Category Archives: Pray 40 Days

PREPARATION DAY 1

February 1, 2016Pray 40 DaysMike

Pray40Days is a 40-day prayer experience led by Fr. Michael J. Denk. If you are visiting for the first time, scroll down to the first post and read the introduction.

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What if I told you right now that in these next 40 days your prayer life could be set on fire? What if I told you that within our own Catholic Faith Tradition we have all the tools that can allow us to receive the Holy Spirit and experience God the Father as a tender, caring, deeply personal presence in our lives? What if Jesus were actually real to us and we realized that in Baptism we are actually baptized into Christ? What if the Holy Spirit was not just some ambiguous, abstract idea, but a real personal force of inspiration, presence, and overwhelming joy in our lives? Sounds pretty amazing doesn’t it?

My spiritual director once told us in the seminary that “prayer should never be boring.” If it is boring, you’re doing it wrong! While reading this text, you will be far from bored. You will stand in awe and wonder when you discover just how real God is and how much The Father loves you.

Welcome to Pray40Days. Over the course of these forty days, you will finally have the prayer life you have always wanted. Most of us go our entire lives praying like we were taught in the Second Grade. What you learned in the Second Grade was not wrong. It’s a great thing if you already pray every day. But have you grown? Has your prayer life deepened and evolved each and every day, week, month and year since second grade? If it hasn’t you may be spiritually out of shape, spiritually dead, and possibly on the verge of losing eternal life.

How is your prayer life? What is it like? Is it boring? Are you hot or cold? Are you moving closer to God every day or growing distant every day? If you responded that your prayer life was simply “ok,” “fine” or “good”; you just may be lukewarm. The worst thing for a prayer life is that it remains lukewarm for too long.

There’s no such thing as staying the same; you are either growing, or your are decaying. Your prayer life is either bringing you closer to God, or you’re growing more and more numb to Him. It is better for your prayer life to be either hot or cold; whereas, the worst thing for your prayer life is to be “lukewarm”.

The God of all creation says this: I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, ‘I am rich and affluent and have no need of anything,’ and yet do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I advise you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich, and white garments to put on so that your shameful nakedness may not be exposed, and buy ointment to smear on your eyes so that you may see (Revelation 3:15-19).

This “lukewarm” could be translated as: “I’m fine,” “I’m doing alright,” or “I’ve got everything I need.” But we have no idea how completely poor, spiritually weak, and completely blind that we are. We have plenty of jewelry, but do we have the “gold refined by fire?” We have closets full of clothes, but are we shamefully naked when it comes to our “wearing” a life of deep prayer? We have glasses, contacts and now even laser eye surgery, but are we actually spiritually blind?

Mother Teresa, who is going to be canonized at the end of the Year for Mercy in 2016, warns: “The greatest disease in the West today is not tuberculosis or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread, but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty; it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There’s a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God” (Mother Teresa, 1995).

If this is true, then the greatest disease that we face in the western world is a spiritual one! It is a poverty greater than any other because it impacts the way we relate to God and the FIRST and GREATEST Commandment is: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Matthew 22:37).

Do you love God with ALL your heart, with ALL your soul, with ALL your mind, and with ALL your strength? Or is your heart divided? Is your soul cast down? Is your mind scattered? Is your strength spent, leaving you tired? Do you find yourself constantly exhausted? Lazy? Slothful? Complacent? Numb? Lonely? There is a hunger for love, a hunger for God, a poverty of loneliness, and ultimately a poverty of spirituality. The poverty is that not only have we stopped growing in prayer, but we have even lost a desire to grow in our spiritual life.

What if I told you that in the next 40 days, very similar to an intense, insane workout program for your body, can help transform your heart, mind, soul and entire being? What if God could become “real” to you? What if you could receive all the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit? “The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord…“The fruits of the Spirit are perfections that the Holy Spirit forms in us as the first fruits of eternal glory.” The tradition of the Church lists twelve of them: “charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, and chastity” (CCC, 1831-1832). Who doesn’t want these gifts and fruits? They do not come to those who are lukewarm.

HOW TO USE THIS APP

This text is designed to guide you through various forms of prayer during the Lenten season. However, you can use it at any other time of the year as well. The program is designed to be read on a day by day basis, with each new post representing a new day of prayer. The first three days (preparation days) will help you prepare for your new prayer life. The next portion will take you through the 40-days of Lent as well as the seven Sunday Masses during the Lenten season. If you are someone who goes to the Saturday Vigil Mass, then swap the Saturday and Sunday prayer days.

OTHER ONLINE RESOURCES

To obtain various video and audio meditations for each day’s prayer, go to TheProdigalFather.org/Pray40Days. But don’t worry, the transcripts of each audio meditation are included here with each day’s prayers. You’ll also find a wonderland “Video Journal” by the first one to ever go through Pray40Days! Olivia Sliman, who is a beautiful and talented young adult at St. Joseph volunteered to be the first to take the challenge! She is a graduate of Kent State University, majored in production and even worked on the Ellen Show! You may know her from “Olivia’s Got Talent Tuesday’s!” On YouTube. Her sincerity, candor, wit and humor will not only inspire you and entertain you but help you journey with someone else who walked the journey of Pray40Days for the first time!

SILENCE IS ESSENTIAL

You are given a time of silence following each meditation. This silence can last a few minutes or as long as you need to reflect on the prayer experience. It is extremely important that you make a firm resolution and commit to a certain amount of time for silence each day. Maybe it is 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or even one hour; whatever the time commitment is, do not leave a moment early come “Hell or High Water!” Make a resolution at the beginning of Pray40Days that you will stick to for the entire program. There will be a thousand and one different excuses and distractions and if you do not remain firm and committed, the enemy will win in distracting you. However, if you are resolute and firm, the enemy will take flight and God will reward you for your generosity and trust in him. After the time of silence, you will want to journal the experience. So get a journal or a notebook and a pen so you can write about your feelings and what you heard God say to you after each day’s prayer. You will be surprised at how much you learn when writing down your thoughts. Remember Pray40Days every day spend time come “Hell or High Water!” You only have to keep your commitment for 40 days, but when you’re done you may just find yourself wanting more time with God!

ACCOUNTABILITY

Accountability in your prayer life is also important. The program can be done individually, as a family, or within a group of friends. I would recommend that you form a “prayer group” that meets weekly so you can reflect upon the week’s prayers and pray the daily experience together whenever you meet. For a limited time, you can also register for weekly spiritual group direction with Father Michael J. Denk at TheProdigalFather.org/Pray40Days

The program was designed to be done during Lent, but you can do it any time of the year – so if you get a late start, don’t worry so much as to “catching up”, just begin with Day 1 and take each day at a time. Remember, it’s not a race and the journey is the most important part! You can also “swap” days, such as doing the “Praying with Sunday Masses” on Saturdays if you plan to attend the Saturday Vigil Mass for that week. Also, the chapters don’t necessarily have to be read in order – so if you decide to start with Day 1 on Ash Wednesday (or later), simply skip to the next “Praying with Sunday Masses” on the day you attend Mass each weekend.

Introduction to “Pray40Days”

February 1, 2016Pray 40 Days, Pray 40 Days AudioMike

Pray40Days: The Personal Relationship with God You’ve Always Wanted, is a 40-day prayer experience led by Fr. Michael J. Denk. It is available as a printed booklet, in audio format, as part of a Retreat experience and via myParish App. We encourage you to enter into the experience over the next 40-days and through it, find the personal relationship with God you’ve always wanted.

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Pray40Days will set you on fire! Whether you are just a beginner in prayer, wanting to grow in your prayer, or very advanced, the prayer exercises in this text will help you experience God in a very profound way. I wrote this program with the ultimate desire of helping you grow in your prayer life so that you will come to know God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in a deep and personal way. Pray40Days will guide through different types of prayer that will immerse you in the life of Christ, be filled with the Holy Spirit, and allow yourself to beheld and loved by the Father. By the end of Pray40Days, you will come to love spending time with God and look forward to the wonder that awaits you every time you enter into this quality time with God, who loves you more than anyone else ever could. You will come to not only a “head knowledge” but a felt “heart knowledge” of God. Through these experiences of prayer, you will grow to love God with all of your heart, all of your mind, and all of your soul. This love, will not only impact you but touch everyone that you come into contact with. There will be a transformation not only in your relationship with God but also in your relationship with others. This love of God will become a desire to give your life in service, to helping others know, love, and serve this wonderful Father that loves you more than you could ever imagine.

My purpose for writing this text is especially for people who want to grow in their prayer life but just don’t know how. It’s also for people who don’t even know they want to grow, but will soon discover how much deeper you really can go! That desire of yours to pray is a gift from God, and He wants to bring it to fulfillment. Maybe these words will be just what you need to go deeper into your prayer life, grow closer to God and have the personal relationship you’ve always wanted.

Over the years, the parable of the prodigal son has become a central theme in my personal prayer life and my priesthood. What I have come to realize is the key figure in the parable is not so much the prodigal son, but the father. Some great spiritual masters suggest that all we ever need to know about God is captured wonderfully in this parable. I’ve also come to realize that the father outdoes the son in being prodigal. Let me explain this a little bit. The original meaning of the word prodigal comes from the Latin Prodigus, which means, “lavish.”

Here are more uses to help us define it.

prod·i·gal ˈprädəɡəl/ adjective

spending money or resources freely and recklessly; wastefully extravagant.
having or giving something on a lavish scale.
a person who spends money in a recklessly extravagant way.

We normally associate prodigal with the son, and rightfully so, however, something pretty amazing happens if we associate this word with the Father and His grace. The Father gives the kingdom of heaven away freely and almost recklessly to the good and bad alike.

“He makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” (Matthew 5:45)

In the Parable of the Lost Son, we hear the son demand: ‘Father, give me the share of your estate that should come to me.’ And what does the Father do? He divides the property between his two sons. He almost recklessly and wastefully gives his sons their inheritance.

We all know the story of how the prodigal son goes on to waste everything until he comes to his senses and realizes how good he had it. Now watch how, once more, the Father gives everything freely to his son: “So he got up and went back to his father. While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him. His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son.’ But his father ordered his servants, ‘Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Take the fattened calf and slaughter it. Then let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.’ Then the celebration began” (Luke 15:11-32).

The celebration is definitely on a LAVISH scale! As was mentioned earlier the word prodigal comes from the Latin word for Lavish.

lav·ish ˈlaviSH/ (adjective)

sumptuously rich, elaborate, or luxurious. “a lavish banquet” synonyms: sumptuous, luxurious, costly, expensive, opulent, grand, splendid, rich, fancy, posh;”lavish parties” (of a person) very generous or extravagant. “he was lavish with his hospitality”. synonyms: generous, liberal, bountiful, openhanded, unstinting, unsparing, free, munificent, extravagant, prodigal “lavish hospitality” or given in profusion.

“lavish praise” synonyms: abundant, copious, plentiful, liberal, prolific, generous; literary plenteous “lavish amounts of champagne.”

bestow something in generous or extravagant quantities upon. synonyms: give freely to, spend generously on, bestow on, heap on, shower with cover something thickly or liberally with.“ she lavished our son with kisses.”

The Prodigal Father lavishes His son with love as he runs to his lost son, embraces him and kisses him. He also goes out to the older brother who is angry and upset. He pleads with him: “My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.”

Can’t we see that it is the Father who is prodigal? It is the Father who lavishes his grace on both of His sons and all of us, His children.

These are all words that describe the Father’s Love for us and in a way that He so lavishly, generously, and prodigally offers us His Grace.

This is a great encouragement for prayer. If you offer your time in prayer for God, he will not be outdone in generosity. The Prodigal Father will lavish you with grace, in extravagant ways, beyond anything you could ever imagine.

“And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more, and will inherit eternal life” (Matthew 19:29). God, The Father, is so generous, so loving, so unsparing, so lavish, so extravagant, so bountiful, so openhanded, so prolific, so giving without counting the cost, that we can truly call him The Prodigal Father.

He wants to give it all to you freely. All you have to do is desire and receive His Son, The Holy Spirit, Mary, all the saints in heaven and all the companions on earth and above all His very self. He loves you that much that he wants to give you everything not only in eternal life but right now.

The Father delights in you like his two sons and says, “My son or my daughter everything I have is yours, and now we must rejoice because you who were lost now have been found, you who were dead now have been brought to life!”

As a priest, I have been tremendously blessed with many opportunities to grow in prayer. I make an annual directed Ignatian eight-day spiritual retreat with wonderful priests, I have had great spiritual directors both in the seminary and in priesthood, I was able to make The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, which is a 30-day silent retreat (kind of like a spiritual marathon), I get to spend time every day praying a Holy Hour, and continue to read truly wonderful spiritual books by the greatest saints and mystics. All of these blessings have helped me grow in my prayer life. My deepest desire is for Catholics, Christians, and all people to grow in their prayer life. Prayer is not just for religious people. St. Francis de Sales wrote a book entitled “The Introduction to the Devout Life” in the Middle Ages and wanted lay (ordinary) people to have a powerful prayer life. I kind of look at this text as a modern day “Introduction to the Devout Life.” Today, in our era, I want to give all people access to the many blessings that so often only given to priests and religious. You too can experience the powerful prayer life that comes with not only vocal prayer but also meditation and contemplation.

I had very insightful experience that brought forth the idea for this program. I was working with three men in a marketing firm to discuss how to use new media to enhance prayer life. These are really good Catholic men, who went to Catholic grade school and Catholic high school, and go to Mass every Sunday. I’d say these are REALLY GOOD Catholic men. However, they seemed to not really “get” what I was trying to accomplish. So I asked each of them: “Tell me how you pray?”. One man stated that his prayer time is really on the way to work, especially if he has a tough situation and needs God’s help. I encouraged him telling him: “That’s wonderful. That’s prayer of petition and God loves when we come to him for help.” I asked him if he ever set any other time aside for prayer and he said no, that was his time. We went around the table, and I asked the second guy to share how he prayed yesterday. He too said: “Father, I don’t set time aside for prayer, but I am grateful for all that God has given me. I just am very grateful for my wife and kids, I have a good job, Father, I’ve got everything I need.” Again, I encouraged him and helped him to see that was “Prayer of Thanksgiving.” The Eucharist means thanksgiving and it is the source and summit of our lives. Finally, the third guy said: “Father, I do set time aside… Very genuinely and sincerely he described kneeling by his bed every night, as he has since a child and saying the Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be.” “Wonderful,” I said, it’ so great that you have that nightly rhythm of prayer.” I then described how they were all praying vocal prayer, which is a good and necessary type of prayer but that there is deeper prayer that we can grow into: meditative and contemplative.

I then asked the men if they wanted to grow in their prayer life. Their response: “Nah, we’re good…” All three said “no”; with a priest pitching them the idea! They were all content with their prayer life and didn’t have any real desire to grow. As you’ll discover in this text once we experience going deeper in prayer, we will ALWAYS want to grow and go deeper. I kind of joked with them and said: “do you realize you are praying at the same level you learned in second grade?” They laughed but didn’t understand what I meant. So I told them all to close their eyes…. “Imagine you are walking on the Sea of Galilee. There is a fire you can see the hot coals and embers flying into the air; you can hear the waves crashing and the smell of the salt water. Then you realize Jesus is sitting next to the fire. Try to picture him and then all of a sudden he looks at YOU and invites you to come and sit by the fire with him. You realize this is real, and he is talking to you, and you can see him and hear him. You walk over and take a seat and before you know it you are having a real conversation. You feel the warmth of the fire and hear it crackling in the silence. You smell fresh bread baking, and you look down to notice it cooking on the fire along with fish. And then you look back up right into Jesus’ eyes, and he looks deep into your eyes and then asks the most important question you will ever be asked: “Do you love me?” …. “Do you love me?”…. “Do you love me?”…. There was silence. Then I told them “Go ahead, answer him, tell him from your heart.” After I had sensed each one of them had, I spoke the words that Jesus did: “Feed my sheep.” I instructed them one last time: “Spend a moment in silence now with Jesus by the fire at the Sea of Galilee.” It only lasted five or ten minutes, but when we came to the end, I could tell it had an effect on them. They did have an experience of Christ. I could see it on their face and in their eyes. The president of the company looked at me and said: “Father, I get it, I’ve never experienced anything like that before!” They encountered God in the meditation in a way they had never encountered God before.

What I’ve learned over my years as a priest is that many people are content with their prayer life, but when they get a glimpse of a new way of praying, they want “more.” I think that for the most part most of us haven’t moved beyond a second grade level of praying. Yes, vocal prayer is a necessary and good form of praying, but we are called to grow in meditative and contemplative prayer. The Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner once said: “In the days ahead, you will either be a mystic (one who has experienced God for real) or nothing at all.”

My desire for writing this text with the corresponding resources is to help everyone be able to have a share in this mystical life where we “experience God for real.” You can have the personal relationship with God that you’ve always wanted. As you pray through this process, with Scripture and the wonderful Tradition of our Church, hopefully, you will encounter God in a way that you never have before! May you come to know this unconditional love of the Father who delights in you, may Jesus be not only an idea or a person in history but a real person to you, your closest and most intimate friend, may the Holy Spirit bring you a sense of wonder and awe. And may you behold Mary as your mother and experience her beholding you as her child. Do you have any desire to grow in your prayer life? I hope for all of us the answer is a resounding YES!