 The Breath of the Soul (12 views) Subscribe   
   From:  Minister Falcon (OSMFalcon)     4/29/2003 8:09 pm  
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Prayer, like breathing, is extremely natural to the human person; second, those who cease to breathe automatically die.  n a word, prayer is both natural and indispensable.  For example, when  you do not practice prayer, you are like a paraplegic, even though they have hands and feet they can not give orders to function in a normal way.  This attests to the natural reality of prayer.  If a healthy person would not say that breathing is difficult, impossible or boring, how can one be justified in saying,  can not pray or prayer is difficult?  If breathing were difficult, then we could say that the person is sick.  It is the same with prayer.  To admit that it is difficult to pray or tiresome, it is to reveal a suffering soul.  Just as breathing is a perfectly natural function of the body, so prayer is natural to a spiritually healthy soul.  

How does one define a healthy soul?  In a word that is both simple and clear: Love.  Love has been defined in many ways.  To love is to want the happiness of others or making others happy by our actions.  This desire constitutes the greatest of all beatitudes; their happiness becomes ours, their misfortune our own.  For these persons, you and me are one in the same.  It is like singing in tune with others melody.  No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends" [John 15:13].  Love knows only how to love and thinks only of giving itself. "Those who want to save their lives will lose them, and those who lose their lives for my sake will find them" [Matthew 16:25].  From a heart capable of loving that much, prayer flows spontaneously.  The soul is more fully present where it loves than where it simply lives.  In other words, true life is love.  For human beings, to live is to love; not to love is to die.

Our only reason for existing is to love.  Not to love is to lead a life of suffering worse than death.  It is said that among the mentally ill, some break glass and then cut themselves with the broken pieces, leaving themselves covered with blood.  In Mark 5:5 we find it says, "Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones."  When we detest or despise others, we do not feel the pain of being in tragic contradiction with ourselves.  This pain is death; it is hell, for hell does not exist only after death. On the contrary, it is the hell we experience during our lifetime that reveals its true nature. 

Prayer is the breath, the warmth of love; hell, the frozen loveless place of suffering.  From this we understand that prayer is absolutely indispensable; without it we cannot love, and without love we can only pretend to pray, for prayer and love are inseparable.  True prayer consists neither in the number of words nor in the length of time we spend in meditation.  If we wish to know whether our prayer is authentic, let us first examine our love for our neighbor. 
 
  
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