray. You are on a level plain, a plateau on this mountain in the region of Galilee. You see Jesus approach, and having compassion on the crowd he comes to greet you all, and immediately speak. There with you are a diverse group followers from Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon.
The sound of Jesus’ voice is gentle but authoritative. He talks about blessings and woes, about loving your enemies, and building a firm foundation….
Holy Love, Shaken Down, Overflowing
Give and Gifts will be Given to You
Luke 6:36-38
Jesus said to his disciples: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven.
Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”
Reflection:
Let us meditate on what Jesus means when he says, “Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap.”
Let us take a moment to imagine a scene. We are in an ancient Jewish marketplace with Jesus and the disciples. Jesus is teaching these words as we watch the buyers and sellers with various grains on mats.
We see the sellers measure the grain to be bought after negotiations on the amount to go into the container brought.
Some sellers are stingy and only scoop the grain into the vessel until it is full. But others will fill the vessel until it is full but then pack the grain down, shake the vessel to make more room, and fill it with extra scoops until it is overflowing. Then the buyer has to carry the vessel using their garment to catch any grains that spill out of the overflowing jar so the grains do not fall onto the ground.
Look at Jesus as he teaches. Look at the sellers. Imagine for a minute you are also a seller. Jesus catches your eyes. He looks intently at you, seeing through you, into your soul.
What kind of seller are you? Do you heap with generosity or do you measure the value of each scoop and carefully sell the grain for the best profit? Do you only give while counting the cost? Can you give generously without expecting something in return?
Jesus is challenging you to imitate him, in thought, word, and deed. Give holy love freely. He promises you that gifts will be given to you generously due to your holy love. So love and do not count the cost.
Take a moment to ask Jesus questions from your heart…. Give the Holy Spirit time to respond. Wait on the Lord. Linger a moment and wait for his response. Has he shown you something? You may want to write it down.
Let us continue our mental prayer with a meditation from Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska.
Holy Love, Shaken Down, Overflowing
Jesus Gives Himself Generously
By St. Maria Faustina Kowalska
[From the Diary of St. Faustina paragraphs 1559-1662]
Still, in order to write anything at all, I must make use of words, though they cannot render all of what my soul enjoyed on seeing the glory of God’s mercy. The glory of the Divine Mercy is resounding, even now, in spite of the efforts of its enemies and of Satan himself, who has a great hatred for God’s mercy. This work will snatch a great number of souls from him, and that is why the spirit of darkness sometimes tempts good people violently, so that they may hinder the work. But I have clearly seen that the will of God is already being carried out, and that it will be accomplished to the very last detail. The enemy’s greatest efforts will not thwart the smallest detail of what the Lord has decreed. No matter if there are times when the work seems to be completely destroyed; it is then that the work is being all the more consolidated.
My soul was filled with a peace much deeper than anything I had experienced before, a divine reassurance which nothing can efface, a deep peace which nothing can disturb, even though I were to go through the severest of ordeals. I am at peace; God Himself governs all things.
I spent the whole day in thanksgiving, and gratitude kept flooding my soul. O my God, how good You are, how great is Your mercy! You visit me with so many graces, me who am a most wretched speck of dust. Prostrating myself at Your feet, O Lord, I confess with a sincere heart that I have done nothing to deserve even the least of Your graces. It is in Your infinite goodness that You give Yourself to me so generously. Therefore, the greater the graces which my heart receives, the deeper it plunges itself in humility.
O Christ, suffering for You is the delight of my heart and my soul. Prolong my sufferings to infinity, that I may give You a proof of my love. I accept everything that Your hand will hold out to me. Your love, Jesus, is enough for me. I will glorify You in abandonment and darkness, in agony and fear, in pain and bitterness, in anguish of spirit and grief of heart. In all things may You be blessed. My heart is so detached from the earth, that You Yourself are enough for me. There is no longer any moment in my life for self concern.
We see through the writings of St. Faustina that our Lord delights in his children who can love him with a humble, trusting, pure heart. Let us pray for the desire to love Him in our suffering and trust like St. Faustina in his divine mercy.
Let’s Pray:
Thank you, Most Holy Trinity,
For the generous love you give your children, for the many mercies you have shown me, for the countless consolations, blessings, and graces you have given me. I am not deserving; I, too, am a speck of dust.
Thank you for everything.
AMEN.
The Most Holy Trinity’s essence is holy love. Will you continue to pray for an increase in holy love in your heart so that you can imitate Christ in your life? Will you be a blessing to someone today? Can you give a good measure, shaken down, and overflowing to a soul in need?
Are You Listening?
Contemplate the mercy of God in your life. Ask the Spirit to remind you of the ways God has proved His love to you in the past. Did you receive a miracle? A consolation? Thank him again right now.
He gazes at you and he says to you, “I love you.”
Respond to him. Tell him you love him, and then give him the many reasons why. Recall the many times he gave you holy love, overflowing, heaping more on top of what you asked for.
Pray the next Lenten Meditation
Day 11 Mental Prayer Meditation
Lord you Cleanse Me, White as Snow, if I am Willing to Obey
Lord you cleanse me of my scarlet sins and make me white as snow when I am willing to obey you and do your will.