God Still Answers Prayers

Today, I bring you the second installment of my reflections from my recent silent retreat.  Before getting to that however, I ask for your continued prayers for the 30 men who will be ordained to the Diaconate this Thursday in St. Peter's Basilica and for their families and friends who will be traveling to take part in this special occasion.

Once again, I have kind of given away the topic of this post in the title.  But you may be saying to yourself, "self, what does he mean God still answers prayers?"  Well, self, this is what I mean.  Everyday after mass, I say a small prayer of thanksgiving for what I have just received.  Usually my prayer consists of something like this;  "Lord, I thank you for allowing me to take part in this celebration.  I ask that you allow this mass to effect my entire life.  Help it to transform me to be more and more like you.  I PRAY THAT MY EVERY WORD, ACTION AND THOUGHT WOULD GLORIFY YOU."  On around the second day of the retreat I found myself praying this prayer and God kind of nudged me with a grin on His face and made me realize that a part of this prayer was realized during this retreat.  As I said before, it was a silent retreat.  No talking, not even to say hello to my brother seminarians...we all knew we were not being rude, rather, we were entering into the silence.  The only time I was able to speak was during morning and evening prayer, during mass to respond at the appropriate times, to say grace before meals and to speak to one of the priests during spiritual direction.  With every word I uttered I was truly giving glory to God!  And not only was I praising Him, He allowed me to see the great grace to realize how good He is to me.  I pray that I will continue to be open to seeing how God answers more of my prayers as I know He does indeed answer them (sometimes I just fail to realize it).  I pray that more and more my every word, thought and action will give glory to the Lord.  As always my thoughts and prayers are with all of you back home.

In Christ,
Patrick