Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Our Prayer Life

The dangers of curiosity and memory.
To give a free course to curiosity, to endeavor to see, know, and hear everything, and, after that, to complain of the ramblings of the imagination, of distractions in prayer, of importunate images which pursue us and keep us in a state of incessant dissipation, is to imitate the child who, placing an object before a mirror, would be offended at seeing it represented in it. To read a letter with too much human eagerness, to let our eyes wander with entire freedom along streets, greedily and inquisitively to ask about all that is being said or done, to read newspapers with passion, and books which contain things more or less interesting, and, after that, to expect that our interior will have an aptitude for prayer, and that the imagination will leave us at peace, is to desire to obtain calm out of a tempest, light out of darkness, order and peace out of turmoil; it is to desire the impossible.

1 comment:

CR Wall said...

Wonderful wisdom, and so timely, given this nations current and unceasing obsession with information.

We have become a nation that lives from one Twitter report to another, gossip magazines, celebrity reports. Seems we must know the most mundane details of celebrity lives, down to what they may have dined on at their exclusive eateries.

It is high time to become reacquanted with our own families, own own lives.

I read once that many parents are far more familiar with the details of the life of any given celebrity than of our own teenager.

This is a great tragedy, and a good part of why we are losing this generation. All too often our children are involved with friends whom we know nothing about, affected by wicked influence, and we as parents the last to know.

Thanks for posting this.

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