I took the day off today.
This morning we had the TLM celebrating today’s Feast. Fr. Briggs Hurley has been so great about now having these celebrations outside of only Sundays. We are doing the same for the Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel and Feast of St. James the Greater.
Our visiting seminarian has been one of the servers at the TLM.
I then went to Eucharistic Adoration and studied St. John of the Cross’ “The Living Flame” with the commentary he wrote. He only wrote the commentary when he was in a deeply recollected state. So I figured reading it in front of the Blessed Sacrament might help me at least be in only a mildly distracted condition compared to the usual. It was helpful, even if I consider my absorption of reading the commentary on the first stanza to be minimal. Still, I don’t mind being in the cellar of the Interior Castle, just that I don’t want to impede where Jesus would lead me.
Too often, my prayer life is me “generating pious thoughts” instead of a conversation with Jesus and providing room interiorly to listen to him. I don’t want to give any illusions regarding my prayer life.
I appeal to Chesterton’s “if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly,” which is not on an excuse on the “badly”, but the doing of it. So if God can bring me from fervent atheism, he can bring me along in prayer as much as he desires for me.
