Day 21

Saint Paul’s prayer connects our recovery journey to Step 11: “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.” In God’s merciful love for us and “in accord with the riches of His Glory,” the Catechism gives us even more practical guidance on how to make a start and grow in the spiritual life as we seek to maintain our conscious contact with God (Ephesians 3: 16). The Catechism reads, “The Sermon on the Mount is teaching for life, the Our Father is a prayer; but in both the one and the other the Spirit of the Lord gives new form to our desires, those inner movements that animate our lives. Jesus teaches us this new life by his words; he teaches us to ask for it by our prayer. The rightness of our life in him will depend on the rightness of our prayer” (CCC 2764).

Christian prayer that reforms our desires, as Jesus modeled and taught His disciples, is therefore critical to our recovery journey if we are to attain true freedom in this life and supreme happiness with Him forever in the next. As people healing from addictions, compulsions, and unhealthy attachments, prayer, especially in union with the powerful intercession of our Blessed Mother, is the conduit of grace by which we recover our true identity as children of God. By orienting our interior to Him, we find the path to eternal life and, in turn, assist Jesus in setting “the earth on fire” for the love of God (Luke 12:49).

Reflection Questions 

• How can you improve your conscious contact with God to get to know Him better? Does your prayer practice include speaking (prayer) and listening (meditation)?
• Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote, “The Lord’s Prayer is the most perfect of prayers…In it we ask, not only for all the things we can rightly desire, but also in the sequence that they should be desired (Summa Theologiae). How could this perspective on the Lord’s prayer influence your personal and communal prayer life in recovery?

Daily Mass Readings

First Reading: Ephesians 3:14-21
Responsorial Psalm:  Psalm 33:1-2, 4-5, 11-12, 18-19
Gospel: Luke 12:49-53

Reflection by Talitha R.

(1920-2005) — Karol Wojtyla, the third child of Polish parents, lost his entire immediate family by age 20. He was interested in acting as a youth and was introduced to Carmelite spirituality as a young man. Karol worked in a quarry during World War II to avoid deportation to Germany and took clandestine classes at the seminary in Krakow. He was ordained a priest, eventually named bishop, then cardinal, and was elected the 264th pope, serving just longer than 26 years. Deeply devoted to Mary, the Rosary, and the Eucharist, he stood up to Communism, taught the “Theology of the Body,” and defended human life and dignity.

Saint John Paul II wrote an Apostolic Letter, Salvifici Doloris, on the meaning of suffering. “Down through the centuries and generations it has been seen that in suffering there is concealed a particular power that draws a person interiorly close to Christ, a special grace.” Where can you see this principle at work in your recovery?

“We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures, we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of his Son” (Pope Saint John Paul II, World Youth Day 2002).

Reflection by Brad Farmer