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Favorite Prayer?

post #1 of 62
10/6/08 at 2:10am
Thread Starter 
Since it was his feast day yesterday, we said the prayer of St. Francis in church today. Such a moving prayer:
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Lord, make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy. O Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life. Amen.
I love how he asks that he may not so much seek to be consoled, etc. as to console, etc. This acknowledges that it's OK to seek to be consoled, understood and loved, but that we should seek to give these things more than to receive them. Anyone else have a favorite prayer?
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post #2 of 62
10/6/08 at 2:44am
We were made to memorize that prayer in Jesuit school and yeah it was effective in teaching me that one should pray not for personal gain but instead pray for other people whose life is shittier compared to mine and maybe try to do the Lord's work too. I also realized that yeah I should just count the good blessings in my life too.
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post #3 of 62
10/6/08 at 2:50am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by acidicboy View Post
We were made to memorize that prayer in Jesuit school
This was at a Jesuit parish, but in San Francisco.
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and yeah it was effective in teaching me that one should pray not for personal gain but instead pray for other people whose life is shittier compared to mine
You must not pray much. JK!!!
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and maybe try to do the Lord's work too. I also realized that yeah I should just count the good blessings in my life too.
Strike the "just" and I'm w/ you. Do you have any favorite Ignatian prayers, perhaps put to music by Manoling Francisco or Arnel Aquino?
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post #4 of 62
10/6/08 at 2:52am
I remember singing that prayer in elementary school. A lot.
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post #5 of 62
10/6/08 at 2:55am
Thread Starter 
Me too. Interesting to revisit these things as an adult.
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post #6 of 62
10/6/08 at 4:56am
Quote:
Originally Posted by emptym View Post
Do you have any favorite Ignatian prayers, perhaps put to music by Manoling Francisco or Arnel Aquino?

No, I'm not familiar with other Ignatian prayers. I did not go to THAT jesuit school here. But the past 2 directors of the Jesuit Communications Office are friends of mine and they've been churning out lots of music and people say its very good.

Interestingly, or not, Cracked.com featured Ignatius in their article, 6 Saints Who Could Kick Your Ass.

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Living in the early 1500s, Ignatius spent a good chunk of his life as a military man. A gambling, barroom brawlings military man. Oh, did we mention the whoring? Or as he put it in his autobiography "wenching."

During a huge battle with the French, his own men knew they were doomed and proposed a surrender. Ignatius would have none of that shit. He fought on and, shortly thereafter, he was shot with a friggin' cannon.

And lived.

The ball passed right between his legs, tearing one open and smashing the shin in his other leg. When he was carried to town to be treated, his broken leg had to be set, rebroken then set again. A chunk of bone sticking out had to be sawed off. When it was discovered that whoever set his leg had fucked it up so bad it was now shorter than the other one, they used weights to try to unsuccessfully stretch it out.

When you consider this was around 1520 and they didn't have frivolous luxuries like sterilization and anesthesia, you realize the guy was more hard-core than entire countries' worth of today's pansies.

It was during his recovery, when his cannon wound made the whoring and brawling inconvenient, that he was forced to read stories of Christ and eventually decided to devote his life to God. That led him to one day found Society of Jesus, what most of us know as Jesuits. You may know them from their statues of a guy giving the finger to a cannonball.
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post #7 of 62
10/6/08 at 6:18am
Quote:
Originally Posted by emptym View Post
Anyone else have a favorite prayer?
Here's mine:
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I don't believe in an interventionist God
But I know darling that you do
But if I did I would kneel down and ask Him
Not to intervene when it came to you
Not to touch your hair on your head
But to leave you as you are
And if He felt He had to direct you
Then direct you into my arms
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post #8 of 62
10/6/08 at 10:47am
The whole "Transitus" service the night before (Oct 3) Francis' feast day is a pretty awesome ceremony to attend if you have any communities of Franciscans nearby.
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post #9 of 62
10/6/08 at 11:34am
My favorite prayer is the one from Monty Python's "Meaning of Life:"

"Oh Lord, ooo you are so big.
So ABSOLUTELY huge,
Gosh we're all impressed down here, I can tell you..."

...or something like that.
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post #10 of 62
10/6/08 at 2:29pm
Another Jesuit prayer I learned in school:

Teach me, Lord, to be generous,
To serve you as you deserve.
To give and not to count the cost,
To fight and not to heed the wounds,
To toil and not to ask for rest,
To labor and not to seek reward
Save that of knowing I do your will.

St. Ignatius
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post #11 of 62
10/6/08 at 2:50pm
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post #12 of 62
10/6/08 at 3:10pm
Even though I'm not a particulary religious man, here are a couple of passages that resonate with me:
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Originally Posted by Hillel the Elder
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And when I am for myself, what am 'I'? And if not now, when?
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Originally Posted by 1 John 4:19-20
We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.
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post #13 of 62
10/6/08 at 5:22pm
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post #14 of 62
10/6/08 at 5:24pm
X-It, your avatar is hot.

Is that wrong to say in a thread about prayer?

The Our Father is probably the best.
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post #15 of 62
10/6/08 at 5:29pm
I really don't like religion but prayers are beutiful.
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