Pursue Closeness with God through a Life Dedicated to Prayer

• Meditate on a time when God was most present with you in prayer. What was special about that time of prayer, and what was His presence like?
• Reflect on how your understanding of prayer today has changed from 5 years ago.
• Reflect on how the rhythms of your life reflect your desire for closeness with God, and for a life dedicated to prayer.
• Pray the Divine Office and make it a part of your life.
• Meditate on what realities and beliefs might keep you from a life more dedicated to prayer. Prayerfully imagine how Jesus might speak to you about each thing that comes to mind.
• With honesty of heart, reflect and meditate on what might be keeping you from experiencing closeness with God through prayer.
• Our God is boundless! Ask God to show you what kinds of limits have you put on your understanding of prayer. Invite Him to show you how might these limits keep you from greater closeness with God.

In the time before time, God was. In the void before the cosmos, there was God. In an expression of His very essence, His love, all things have come to be: things that were, are, and will become. All are held within the expansiveness of His tender divine love.All are held within the reality of His unending presence. God’s presence that manifests His humility because it does not impose itself. It is possible to move through every moment of our life without noticing the presence of God with us. All that we see, feel, smell, breathe, hear, and know will fade into dust and nothing. Amongst all that fades, we are invited to experience the eternal expansive presence of God.

God Himself is eternal.
God Himself is with us.
God Himself is for us.

Prayer is a foundational way of being with God. Pursuing closeness with God means we dedicate ourselves to prayer. It is the most natural response to God’s love for us. A life of deep and growing love for God must therefore be a life of regular prayer. To let our life of prayer fill the depths of ourselves with the reality of God’s presence.

At the core of the call to follow Jesus is to follow Him into prayer. Cultivating a life of prayer will always require us to intentionally step away from daily life. This is part of the life of prayer that Jesus modeled for the disciples. Only when we set aside regular time for prayer can our spirit come into resonance with the spirit of God. This prayerful resonance of our spirit begins to transform our lives into ones of prayer. Where we see God’s presence with us in all things. Praying in all things.

Resting, dwelling, and living in the presence of God is not without risk. The love and grace of God invites you to become like Him. It is most unnatural in our age to be like Jesus. The cosmos is unkind to those defined by selfless compassion. For the eternal person of Jesus is grace, hope, and love. Again, and again, in prayer, we will discover the edges of ourselves. These are the real boundaries that hold us in. Edges, made or imposed, that give us the shape of ourselves. The shape we have come to know.

There are no boundaries with God.
There is no bottom to grace.
There is no limit to hope.
There is no end to love.
God has no boundaries.

In the quiet parts of myself, the parts that feel eternal, I feel a love that breaks me. Small bits and moments that make prayer everything I could ever long for. For in prayer, I come to know God, myself, love, and others. For prayer helps me be in the presence of God. The presence of God is His love. A love with space for my pain, my loss, my listlessness, my hurt, and my grief. There is no shame in His love. It is His love that creates the longing to be more like Him. Forever becoming what only the love of God, in His mercy, could hope for me to be.