The Night Office, today the Reading re-echoed from Nyssa’s Sunday Reading.
It beautifully and powerfully enlightens our hearts on PRAYER.
On Sunday, Luke 18:1-8, gave the theme;
“There are lots of teachings on PRAYER.
I wondered what is the difference in Continuous Prayer and Continual Prayer?
Then the version of ‘Pray Constantly’ –‘Uninterrupted’.
It is a gift of grace, it is life in God’s presence.
In the Asperges in the Mass Introduction, we are reminded of the flow of life beginning at our Baptism.”
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Prayer; continual, continuous, or constant
Something is continual if it happens repeatedly: Our holiday was ruined by the continual rain (it rained often but not all the time). It is continuous if it goes on without a break: Our holiday was ruined by the continuous rain (it rained all the time). If something is constant it happens many times in the same manner: Ruth suffered from constant colds as a child.
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Wednesday 29th Week Ord Time Yr II - Second Reading
From the writings of Saint Gregory of Nyssa
(The Christian Way of Life II: Jaeger VIII, 77-79)
(The Christian Way of Life II: Jaeger VIII, 77-79)
Prayer is like a choir leader in the choir of virtues
In speaking about the different virtues, we cannot say that one is better than the rest, or that we should pursue them in order of merit. For in fact they are of equal importance with one another, and linked together they lead those who practice them to the height of perfection. Sincerity leads to obedience, obedience in turn to faith, and faith to hope, hope to righteousness, righteousness to service, and service to humility. From humility we learn gentleness which leads to joy, as joy leads to love, and love to prayer. Thus bound to one another and binding their zealous follower, the virtues lead him to the very height of his desires, just as the various forms of wickedness lead those attached to them down the opposite way to the utmost depths of evil.
But we must above all devote ourselves to prayer; for prayer is like a choir-leader in the choir of virtues, by means of which we ask God for the virtues we still lack. Devotion to prayer unites the Christian to God in the communion of a mystic sanctity, in a spiritual possession and a disposition of the soul that no words can describe. With the Spirit then to guide and help him, his love for the Lord like a bright flame, he prays unceasingly in ardent desire, always burning with love for the divine good and refreshing his soul with renewed zeal. As scripture says: Those who eat me will hunger for more, and those who drink me will thirst for more; and elsewhere: You have filled my heart with gladness; so too the Lord says: The kingdom of heaven is within you.
By the kingdom within us he certainly means that joy which the Spirit instills into our souls from above, as an image and a pledge, reflecting the eternal joy which the souls of the faithful possess in the life to come. So the Lord comforts us in all our afflictions through the working of the Spirit, to keep us safe and to grant us a share of spiritual gifts and of his own special grace. He comforts us in all our troubles, says the apostle, so that we may be able to comfort others in their distress. And the psalmist says: My whole being cries out with joy to the living God; and: My soul is richly feasted, indicating in all such symbolic sayings the joy and comfort that come from the Spirit.
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