Catholic Meditation: 7 Powerful Ways to Pray

But this is not what we aim at; we aim at him. The unification of our consciousness happens in us slowly and subtly and sweetly only when we forget ourselves in him. This is one of the ways "he who loses his self shall find it. Repetition of the holy name conditions our unconscious mind to see this name as normal, as central, and to expect him to be present and active, as a dog is conditioned by his master to see its master as central and to expect its master to be present and active.

Do we train our dogs but not our own unconscious minds? You may object, "But this sounds like a magic spell or a mantra: Do you not know that black magic can be overcome only by white magic, not by reason? And our culture's secularism and materialism is a powerful spell of black magic. It makes us judge Jesus by its standards instead of judging it by his standards, because it makes us see Jesus as abnormal and our culture as normal; to see Jesus as a questionable, tiny thing surrounded by an unquestionable, greater thing, namely, our culture.

This is a cosmic illusion! Invoking the holy name builds up resistance to that illusion. That is not black magic; it is not itself an illusion but sheer realism. Jesus is everywhere and everywhen and the ultimate meaning of everything. This prayer in deed conditions us, but it conditions us to know reality.

The reason this prayer is so powerful is that the name of Jesus is not just a set of letters or sounds. It is not a passive word but a creative word, like the word by which God created the universe. He is the Word by which God created the universe! Every time we receive Christ in the Eucharist, we are instructed by the liturgy to pray, "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.

That word is so powerful that by it God made the universe out of nothing, and by it he is doing the even greater deed of making saints out of sinners. That word is Jesus Christ. In most ancient societies, a person's name was treated, not as a mere artificial label for pragmatic purposes of human communication, but as a truth, a sign of the person's unique identity. Revealing your name was thus an act of intimate personal trust, like a handshake. A handshake originally meant: I bear no weapon.

You can trust me. In all of human history, God revealed his own true name, his eternal name, only to one man Moses and only to one people the Hebrews, his own "chosen people" and only at one time at the burning bush Ex 3. This name was the secret no philosopher or mystic had ever attained, the very essence of God, the nature of ultimate reality: But then, many centuries later, God did an even greater thing; he revealed a new name in Jesus "Savior".

This is now the most precious name in the world. It is a golden key.

It opens all doors, transforms all corners of our lives. But we do not use this golden key, and doors remain locked. In fact, our society is dying because it has turned the most precious name in the world, the name of its Savior, into a casual curse word. Even Muslims respect the holy name of Jesus more than Christians do, in practice: In the Acts of the Apostles 3: Exorcisms are performed "in his name".

The name of Jesus is so powerful that it can knock the devil out of a soul! The name of Jesus is our salvation. John ends his Gospel with this summary: So we had better understand it! What does the phrase "in the name of Jesus Christ" mean? Suppose you are poor, but your father is rich. When you try to cash a check for half a million dollars in your own name, you will get only a laugh from the bank. But if the check is in your father's name, you will get the money.

Our Father in Heaven gave us unlimited grace in the "account" of Jesus Christ and then put us "into Christ", inserted us into his family, so that we can use the family name, so to speak, to cash checks on the account of divine grace. Saint Paul tells us that our account is unlimited: Jesus himself first assured us of this wonderful truth, which we find hard to believe because it seems too good to be true, and then he explained why it is true:.

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If even we love our children so much that we do not settle for anything less than the very best for them, why do we think God loves his children less? It is probably a very good exercise to practice "the imitation of Christ", to walk "in his steps", to ask "What would Jesus do? But the prayer we are teaching now is even better, for two reasons. First, invoking his name invokes his real presence, not mental imitation; something objective, not subjective; between us and him, not just in us. Second, it is actual, not potential; indicative, not subjunctive; "What is Jesus doing?

To invoke Jesus' name is to place yourself in his presence, to open yourself to his power, his energy, The prayer of Jesus' name actually brings God closer, makes him more present. He is always present in some way, since he knows and loves each one of us at every moment; but he is not present to those who do not pray as intimately as he is present to those who do. Prayer makes a difference; "prayer changes things.

It does if God sees that that change is good for us; it does not if God sees that it is not. But it always changes our relationship to God, which is infinitely more important than external circumstances, however pressing they may seem, because it is eternal but they are temporary, and because it is our very self but they are not.

In saying it brings God closer, I do not mean to say that it changes God. But it does not just make a change within us, a psychological change; it makes a change between us and God, a real, objective change. It changes the real relationship; it increases the intimacy. It is as real as changing your relationship to the sun by going outdoors. When we go outdoors into the sun, we do not move the sun closer to us, we move ourselves closer to the sun.

But the difference it makes is real: When this happens, it is not merely something we do but something God does in us. It is grace, it is his action; our action is to enter into his action, as a tiny stream flows into a great river. His coming is, of course, his gift, his grace. The vehicle by which he comes is also his grace: And the gift he gives us in giving us his blessed name to invoke is also his grace. So, therefore, his coming to us in power on this vehicle, this name, is also pure grace.

Even our remembering to use this vehicle, this name, is his grace. As Saint Therese said, "Everything is a grace. His name is the only one that contains the presence it signifies" CCC In other words, it is sacramental. God comes to us on his name like a king on his stallion. When we pray to the Father in Jesus' name, we provide God with a vehicle to come to us or, rather, we use the vehicle God has provided for us. We do not initiate, we respond; we respond to his grace by using the gift of his name that he gave us and told us to use; and he responds to our obedience by doing what he promised: This is the definition of a sacrament: Jesus himself is the primary sacrament.

So the believing Christian's use of Jesus' name is sacramental. The very act of praying "Jesus" effects what it signifies, brings about what the name "Jesus" signifies, which is "Savior", or "God saves". That is the literal meaning, in Hebrew, of the name God commanded Joseph to give to Mary's son: A name is not a machine , for a person is not a machine. The name of a person must be personally "involved" that is, called upon in faith and hope and love, as a human father is "invoked" by his son in Jesus' parable in Matthew 7.

But though it is not a machine, it really "works": Suppose we were to ask the father. His answer would be obvious: No stranger can call a human being "Dad", and no stranger can be sure that a man will come if he calls him only by his "proper name", for example, "Mr. Smith's son can be sure his dad will come because his son can invoke him under the name "Dad", as no one else can. Jesus has made it possible for us to do the same with God. In fact, the name he taught us to call God is "Abba", which is the Hebrew word, not just for "Father", but for "Dad", or "Daddy", or even "Dada".

It is the word of ultimate intimacy.

You may think the claim that invoking his name actually brings about his presence is an arrogant one. But in fact it is a humble one, because it is obeying his design, not initiating our own. Or you may think, "What right do we have to think he will come whenever we call?

Is he a dog? The fact that this holy name of Jesus actually brings about the presence of God explains why God gave us, as the second of all his commandments, "You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain" Ex You can pronounce any other name, like "Ivan" or "Mary" or "Hey, You" without claiming to be the person who bears that name; there is only one name that you cannot say in the second person you or the third person he or she , and that is "I". Thus no Jew ever dared to pronounce that holy name, or even guess how the vowels were supposed to be pronounced, because it could be truly spoken only by God himself.

That is why the Jews tried to execute Jesus for blasphemy when he pronounced it in his own name Jn 8: And that is also why Jesus commanded us to pray to the Father, as the very first petition of the model prayer he taught which we call the Lord's Prayer, or the Our Father "Hallowed be thy name" Mt 6: For we actually bring about and fulfill what we pray for when we call on the holy name of Jesus. We bring his presence and his mercy down from Heaven to earth, so to speak.

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Thus it is blasphemy to treat this holy name like any other name, because it has a holy power unlike any other power. I will tell you a little bit from my own experience about what I think will happen when you use this prayer. For I have tried many other, more complex, and more abstract ways to pray, and I have found them all less effective than this most childlike of all ways.

Perhaps the most shattering consequence of his real presence, which is brought about by invoking his name, is that we become unable to lie to ourselves any more. He is light, and wherever he inserts his lordship there is now an absolute necessity of honesty and a zero tolerance for any form of self-deception, self-congratulation, or self gratification, even those forms that felt necessary, natural, and almost innocent before.

He is gentle, but he is light, and he simply does not and will not coexist with any darkness at all; either he casts it out, or it keeps him out. This is the negative dimension of the fact that he is light. He subtracts our falsehoods. But he also adds his truth. The positive dimension is essentially a clarification of vision, of perspective, of "the big picture".

He does not usually give specific directions or instant solutions, but he always gives a clarification of our vision. This usually happens gradually. Thus there is a positive side to even the negative point made above. For instance, he makes us men see how flawed and mixed our motives are even in such natural and spontaneous things as a look into the face of a beautiful woman. Half of all the women in the world are beautiful to men, nearly all are beautiful when they smile, and all are beautiful all the time to God.

We find that there is something in this look that is his, and also something that is not from him but is from the world, the flesh, or the Enemy. And yet this insight does not bring about a guilty despair but a happy humility. For it is a sign of his presence.

Catholic Meditation: 7 Powerful Ways to Pray by James Lawrence S.T.B. (eBook) - Lulu

He is the standard. When the plumb line is present, apparently straight lines show their inclination. And this is, of course, upsetting how easily our lines incline! As John Wesley said, "The best thing is, God is with us.

And when his light and our darkness, his straight and our crooked, are thus brought into relationship and warfare, we gain rather than lose, even if it is upsetting. It is like bringing in the Roto-Rooter man: Before his light came in, our sin was just as much present but undetected. But he was not just as much present. So that is a gain. Furthermore, he is stronger than sin; he exorcises sin more than sin exorcises him. All we have to do is to give him a chance. Open the blinds, and light casts out darkness every time.

This new sense of vision or perspective that invoking his name brings about is most sharply perceived when we invoke his name upon our problems and complaints. End with words of praise and thanks and love. If you want God's forgiveness, then the image could be Jesus the good shepherd, who searches for his sheep that are lost.

Begin by talking to Jesus. Tell Him all your worries, including your deepest fears. Don't hold anything back. Jesus comes as a healer not as a judge. With confidence in His promises, ask Jesus to help you. Express your love and trust in Jesus and thank Him for His past kindness. Using this type of prayer can bring about a feeling of calm and an inner peace. For a worried person Imagine yourself walking with Jesus, firmly holding his hand.

The day is sunny, the air is fresh, and the birds are singing. Jesus wants to know why you are worried. He tells you that he loves you and wants you to trust him.