As a Catholic who had no real foundation in the faith from his family I have learned many things here and there to keep my family well grounded in the faith. A example that I feel most people face is distractions during prayer. These begin with little thoughts off the subject of God and if ignored or not handled properly can lead into real problems. The worst of these is these thoughts grow in wickedness and in volume until you cannot ignore them. I have had in the past some of the most horrible thoughts you can imagine. The problem was frightening for some of these thoughts were very wicked and became harder and harder to shut down. I became frustrated and very afraid of further attacks on my prayer time and became one of many stuck on the "treadmill". You know the one you sin confess it before the Priest and promise yourself never to do it again. Wash,rinse and repeat as many times as it takes to learn to combat these issues. It can destroy your faith and take you away from both Mass and God and render you ineffective as a Catholic, this is of course the very thing Satan wants. You away from Mass and God equals sin and Satan is the only winner here.
So how do we defeat this enemy attack? Well it starts where everything else does by changing yourself and your habits. This is a tough part because it requires total honesty with yourself and many find looking at themselves in total honesty is not easy as we tend to excuse or justify allot of sins. Myself I never like to venture down this road because I always find something in there that makes me sick to my stomach about myself. The first step is to look at your habits. Do you leave the TV or radio on when you pray? Unless the music is of true faith it is not helping you no matter how much you try to say otherwise. Television is a real monster as it causes you to look away and keep half a ear focused there. With all the garbage that is on TV today we need as little of this as possible. Thank God for Catholic TV be it EWTN or The Catholic Television Channel, or perhaps ABC family (some of it) or TV Land which allows me the opportunity to watch programs that I watched as a child when much of what you see and hear on TV was not allowed at all.
The second is look at the timing. My night prayers I say right at bedtime, however the problem is that unless you are very careful you can easily be carried off to sleep way too soon and you either fall asleep during or before your prayers have even begun. It is not helped if you are on a prescription for pain pills on a constant basis so the best way to fight this is to plan and make prayer a part of your day. Now I am not speaking of the little prayers of praise or worship we say on a daily basis but the actual heavy duty prayer time. Schedule it and practice it. It will be difficult at first but in time it will become part of your daily life which is where you want it in the first place.
The second is you wife and children I strongly suggest you pray as a family as all will benefit from some quality time with God. There are many who suffer from a lopsided family. This is when one parent takes off learning all he can and the other doesn't. While I must agree knowledge is not in any way part of our way to heaven it is helpful to get a grip on learning fundamentals of the faith.doctrine as well as tradition. When this happens one spouse digs deep to learn all they can about their faith in a effort to learn to keep away from sin and combat temptation. The other spouse is likely to be a new Catholic and sort of stumbles along the way and relies on the other to direct her spiritual life and that is a recipe for disaster. As one continues to dig deeper the other gets further behind and becomes still more dependant on the studying spouse. The kids when our studious Catholic speaks to them on faith and sin give us that dog look. Yeah you know the one where the head tilts as he looks at you like your trying to teach him calculus. Therefore you family is uneven in faith and knowledge and everybody looks to another to see what to do. At this time prayer life in those left behind falters and nobody gets fed. The other kid issue is simple kids coming in and out telling on each other or in a screaming fight. This is enough to distract anybody.
So we now have a quiet,scheduled time with the boob-tube off and The Tennessee Bloodsuckers aren't screaming into your ears compliments of a MP3. Are we done? not yet. You must spend the first part of your daily prayers to focus on God and pray that your spirit is lifted up to his. I know many say just pray but again I say you have to be in the presence of someone to talk to them. So therefore your Spirit must be lifted up. You can do this by saying Nicene
Finally at all times try to pray as a family I cannot stress this enough yes your teen might grumble and your younger ones fidget, but learning to pray effective prayer is a gift of epic proportions to give to your family. With today's issues of work,bills and hard economic times it is easy to skip prayer. Yet this is a slippery slope one night turns into two or three and then disappears completely and once again Satan wins. To pray with your family is the greatest example for your children to follow. Your kids might grumble but when they can see their Parents or Parent come before God on their knees they will quickly realize that God is to be respected,;loved and worshipped above all and that all things come from him. Then perhaps as I am trying to do, your children will not be absent from the true Church for many years and learn to regret all the lost opportunities they missed by not being well grounded in the Church. The old saying holds true, "Stop the insanity" and set you and your families eyes on God.
Until next time God Bless and see you at Mass.
No comments:
Post a Comment