Lord you preserve me from going down to the netherworld. 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 22 of our Lenten Challenge with this opening prayer:
TRUST AND BELIEVE...
Lord,
You preserve me from the netherworld. I belong to you, Jesus. Let me obey your precepts and walk in your ways. You have not forsaken me because you love me like a bridegroom. When I have sinned, you have convicted my heart. When I have repented, you have shown me mercy and forgiven my transgressions. How can I repay you for all the good you have done for me?
Monday of the 4th Week of Lent (Liturgical Year II)
Lord You Preserve Me From the Netherworld
A Reflection for Prayerful Meditation
Join me in a prayerful meditation for your Lenten journey with Christ to Jerusalem.
Lord You Preserve Me From the Netherworld
Prayer to the Holy Spirit
Enter into the prayer of silence before the Lord
Holy Spirit,
I believe you are truly here and present to me right now. I desire to be present to you. Set me apart from this world and preserve me from the stain of sin. Convict my heart of all my transgressions so that I may repent and be washed clean. You rescue me from the netherworld and help me have virtue. I know that you love me with infinite love. I struggle daily with temptations to sin. I acknowledge these temptations and my sinful habits. Help me, Holy Spirit, to be afraid of offending God. On my own I cannot stop my sinful habits but with your help I will have the strength to overcome them.
Increase in me the gift of being afraid of offending the Lord. Help me to separate myself from all worldly attachments and spend these 15 minutes reflecting on the ways you preserve me from the netherworld. Let my heart and mind be completely fixated on you.
Please give me the grace right now to pray my mental prayer well and to love you in a way that is pleasing to you. I want to grow to love you more perfectly. Thank you, Lord, for every consolation, desolation, time of silence, difficult trial, and temptation of the evil one. I understand that everything that happens in my life is by your holy will, whether it be your divine providence or your permissive will due to my sin and negligence.
Please humble me as I walk with you toward Jerusalem. Help me desire holiness and have gratitude for the ways you protect me from evil.
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?
Lord You Preserve Me From the Netherworld
A New Heavens and a New Earth
Isaiah 65:17-21
Thus says the LORD: Lo, I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; The things of the past shall not be remembered or come to mind.
Instead, there shall always be rejoicing and happiness in what I create; For I create Jerusalem to be a joy and its people to be a delight; I will rejoice in Jerusalem and exult in my people. No longer shall the sound of weeping be heard there, or the sound of crying; No longer shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not round out his full lifetime; He dies a mere youth who reaches but a hundred years, and he who fails of a hundred shall be thought accursed.
They shall live in the houses they build, and eat the fruit of the vineyards they plant.
Reflection:
Let us take a moment to reflect on the message in the first reading.
Yesterday we learned from Hosea, about the heart of God, who wants to heal us. Today we learn that the Lord wipes away the sinful memories of the past.
In today’s passage we see how God replaces death and sorrow with rejoicing and happiness. There are two things going on here.
The Catechism teaches us that in “the end of time, the Kingdom of God will come in its fullness. After the universal judgment, the righteous will reign forever with Christ, glorified in body and soul. The universe itself will be renewed” (CCC 1042).
In Catholic theology the Kingdom of God is already here and present to Christians through the Church, but it is not fully perfected yet until the final judgement comes and God gives us a new heavens and a new earth.
Contemplate this reality and spend a few moments in prayer. Maybe you want to ask the Lord to help you grow in love for him and in virtue so that you can live in the joy of his kingdom now within the Church, and how you can be counted among the righteous at the day of final judgement.
What part of this excerpt from Isaiah sticks out to you?
“Lo, I am about to create a new heavens and a new earth; the things of the past shall not be remembered or come to mind.”
This passage showed me that God has the power to erase memories of sin and trauma; he has the power to make things new. Nothing is impossible with him. When we turn toward Christ and begin a sacramental life we begin to heal from our past sins.
Now let’s personalize this passage from our first reading…
Are there painful memories from your past that you are holding onto, causing you deep sorrow and perhaps shame? Are you desiring things that are not according to God’s will for you? When you are living to please God you will want what he wants for you. Ask him if you are living to please him or holding on to the things of this world. Pray, “Lord, show me my heart.”
Be Completely Real...
Ask the Lord to create in you a new heart and mind that remains present to him. Surrender these painful memories from your past to him and ask him to help you fully forgive from your heart and heal. Spend a few moments in silence with the Lord to feel the power of his loving presence. Say, “Lord, I believe you can heal me and help me to forget these painful memories. Please help my unbelief.”
Let’s Pray:
Jesus, I love you very much. You have never abandoned me even when I have turned away from you. You are always present to me and there when I need you. Thank you for teaching me to trust you. Please help me forget my past and stop dwelling on past sins and traumas. Help me learn how to be with you in the present moment every day so that I am not emotionally trapped by my past or afraid of my future. AMEN.
Now we will contemplate the Lord by listening to him speak to us in the Gospels.
Visualize Christ
Let’s return to Capernaum, the fishing village on the northern coast of the Sea of Galilee.
Today we see Jesus being approached by a Royal Roman Official of high rank. He is wearing a white, wool knee-length tunic with wide purple stripes, a white toga draped over his left shoulder. As he approaches, it is clear he is in great distress over a matter….
Lord You Preserve Me From the Netherworld
Walking Boldly toward Death
John 4:43-54
At that time Jesus left [Samaria] for Galilee. For Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his native place.
When he came into Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, since they had seen all he had done in Jerusalem at the feast; for they themselves had gone to the feast. Then he returned to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine.
Now there was a royal official whose son was ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, who was near death.
Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.“
The royal official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”
Jesus said to him, “You may go; your son will live.”
The man believed what Jesus said to him and left. While he was on his way back, his slaves met him and told him that his boy would live. He asked them when he began to recover.
They told him, “The fever left him yesterday, about one in the afternoon.”
The father realized that just at that time Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live,” and he and his whole household came to believe.
(Now) this was the second sign Jesus did when he came to Galilee from Judea.
Reflection:
Let us meditate on what Jesus means when he says, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”
Are you struggling right now and looking for a sign from the Lord? Are you waiting to do the next best step until you receive a sign? Are you doing this because deep down you need a sign in order to believe? The Lord is always with you. He accompanies you everywhere. The proof is all around you. You do not need eyes to see, just faith to believe.
In today’s meditation, Jesus heals a boy on his deathbed when his father, a royal official, comes to him asking for a miracle.
Let’s take a moment and contemplate this passage, “The man believed what Jesus said to him and left.” We learn that the moment he believed was the moment his boy began to recover.
What are you praying for? Do you need more faith in the Lord?
Take a moment to ask Jesus to give you faith like he did for the royal official. Sometimes we ask for things that are not good for us. Is what you are requesting God’s will for you? If not, ask him to help you pray in a way that pleases him. Let him speak to you in the silence.
If he shows you something, you may want to write it down.
Let us continue our mental prayer with a meditation from Saint John of the Cross:
Lord You Preserve Me From the Netherworld
If All Your Wishes are Gratified...
The sum of the matter is this :
Let no man rejoice in his own or in his brother’s wealth, unless it be that it tends to the better service of God. If rejoicing in riches can be made in any way endurable, it is when we spend and employ them for God; for there is no other way of making them profitable.
The same principle applies to the temporal goods of title, rank, and office; all rejoicing in which is vanity unless we feel that these things enable us to serve God better and that they make the way to Eternal Life more secure. And as we can never be sure that these things enable us to serve God better, it will be vanity to rejoice deliberately in them, because such a joy can never be reasonable. For as our Lord says: ‘For what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?’ There cannot be anything worth rejoicing in except that which makes us better servants of our God.
Neither are men to rejoice in their children. They are many, rich, endowed with abilities and natural graces, and prosperous, but only in that they serve God. Neither the beauty, nor the wealth, nor the lineage of Absalom the son of David profited him at all because he served not God. To rejoice in such a son would have been vanity.
It is also vanity to desire children; as some do who disturb the world with their fretting; for they know not if their children will be good and servants of God. They know not whether the pleasure they expect from them may not be turned into pain, tranquility, and consolation into trouble and disquietude, honor into disgrace; and, finally, whether they shall not be to them greater occasions of sinning against God, as is the case with many.
Christ has said of these that they compass sea and land to enrich themselves and to make themselves twofold the children of perdition: ‘You go round about the sea and the land to make one proselyte; and when he is made, you make him the child of hell twofold more than yourselves.’
If a man’s affairs are prosperous, if his undertakings succeed, and all his wishes are gratified, he ought to fear rather than rejoice, for this is a dangerous occasion of forgetting and offending against God.
Reflection:
Jesus is the one who helps us escape from the netherworld but we have to fully surrender to him. Think about the warnings that St. John of the Cross gives souls when all their worldly wishes are gratified. Is what you want and what you are praying for actually good for you? Where is your heart? If you are lacking joy, ask the Lord why.
Are the warnings of St. John of the Cross resonating with you? How?
Pray the next Lenten Meditation
Day 23 Mental Prayer Meditation
Do You Want to be Well? Stand up and Walk Now
Do you want to be well? Is the Lord calling you to holiness but you are unwilling or unable to stand up and walk?