“I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people—for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.” (I Timothy 2:1-2)
Prayer is a powerful act of faith, intercession, and unity among believers. When we lift our voices in prayer, we seek God’s help for our least brothers, our least sisters and ourselves, we literally stand in the gap for our communities, the Church, our leaders, and the world.
The Suscipe prayer, also known as the Offering of St. Ignatius Loyola, is a prayer of surrender and self-giving. The text of the prayer is as follows:
“Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will. All I have and call my own. You have given all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. Everything is yours; do with it what you will. Give me only your love and your grace, that is enough for me.”.
It is a radical expression of self-giving and trust in God.
I am a longtime radical solitary. I believe in radical prayer that produces stunning and staggering results.
Today, we usually think being a radical means being contrarian or denouncing the world just for the sake of it. But to be radical is to be rooted—from the Latin radix, a root—and so to be a Catholic radical, is to be rooted deep in the essential traditions and practices of the Church. It is not to be a strange, marginal, or fringe Catholic—it is to be fully Catholic. It is to go to the root of one’s own life and to be transformed into Christ’s image at the deepest level. It simply doesn’t get any more radical than that.
ONE MONASTIC MINUTE
Time is rushing away from us.