Day 52 – 2 hours       Day 53 – 2 hours                   403 to go

Monday’s prayer day started with a wonderful Psalm of praise #68.  I encourage y’all to read it sometime.  It’s subtitled: The Lord’s triumphant entry into his Sanctuary and is a beautiful description of God’s power and mercy.  It would be a great daily prayer of praise and thanksgiving, which is how we are to begin each prayer.  Whenever I am asked to pray before a gathering or some event, I try & do it in the order I was taught during Lay Ministry classes: #1 – give God honor & glory, then #2, give Him thanks for all He has done for us & finally, pray for the intentions of the occasion.  I for many years would just ask God to intercede and rarely thanked Him for what He had already done.  The praise and glory part was entirely missing in my prayer life for too many years. 

I give you honor & glory, my Redeemer & my merciful & kind Savior and thank you for my life and my health and for those intentions You have granted during these last 53 days and I ask in confidence that you grant all I petition during these 524 hours and hopefully 5,240 more. (I think I just committed to 10 more years of this project)

The OOR featured a homily of Saint Basil the Great, which implores us “Boast only in the Lord.”  Check out this wisdom from the apostle Paul – “The wise man must not boast of his wisdom, or the strong man of his strength, or the rich man of his riches.  The man who boasts must boast of this, that he knows and understands that I am the Lord.”  Then from Basil, “Here is man’s greatness, here is man’s glory and majesty: to know in truth what is great, to hold fast to it, and to seek glory from the Lord of glory.” Then again from Paul – “Christ was appointed by God to be our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification, our redemption, so that, as it is written, a man who boasts must boast of the Lord.”  My ACTS brother Paul took this to heart & witnessed to that during our retreat meeting last night.  Thanks Paul & Paul & Basil

Yesterday the second reading in the OOR was from St. Peter Chrysologus and this is how he started his sermon:  There are three things, my brethren, by which faith stands firm, devotion, remains constant, and virtue endures.  They are prayer, fasting, and mercy.  Prayer knocks at the door, fasting obtains, mercy receives: these three are one, and they give life to each other. The practice of fasting has been in many of the readings during Lent  and I think God may be suggesting that I should take it to heart.  I think that from now on, meat on Fridays is gone.  During Lent, I think I will also abstain from fish; but for the rest of the year, no meat on Fridays.  You may not know this, but the church did not lift the direction to abstain; they just took away the connection to mortal sin; but still wishes for the faithful to observe this.  I also pray that I can continue to make Wednesdays a stricter fast and stick to bread and water – mind you, my water has a tea bag in it at times and the bread is not always, dry, plain white bread.  One day a month I should maybe try a complete fast. Read Joel 2:12-13.  I will pray for strength to do this.

My chaplets were for the people of Haiti & Chile and my rosary Monday was for the Disciples In Mission Small Church Community.  I offered my fast today for the homeless man, Tommy

Peace