I was on the radio this morning, as I often am when there's a new book coming out - I end up doing a lot of Catholic radio, especially the morning drive shows. So today I was on in Iowa - 8:15 am for me, 7:15 for them.
The host of the radio show was asking me about my next book, Praying the Psalms: The Divine Gateway to Lectio Divina and Contemplative Prayer, coming out in November. And he said something interesting - he said that he thought contemplative prayer was the most important kind of prayer (or something like that). And I found myself gently correcting him, saying that while contemplative prayer is a beautiful form of prayer, it is an advanced prayer, and as the mystics will tell us, it's not for everyone. Some people never get to this advanced form of prayer, and that's ok. And what I didn't say, is that in my next book, coming out in the spring, Praying Like the Early Church - one of the first things I point out is that in reality, the most important prayer is the prayer that most of us will never pray ourselves, we will only ever say Amen to is - that is, the Eucharistic prayer.
So, yes, contemplative prayer is great, if you are called to that. But the truth is - and I think I can speak for the Church fathers here - if it was a choice between just going to Mass or being a contemplative and skipping Mass, God would rather have us just go to Mass. There is nothing wrong with being a "basic" Christian who regularly attends worship, but who does not become a contemplative. And being a contemplative is great, but it's not for everyone, and it certainly cannot replace the Eucharist. It all begins with receiving Christ in the Eucharist. After that, all that the earliest Christians were expected to do was to pray the Our Father three times a day. As I explain in my book, the very idea of personal devotion, or private prayer, takes a while to develop, but the prayers that are most important from the very beginning are the ones that Jesus taught/instituted - the Our Father and the Eucharist.
I'm back, up and running, and ready to go - I should have a new JOURNEY episode within the next week or so - and because you are my loyal peeps, here is an exclusive, just-for-you, behind the scenes SNEAK PEEK into my new office:
This was for March 24th, recorded for the Ascension App
Thanks for your patience - here is our next installment of The Journey - it's session # 96, but I'm also calling it PART 1 of a "miniseries" on John chapter 6.
Whoever watches it first, please let me know if it looks good or if there are any problems with it - I get through the first two sections of the text on the feeding of the 5,000.
Enjoy!
I mentioned in The Journey that I wrote a song based on Isaiah 2, which is one of my favorite OT passages:
In days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest mountain, and raised above the hills.
All nations shall stream toward it. Many peoples shall come and say:
“Come, let us go up to the Lord’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, That he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.” For from Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations, and set terms for many peoples.
They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again. House of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!
I hope you like the song!
So begins a song I wrote back in the day, to commemorate the martyrs of Rome - which was the point of the name of the band I had for about 20 years - the band was called Remember Rome. The song was called Midnight Light. At about midnight on the night between July 18th and 19th, in the year 64 AD, the emperor Nero's men started the great fire in Rome, which would be blamed on the Christians, starting the long trajectory of Roman persecution of the Church. Here's a video of Remember Rome playing the song - do I look younger? This was recorded right around the turn of Y2K, about 25 years ago.
I highly recommend this podcast in general, but this concept of "Transhumanism" is really important to understand, and in my opinion is not unrelated with the whole AI thing - check this out:
