Walking in your ways with all my heart. 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 9 of our Lenten Challenge with this opening prayer:
TRUST AND BELIEVE...
Lord,
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.
Jesus, I want to be walking in your ways with all my heart and soul. Teach me your ways and I will follow them. I am letting go of myself and the sinful habits in my life that need to change.
Please help me open my heart and pray with more intensity. I want to be able to visualize myself with you so I can feel your presence more intimately in my life this Lent.
Lord, give me the grace I need as I strive to complete these 40 days of daily Lenten reflections. I am choosing to take up my cross and humbly follow you all the way to Calvary, walking in your ways with all my heart and soul.
AMEN.
Saturday of the 1st Week of Lent(Liturgical Year II)
Walking in Your Ways with all my Heart
A Reflection for Prayerful Meditation
Join me in a prayerful meditation for your Lenten journey to walk in Christ’s ways.
Walking in Your Ways with all my Heart
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.
Please guide my heart and mind understand how to walk in your ways. Teach me how to pray from my heart. Help me let go of myself and truly belong to you. I know that you love me with infinite love and you want to freely give me grace.
In my sinful past I made a lot of bad choices, but from today onward I want to walk in your ways and do only what pleases you. I am here, Lord, because I really want to belong to you with all my heart and soul.
Please help me worship you with a pure heart and without distraction. Help me to separate myself from all worldly attachments and walk in your ways from now on.
You know all my weaknesses and how I am tempted toward my habitual sins. Please give me the grace right now to overcome my sinful habits and walk in your ways. I want to be perfect like my Father in heaven. I believe that with your help I can change, and I will change, because you will give me the strength to change.
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.
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 begin walking in Your ways with all my heart.
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?
Walking in Your Ways with all my Heart
The Mercy of God
Deuteronomy 26:16-19
Moses spoke to the people, saying: “This day the LORD, your God, commands you to observe these statutes and decrees. Be careful, then, to observe them with all your heart and with all your soul.
Today you are making this agreement with the LORD: he is to be your God and you are to walk in his ways and observe his statutes, commandments and decrees, and to hearken to his voice.
And today the LORD is making this agreement with you: you are to be a people peculiarly his own, as he promised you; and provided you keep all his commandments, he will then raise you high in praise and renown and glory above all other nations he has made, and you will be a people sacred to the LORD, your God, as he promised.”
Reflection:
Let us take a moment to reflect on the message in the first reading.
What is the source for the covenant between the people and the LORD? What does the passage tell you about the heart of God? If he loves you this deeply, and his covenant is true, then why would you doubt your faith?
What came to mind when you read the sentence: “Today you are making an agreement with the LORD: he is to be your God and you are to walk in his ways and observe his statutes.”
Now let’s personalize this passage from our first reading…
Do you know God’s ways? Are you familiar with the Catechism? Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you how you can walk in his ways.
Let’s Pray:
Lord, please help me choose how I can better understand my faith and walk in your ways. Please help me learn the Catechism and how I can best live my faith. AMEN.
Be Completely Real...
Let the Holy Spirit guide your mind…
Are there things that you take for granted to be true, or things that you have always rejected as church teaching in the past? Let the Lord bring some things to mind and when they come to your mind begin to ask the Lord to help you discover the fullness of the truth.
You may want to use your Catechism to learn what the church teaches on these things that came to your mind.
Visualize Christ
Now we will contemplate the Lord by listening to him speak to us in the Gospels. We return again today to the Mount of Beatitudes, and we see Jesus speaking from his seated position in front of the large crowd.
For a brief moment you see Matthew; he is seated beside Jesus. You notice how different Matthew looks. He is at peace, full of joy, and making eye-contact with Jesus. You realize that Matthew has no shame anymore, and he has returned to the place where he was once a tax collector without fear of what the people who once knew him in his sin will think of him or say….
Walking in Your Ways with all my Heart
Lord, Make Me Perfect like you
Matthew 5:43-48
Jesus said to his disciples: “You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?
Do not the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same?
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Reflection:
Let us meditate on what Jesus means when he says, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father.”
Have you ever experienced a time when someone wronged you? How did you respond? Do you see yourself acting more like the pagans or the tax collectors in this lesson? If so, why? How might Jesus want you to act in the future? What could you do differently?
Now listen to the second part of Jesus’ teaching, “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Take a moment and think about the love of the Father. How has he treated you, despite all you have done to him, or to his children? What does it mean to be perfect like him?
Do you know the attributes of God? God wants you to imitate him, in thought, word, and deed. He is perfect in every way, perfectly virtuous, full of wisdom, knowledge, understanding, charity, fortitude, patience, kindness, and so on. He is wonderful. Counselor. Mighty. All powerful. Gentle. He loves you unconditionally and will correct you when you err.
Take a moment to ask Jesus questions from your heart…. Maybe you want to ask him how to be perfect.
Give the Holy Spirit time to respond.
Ask him to show you what walking in his ways looks like. Be honest with Jesus and tell him your fears. Has he shown you something? You may want to write it down.
Let us continue by praying with Psalms 119.
Walking in Your Ways with all my Heart
Bless Me, Lord, Do not Forsake Me
Psalms 119:1-2,4-5,7-8
Blessed are they whose way is blameless,
who walk in the law of the LORD.
Blessed are they who observe his decrees,
Who seek him with all their heart.
You have commanded that your precepts
be diligently kept.
Oh, that I might be firm in the ways
of keeping your statutes!
I will give you thanks with an upright heart,
when I have learned your just ordinances.
I will keep your statutes;
do not utterly forsake me.
Now let us continue contemplating how to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect by reading a passage from St. Alphonsus Liguori. Read over the passage slowly, pausing over parts that convict your heart.
Walking in Your Ways with all my Heart
Perfection is founded on a Love of God
by St. Alphonsus Liguori
Perfect love of God means the complete union of our will with God’s. It follows then, that the more one unites his will with the divine will, the greater will be his love of God.
Mortification, meditation, receiving Holy Communion, acts of fraternal charity are all certainly pleasing to God — but only when they are in accordance with his will. When they do not accord with God’s will, he not only finds no pleasure in them, but he even rejects them utterly and punishes them.
To illustrate: — A man has two servants. One works unremittingly all day long — but according to his own devices; the other, conceivably, works less, but he does do what he is told. This latter of course is going to find favor in the eyes of his master; the other will not.
Now, in applying this example, we may ask: Why should we perform actions for God’s glory if they are not going to be acceptable to him?
God does not want sacrifices, the prophet Samuel told King Saul, but he does want obedience to his will: “Doth the Lord desire holocausts and victims, and not rather that the voice of the Lord should be obeyed? For obedience is better than sacrifices; and to hearken, rather than to offer the fat of rams.
Because it is like the sin of witchcraft to rebel; and like the crime of idolatry to refuse to obey.” The man who follows his own will independently of God’s, is guilty of a kind of idolatry. Instead of adoring God’s will, he, in a certain sense, adores his own.
The greatest glory we can give to God is to do his will in everything. Our Redeemer came on earth to glorify his heavenly Father and to teach us by his example how to do the same.
Are You Listening?
Jesus is journeying to Jerusalem and he is asking you to follow him. He knows that his sacrifice will save you from death. He gazes at you and he says to you, “Be perfect. Do my will.”
You have a choice. Will you do what he is calling you to do?
Pray the next Lenten Meditation
Day 10 Mental Prayer Meditation
Holy Love, given in a Good Measure, Shaken Down, Overflowing
A prayerful reflection on God’s holy love; His gifts given in response to our charity— in a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing.