This is our Lord's will... that our prayer and our trust be, alike, large.
Julian Of NorwichRead
Prayer unites the soul to God.
Interpretation
Prayer is a way for individuals to connect deeply with God and seek spiritual fulfillment.
Julian of Norwich emphasizes the profound relationship established through prayer between the individual soul and God. This connection allows for spiritual guidance, support, and a sense of unity with the divine, suggesting that prayer is not merely a ritual, but a vital lifeline that nurtures one's spiritual journey and sense of purpose.
In practice
During a church service, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of prayer in building a relationship with God.
This is our Lord's will... that our prayer and our trust be, alike, large.
Truth sees God, and wisdom contemplates God, and from these two comes a third, a holy and wonderful delight in God, who is love.
Glad and merry and sweet is the blessed and lovely demeanour of our Lord towards our souls, for he saw us always living in love-longing, and he wants our souls to be gladly disposed toward him . . . by his grace he lifts up and will draw our outer disposition to our inward, and will make us all at unity with him, and each of us with others in the true, lasting joy which is Jesus.
Peace and love are ever in us, being and working; but we be not alway in peace and in love.
And I saw that truly nothing happens by accident or luck, but everything by God's wise providence. If it seems to be accident or luck from our point of view, our blindness and lack of foreknowledge is the cause; for matters that have been in God's foreseeing wisdom since before time began befall us suddenly, all unawares; and so in our blindness and ignorance we say that this is accident or luck, but to our Lord God it is not so.
Where I say that He abideth sorrowfully and moaning, it meaneth all the true feeling that we have in our self, in contrition and compassion, and all sorrowing and moaning that we are not oned with our Lord. And all such that is speedful, it is Christ in us. And though some of us feel it seldom, it passeth never from Christ till what time He hath brought us out of all our woe. For love suffereth never to be without pity.
It is a tremendous freedom to get rid of all self-considerat ion and learn to care about only one thing-the relationship between Christ and ourselves.
There is no condition of life in which we cannot abide in Jesus. We have to learn to abide in Him wherever we are placed.
Prayer should be the means by which I, at all times, receive all that I need, and, for this reason, be my daily refuge, my daily consolation, my daily joy, my source of rich and inexhaustible joy in life.
And with the grace of Baptism and of Eucharistic Communion I can become an instrument of God's mercy, of that beautiful mercy of God.
As we seek the Lord ever more diligently, we will surely find Him. We will see clearly that the Lord does not abandon His Church or His faithful Saints. Our eyes will be opened, and we will see Him open the windows of heaven and shower us with more of His light. We will find the spiritual strength to survive even during the darkest night.
Dear young friends, learn to pray every day: this is the way to know Jesus and invite him into your lives.
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