Faith in Jesus is never doubting but hoping against hope. 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 29 of our Lenten Challenge with this opening prayer:
Today we will meditate on faith in Jesus. Do you have an impossible situation that needs prayer? Faith is never doubting but but hoping against hope. This is a kind of hope that perseveres in belief even when it seems that what you are praying for is very unlikely. God does answer the prayers of the righteous and he is faithful in his promises. Let us meditate and pray about faith in Jesus and hoping against hope for an answer to our prayers. God, please come to our aid and give us the gift of hope as we pray.
Tuesday of the 5th Week of Lent (Liturgical Year II)
Faith in Jesus- Never Doubting-
Hoping against Hope
A Reflection for Prayerful Meditation
Join me in a prayerful reflection and meditation for your Lenten journey with Christ to Jerusalem.
Faith in Jesus- Never Doubting- Hoping against Hope
Opening Prayer
Enter into the prayer of silence before the Lord
Jesus,
I believe you are truly here and present to me right now. I desire to be present to you. Send me your Spirit. I desire to have faith in Jesus’ promises and be able to hope against all hope when I pray. Give me strong faith so that I am never doubting your love for me or your presence in my life, even in what seems like an impossible situation. Take away all doubt in your faithfulness and replace it with the virtue of hoping against hope that anything is possible according to your will.
I am here, Lord, because I lack adequate faith. I know that you are kind and generous. I believe if I ask you for the gift of hope you will not only give me a reason to hope but show me that hoping against hope is possible.
Please send me your Spirit so that I can worship you with a pure heart and without distraction. Help me to separate myself from all worldly attachments and spend these 15 minutes praying for the ability to hope beyond all hope, with my heart and mind completely fixated on you. Jesus, look at me with the eyes of a faithful Father and have pity on me for my lack of faith and hope. You know all my weaknesses and that I can’t elevate my heart or my mind without your help.
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 carry my cross well and do so with great love in my heart for you.
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.
Now we will contemplate the Lord by listening to him speak to us through the Gospel story of the Incarnation through the eyes of Joseph….
Faith in Jesus- Never Doubting- Hoping against Hope
He will save His People from Their Sins
Matthew 1:16,18-21,24
Reflection:
Let us meditate on the Incarnation of Christ, “she was found with child through the holy Spirit.”
Contemplate what it meant for God to send his Son to be born of Mary. Jesus was fully human and fully divine. He lived and experienced life in the flesh like the rest of us, yet he was without sin.
Ask yourself…
Do I contemplate the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Only Begotten Son of God, that was born of the Father before all ages?
Ponder this great act of love for mankind. Jesus Christ, who is God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, and consubstantial with the Father.
Jesus chose to humble himself and come to save mankind through a humble and obedient woman as an infant in need of care and in obedience to his parents. He allowed himself to be subject to them.
We know that through Jesus all things were made.
Yet to save you from eternal damnation due to original sin and your concupiscence, he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary.
You are deeply loved by God. He came to teach us how to know the Father, and to give us the Holy Spirit so that we can be reconciled.
Now listen to the second part of the angel’s message to Joseph: “it is through the holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
In what way does this proclamation tug at your heart? Contemplate your sinful nature, the many ways you have sinned in your thoughts and words, in what you have done, and in what you have failed to do.
Jesus was incarnate so that he could ransom you. He came to rescue you. He came to give you an abundant life in the Spirit through the Sacraments so that you could be freed from sin and death.
This was all done for you.
Take a moment to contemplate the love of Jesus and how he chose the lowest form of self-abasement by entering the world as an infant born in a manger and living a hidden childhood as a refugee and returning to work as the son of a carpenter in a small village. To have faith in Jesus is to believe in what we cannot see, hoping against hope in his mercy and love. We have to believe that because he desired to live among us in such humility and was willing to suffer a violent death to save us, his love is greater than our sin; so we must confess them and let him wash us clean. We must obey what he says and believe we are forgiven.
Contemplate Jesus right now coming to you and filling your soul with Love. Give the Holy Spirit time to respond. Praise the Lord when you feel his presence. What is the burden on your heart? Be honest with Jesus and tell him your sinful habits. 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 Catherine of Siena on hoping against hope in the love of God and his desire to forgive us of sin and redeem us:
Faith in Jesus- Never Doubting- Hoping against Hope
On Pains of Sinners in the Hour of Death
St. Catherine of Siena (the Dialogue of St. Catherine)
[Jesus to St. Catherine of Siena in the Treatise of Prayer, Chapter 132]
NOT so excellent, dearest daughter, is the end of these other poor wretches who are in great misery as I have related to you. How terrible and dark is their death! Because in the moment of death, as I told you, the Devil accuses them with great terror and darkness, showing his face, which you know is so horrible that the creature would rather choose any pain that can be suffered in this world than see it… because then he knows the truth of that which at first he knew not, and his error brings him to great confusion…
Oh! how hard for them is this battle, because it finds them disarmed, without the armor of affection and charity; because, as members of the Devil, they have been deprived of it all. Wherefore they have not the supernatural light, nor the light of science, because they did not understand it, the horns of their pride not letting them understand the sweetness of its marrow.
Now in the great battle they know not what to do. They are not nourished in hope, because they have not hoped in Me… And the incarnate wretch did not see that all was counted to him with interest, and that as a debtor he would have to render an account to Me; now he finds himself denuded and without any virtue, and on whichever side he turns he hears nothing but reproaches with great confusion.
His injustice which he practiced in his life accuses him to his conscience, so he dares not ask for mercy rather than justice. And I tell you that so great is that shame and confusion that unless in their life they have taken the habit of hoping in My mercy, that is, have taken the milk of mercy, there is not one who would not despair, and with despair they would arrive with the Devil in eternal damnation.
But when at near death, a sinner recognizes his sin, and his conscience is unloaded by holy confession, and presumption taken away so that he offends no more, there remains mercy, and with this mercy he can, if he will, take hold on hope…
One who despairs despises My mercy, making his sin to be greater than My mercy and goodness. If a man falls into this sin, he does not repent and does not truly grieve for his offense against me as he should; grieving for his own loss instead, but not for the offense done to Me. Therefore he receives eternal damnation.
Reflection:
Do you believe in the love and mercy of God? Are you able to receive the love or do you despair that your sins are greater than God’s mercy? Is your conscience convicting you of sin and telling you that you are unworthy of God’s grace because of things you have done? Have you confessed these sins?
Sometimes we remain proud and unwilling to reciprocate the Love God gives us. This is called presumption. Sometimes we are too ashamed and we remain in our sinful state because we believe the lie that God would never forgive us or reconcile us to himself. This is also a lie.
Spend a moment with the Lord. Offer your heart. Speak to him about your fears and doubts. Are you presumptuous? Are you ashamed? Be honest.
Next, let us meditate for a moment on 2 Samuel 7. Listen to the words of the Lord to the prophet Nathan. Reread this passage a second time, praying the words from your own heart.
Faith in Jesus- Never Doubting-
Hoping against Hope
I will be a Father to Him and He a Son to Me
2 Samuel 7:4-5,12-14,16
That night the LORD spoke to Nathan and said: “Go, tell my servant David, ‘Thus says the LORD: Should you build me a house to dwell in? And when your time comes and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your heir after you, sprung from your loins, and I will make his kingdom firm. It is he who shall build a house for my name. And I will make his royal throne firm forever.
I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. And if he does wrong, I will correct him with the rod of men and with human chastisements; Your house and your kingdom shall endure forever before me; your throne shall stand firm forever.'”
Reflection:
Focus on the words, “I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me.”
God wants to be a Father to you. Tell him your intention to be his child.
Faith in Jesus- Never Doubting-
Hoping against Hope
Righteousness comes through Faith
Romans 4:13,16-18,22
Brothers and sisters: It was not through the law that the promise was made to Abraham and his descendants that he would inherit the world, but through the righteousness that comes from faith.
For this reason, it depends on faith, so that it may be a gift, and the promise may be guaranteed to all his descendants, not to those who only adhere to the law but to those who follow the faith of Abraham, who is the father of all of us, as it is written, “I have made you father of many nations.” He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into being what does not exist.
He believed, hoping against hope, that he would become “the father of many nations,” according to what was said, “Thus shall your descendants be.”
That is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.”
Reflection:
Righteousness is a gift that comes to us by faith. The more we have faith and trust in his words and promises the more we will come to love him.
When we love God we grow in righteousness.
Everything boils down to trust.
You have a choice. Are you going to have faith in Jesus, never doubting his words? Learn to continue hoping against hope that God desires to save you from damnation and wants you to be with him for eternity in heaven. When you believe he loves you and desires to Communicate with you his grace, you will want to obey him and you will trust in his words.
Take a moment to be with the Lord. Take 1-3 minutes to listen for his response to your heartfelt prayer.
Impossible Situation?
Pray the next Lenten Meditation
Day 30 Mental Prayer Meditation
I Will Remain in Your Word and Know the Truth
I will remain in your word, Lord. You promise that when I do this I will know the truth and it will set me free.