Difficulties in Prayer with St. Thérèse: CarmelCast Episode 66

the most important gift that we give to God In Prayer is time because when you give God time in prayer you can't do anything else it's a full gift and whether it's distracted prayer or consoling prayer you have sacrificed a part of your [Music] [Music] life praise be Jesus Christ and welcome to another episode of carel cast carel cast is a production of IC Publications for more information you can visit our website at www.pu.edu uh we're very glad to have you with us Father Mark Father Mark is is one of our authors um he has

written several of our books um that which you can find on our website icsp publications. org uh in particular uh I would recommend his Study Edition of story of a soul um it has the entire text of St terz a story of a soul but then has some commentary to kind of walk you through the text and help you to understand what it is that terz is saying and he also has some other uh commentaries on the works of St John of the Cross and and other uh books as well so I encourage you to

check those out when you get a chance we're back again talking about prayer uh for this entire season we're really focusing on prayer because uh Pope Francis has named this year 2024 a year of prayer and in this episode in particular we're going to turn and talk about some of the the difficulties that we all experience in prayer especially through the wisdom of our sister St terz of the Little Flower to dive in Father Mark I wanted to to to ask you a question okay um with with no warning here um if you had to

give one piece of advice to people about prayer what do you think like just some practical advice what do you think you would you would say show up show up and I I mean I'm say that tongue and cheek but I'm I'm serious in the sense that in the way of perfection Teresa says uh the most important gift that we give to God In Prayer is time because when you give God time in prayer you can't do anything else it's a full gift and whether it's distracted prayer or consoling prayer you have sacrificed a part

of your life yeah no that's great that's very great advice I I appreciate that and it's a good lead in too to what you know we're going to talk about today the idea that um prayer is not always easy we experience a lot of difficulties and I think often when we read about the prayer of the Saints we can get the wrong impression of what even their prayer was like yeah I mean can you give some examples of some of our maybe our own Saints who have struggled with their times of prayer well St Teresa

of Vala for example uh she she says that she found it so difficult to keep this be in Chapel in prayer that you would literally Hit The Hourglass to make it go faster you know um you know uh St TZ had some real problems be talking about that her dryness but she had a a genius of what to do with it yeah you know right yeah and that's really why I I think it's good that we turn to TZ here because when we read even when we read story of a soul some people can get

the wrong idea about what Teresa's prayer was like but if you I think if you look carefully at the text you get another picture of what it is that s TZ is actually saying and she has a lot of wisdom for us because we experience um some of the same difficulties that that she does can I give a recommendation on reading ST Tes yes definitely I'm um trying to write another book on St terz and after reading it for decades I'm beginning to SE things I've never seen before and what's made the difference is I'm

reading it out loud and I'm reading it slowly it's it's like a completely different text yeah yeah yeah I would agree even when I've given um some Retreats and conferences to people I've read sections of TZ out loud to them and it's it's it's really it's almost was seems like it's written to be read that way because when I read it out in that way it's it's it's really engaging and like you said I think it it brings out different things yeah yeah yeah no that's a good point I was thinking maybe we could look

at a few of the the difficulties that TZ had in prayer and then because I think that there are difficulties that we we all experience as well and maybe we could just look at what TZ what she says about her own experience and the wisdom that she she gives to us when it comes to to facing those difficulties um so maybe first to start with um distractions this is something that I think many of us struggle with um in prayer and herself certainly struggled with one thing I I recall that she says um is when

she's talking about praying the rosary oh yeah this is on on page um 242 I read this within the context of caral spirituality especially St John of the cros she says I'm ashamed to admit it the recitation of the Rosary is more difficult for me than the wearing of an instrument of penance now people look at that go wow but the next line is very revelatory I feel that I said this very poorly I force myself in vain to meditate on the Mysteries of the Rosary I don't succeed in fixing my mind on them and

there's a couple other passages like this I think what the problem here with trees in the rosary it's difficult to meditate it's difficult to fix your mind on it I think what you she's referring to is this transition from meditation to contemplation John of the Cross um deals with and we can't go through the whole uh three signs but if I could sum them up succinctly would be I can't meditate I don't want to meditate all I want to do is rest in God's presence and I think John says when a person in fact he

uses the same word when a person tries to fix their mind on a meditation when John is when God is calling them it's like grinding and they just don't it's like wearing a instrument of penance so I think this is what's happening here yeah so you basically it sounds like what you're saying is that tesa's inability to to to focus on the med the The Mysteries of the Rosary isn't necessarily a sign that she's doing something wrong no no in fact I think it's a sign that something is happening is right that God is calling

her um I I've had I've had people come in before in Direction and they've talked about this difficulty of seeing the rosary they've been saying it for years and they get to a point where they don't want to say it anymore and they feel that uh they have to because if I don't I'm letting down the Blessed Virgin and the advice I usually give is I ask them have you ever seen an icon of Mary holding the child and usually they do and when she's holding the child she's always pointing one hand at Jesus and

I say this is symbolic of Mary's role in Salvation history she leads us to Jesus and I say have you ever considered that when you get to a point halfway through the rosary that you just want to rest In God's Presence that you are doing honor to our blessed mother because she's done her job she's LED you to Jesus and she wants you to be quiet in his presence you know so this has helped some people you know yeah yeah I think the hard thing though is is how do you discern you know in that

moment if I if I'm praying the rosary and I just don't feel like praying it anymore um I'm struggling with the rosary how do I discern whether I you know this is a chance for me to make a sacrifice and to keep praying or when is this an an invitation perhaps to well to to slow down yeah I would say that in fact that was the word I was going to use not necessarily stop but slow down you know it's like the none that uh St Teresa asked how she prayed and she says I just

do vocal prayer and she says could you say something about that she says well I just say an our father but often it would take her just an hour to get through because she would say our father and she'd stop for five minutes then go on I like to think of a bird in flood and the wind is under its wings and it's just staying aoft and you're kind of in the presence of God and when kind of the wind dies down and you begin to get distracted you just flap your wings you just kind

of say one or two words to stay in place uh Teresa uses an and Chang Teresa of that there's a small flame you want to keep lit and you don't want to blow too hard but you have to blow and just very gently from time to time everyone has to find that own their own Rhythm within them of what what keeps them in the presence of God John of the Cross basic one of the things that John of the Cross says about contemplation is awareness of God is prayer so do that which keeps you aware

of God during your time of prayer that's probably the most important thing right and so these these um this flapping of wings or this this like blowing on the flame these are also kind of tools then to like you said to help us keep our attention so when we're fa with distractions for example these can be tools to kind of reenter us yeah and and basically the flapping of the wings of the blowing that those are just metaphors for saying a word or so or phrase or what have you what what is very helpful to

keep you in the presence of God I always wondered when I looked over in the chapel at you and I saw you going like this what you were doing all right cut neck get that out that's good yeah um connected to this issue is I mean we sometimes we have difficulties focusing or distractions within our minds other times we have distractions that are coming from the outside and there's a great story from St TZ actually I don't know exactly what page it's on but know yeah I'm sure you can you know it well is there's

the she goes to the to prayer and there's the clicking sound of can you tell us a little bit about that that episode from St yeah basically T is in Chapel and there's a none in back of her and there's a clicking sound um basically we don't know exactly what it was whether she was hitting her teeth um I think it was false Ventures and let me tell you why because in the text she says it was like two clamshells coming together that's that's what I think it was and Tre said that she tried her

best to re really block out the sign and the more she tried the worse it got in fact she she felt sweat coming down and all of a sudden what she did was instead of trying to block it out she gently focused on it and when she focused on the sound she says it became like a symphony and there's I think um a basic fact here is that we give power to the things that we resist uh for example if I told you for the next 10 seconds don't think of pink elephants what would you

be thinking of elephant that's right because it's it's we we give power to the things we we give it makes it worse but when we can basically be present to it it actually sounds different for example if there are sounds outside don't try to block them out that causes distraction um now here now here's a tricky part when distractions come you don't want to entertain them but if you try to block them out it makes them worse so what do you do um The Cloud of un knowing has a wonderful image where it says look

over the shoulders of distractions and it's basically I also have the image of you're at um um what is it Green Bay Packer game okay you're way way way up in the stadium and halfway down is one of a Green Bay fer Packer fan with one of these big cheesee heads on and you're trying to look at the game but it's out of the corner of your eye and you just it's impossible not to see it you've got to get used to focusing on the game and this is all always be in peripheral vision and

not worry about it it's going to be there and you just have to live with it and that's part of the mortification of I think of our um of our Spirits uh St John of the Cross has a wonderful passage at the very end of uh chapter 12 of book one of the S of mon carel where he talks about what he calls first movements and first movements are those images and memories that are always is coming to our conscious mind and he speaks about um like the seven capital sins which are not sins in

the sense of guilt but their inclinations towards that behavior he says what our job is is doing our best to Simply focus on God and he says these first movements first movements toward anger lust Pride Envy they can give rise to all the vices but they can give rise to all the virtues uh for example let's say you're at prayer for half an hour and you have a hundred distractions and within that half an hour you're distracted and you gently bring yourself back to God's presence you're distracted you bring yourself back to God's presence you

would probably interpret that as oh I had a horrible half hour of prayer if you told that to John of the Cross he says you did fantastic because you made a hundred 100 acts of the will you made a 100 acts of Love spiritually speaking you are better now than before even though you feel that you're worse because you were distracted you have to interpret your experience from a spiritual perspective and not a psychological perspective yeah yeah and so in that sense the distractions actually become these great opportunities for Grace exactly and it's the very

thing that's um really helping us to grow as well to grow in virtue and even outside of prayer uh Tres gives another example which is similar it's wash day and the none next door her is is is slamming the uh the blanket or what have you with the wet padal and the sprinkling her and she's getting so angry until she relaxes and she focuses on the feelings of the drops as if they're caressing her and all of a a sudden The Experience changes the the anger towards this none goes away it's interesting because I think

sometimes we can be frustrated or or even angry at ourselves about our um predispositions to be uh frustrated or angry or something like that but I often see them in these cases as they're almost like a buil-in like natural um warning sign for us to or alert system to tell us like hey here's your chance to practice virtue when I feel my blood boil when I when I have these like natural like physical reactions to something of irritation like rather than being uh upset about it or being hard on myself for that first movement I

can be thankful for the fact that I have this physical reaction because it it's it's it's warning me like hey this is this is your chance right here to practice virt this is your opportunity you know St Francis the sale says The Hardest Act of patience is being patient with your impatience so you've got a you've got many opportunities a day you know the practice is a really good type of patience huh right yeah so and then I guess turning this back then to distractions and prayer then when this comes like you said it's like

we can kind of acknowledge um look over the shoulder of not try so much to to fight or resist but um to to acknowledge and then turn our attention back to that's right to Christ Our attention back to God ex and always John of the cross uses the word over always doing it gently because if you do it forcefully the energy of the force actually is counteractive it goes into the destruction itself right and and something I noticed jonath the cross points out a lot is he he he tends to say that uh the disruption

of your peace is like one of the greatest obstacles to Union with God that's right and so whenever you're doing something like that that'll cause you to disrupt your peace if you're reacting VI violently it's it's pulling you away from God yeah yeah now I'd like to make a distinction between voluntary distractions and involuntary distractions I mean obviously there can be distractions uh that we really focus on and they're we are culpable of there are other distractions it's impossible not to be distracted I mean and I would say this especially toward uh people like married

people with children you know uh there other responsibility uh there's that great line in Henry IV part two where Henry says uh uneasy lies the head that wears a crown that when you have the responsibility it's you you sometimes you can't sleep and it's always on the back of your mind is a preoccupation that's not a distraction can you learn this this is a hard thing for life when you're preoccupied can you be present to to people that's a great Act of love right you can't get rid of the preoccupation but you can choose not

to allow it to dominate your life MH and this is the great distinction that St Teresa makes between um Her Imagination and like the more interior part of her soul this idea that my imagination can be in some sense distracted can be turning towards things that's right and yet I can still be present to yeah uh God in the time of prayer yeah and there's that image in U I think it's in the way where she calls the imagination uh uh the mad woman of the house and this mad woman is running around the house

and looking in the windows and she says don't get up from prayer and run out and try to push her away because then you'll be focusing on her you have to learn to sit in the house quietly and allow this woman to go around and drive you crazy in other words you sit in the eye of the hurricane because you can't stop those distractions right yeah and maybe just to finish this this discussion was something like really practical one thing that I like to do when I when I a distraction comes to my mind because

often my distractions are rooted in um something I remember that I need to do yeah or that I should have done I I often have a little piece of paper next to me in prayer and I just jot down one word or two words so I can remember to do that later and I find when it's on the paper then I can let it go and move on and and you know turn back to prayer I don't know if you have any any uh practical things that you recom for prayer or things that you do

um particularly when it comes to distractions I think it depends upon the day for example I know that I can make my Hour of Prayer in the chapel in the morning it's harder in the evening because I've been working all day and sometimes I find since I'm sitting all day either seeing people or up in my office sometimes just gently walking back and forth helps to relieve my body which leaves my mind um and also sometimes uh some some things that calm me down or for example if I'm walking over in the cemetery I have

a couple of things that I say to myself over and over again poems that I've uh learned growing up uh one is from um El written in the country churchard the boast of heraldry the pomp of power and all that beauty all that wealth there G awaits Al like the inevitable hour the Paths of Glory lead but to the Grave that put that gives me peace that the things I worry about and I look at the Tombstones you know it's it's just U it puts things in perspective and that brings me into the presence of

God so um I would say memorize certain things a line from scripture a line of poetry a line kind of something that um helps you that will draw your mind in and Center you and it's going to be different for other people that's what you know so yeah so when you flap your wings make sure it fits who you are right yeah no that's great advice thank you let's turn now to another difficulty that St TZ experienced in prayer and that that's drowsiness um she talks about how she struggled staying awake in prayer um there's

a good passage for this on page 165 yeah now the the actually these two passages here are very very profound I think people pass them over you know she feels there's an idity and often when we feel there's a dryness and idity all we want to do is get rid of it she's using her imagination and her will in a in a remarkable way here she pictures herself in a boat with Jesus and Jesus is a sleep and she said he basically says you know Jesus has had a really rough day rarely do Souls allow

him to sleep peacefully within them Jesus is so fatigued with with always having to take the initiative and attend to others needs so what she does is she says you know I can make a choice of waking him up and get rid of the idity or I'm going to let him sleep and that's an act of love and you really love somebody you're willing to Bear the aridity so she's making something that she experiences passively as if she's choosing it and as an act of love so she's making heridity she's relating to in such a

way by an image that is an act of love Yeah another thing in the in the same passage where she speaks about falling asleep she says for seven years she fell asleep during prayer and uh her Thanksgiving after communion and she says you know I should be desolate for having slept for seven years during my hours of prayer my Thanksgiving after communion I mean we're talking about probably like 80% of her time as as a nun yeah she yeah she didn't she didn't live in the monastery for very long so seven years is quite a

bit Yeah but she says I'm not desolate I remember that little children are as pleased to their parents when they are asleep as well as when they are wide awake I think what's really important here is she's using an image of God to correct why would she be why would she be desolate because she's probably having an image of God that God is displeased with her so she's taken another image of God that God is like a loving parent who Smiles upon a CH child who's asleep so it's a transformation of her image of God

but also a transformation of how she feels about herself that she's fallen asleep you know why she fell asleep she was tired she was tired there was no Act of the will involved you know I I always know in Chapel when I have fallen asleep during prayer you know how there's a Dro Mark right here you know right right there you know so it happens all the time you know so yeah she was very very realistic you know right yeah it reminds me of that passage from the psalm that we say um I forget which

number it is but it says in vain is your earlier Rising you're going later to rest you who toil for the bread you eat when he poures his gifts on his beloved while they Slumber while they Slumber yeah so this and this seems to be this same inspiration that St TZ had is that that um our falling asleep is is not necessarily a sign that we're doing something wrong or that no or that God's not working like no no what we have to have a very a weak understanding of who God is and his power

we think that our falling asleep is somehow limiting um his ability to work within us Elizabeth Browning has a variation of that and it's just like a common shes the Lord gives his beloved sleep that's the gift yeah the rest itself is the GI the rest itself is is a gift and that brings up another image that TZ brings brings in here is um after this idea of the parent uh looking lovingly on their sleeping child she says I remember too that when they perform operations doctors put their patients to sleep and so that's another

way that we can kind of shift our our mindset here is that um in some sense my being unconscious is is uh pulling down the barriers that I am actively putting up to right to God yeah yeah and I would just say to the audience here be very very careful if if you go to your director or you go to or you go to your Confessor don't confess I fell asleep because the more you do that the more you'll believe there's something wrong with it you know even St John of the Cross says don't confess

first movements right don't don't do that there was no Act of the will involved you know yeah and then at the same time I think um you know the other side of this coin too is we we have to do what we can to try to remain attentive during or awake during prayer you know sleep well at night if we can and um you know pray in a posture that's going to help us to stay awake you know we do what we can and yet at the same time if we fall asleep then there's yeah

we shouldn't beat ourselves up about that and i' like to speak to the audience out here uh how old are you now 33 33 I'm 75 and trust me then get a lot of people out here know this when you get older your sleep patterns change and you wake up two three times in the middle of the night you can't get back to sleep and you're tired during the day the you can't do often when you're older what you can do younger and I think one of the PE the the fallacies that people labor under

is what's wrong with me I I used to be able to yeah but you were 40 years younger and I think that you have to take human nature into consideration I mean uh Francis Deale says people that try to be uh try to make themselves Angels end up being being beasts yeah great well let's turn to one more sure um difficulty which we we alluded to before but um this is when it comes to to aridity and prayer um there's a passage here on page 175 let's put this within context she's speaking about insights um

in prayer here MH and she says at the ages of 17 and 18 I had no other spiritual nourishment uh than St John of the Cross but now now she writing this book this is four years later she's been praying for four years in the monastery now if I open a book composed by a spiritual author even the most beautiful the most touching book I feel my heart contract immediately and I read without understanding and my mind comes to a standstill without the capacity of meditating I think we're dealing with the same thing uh as

meditative prayer you open up you want to do some spiritual reading and you say you get a couple of sentences and you just don't want to go on just just like if you're saying uh a vocal prayer you get to a point where you don't want to go on and I think there's something parallel here that that St Teresa is speaking about uh I find as I get older um I read less and less as I read out loud I I might get through a half a paragraph then the next day go through the same

thing um I I don't feel an obligation I have to finish a book anymore read what is helpful and often just go back over the same uh book and and if a passage is still speaking to you just stay with with it mhm yeah it seems like there's a shift here for TZ too there's this realization that she's maybe not getting something out of prayer or out of the time of reading like she used to and she has to come to terms with with that reality um I think that's often our experience of when when

we find ourselves faced with um aridity where we used to feel consolation or have insights uh we can think that we we can we can find ourselves struggling with that and yet the reality is that perhaps um it's revealing that we were we were praying not for a totally pure reason before sure we we were praying because it g made us feel good or it gave us good insights and yet here she there's this just awareness that that's being taken away and um there's a peace with that comes with even the the dryness in prayer

yeah and also practically speaking as you grow older if you as you read often the insights are basically the same and there's just a variation on a theme you know that you've heard it before yeah that that's just a reality you know also she she says down below Jesus has no need of books or teachers to instruct souls he teaches without the noise of words see a lot of words too much verbage can be noisy okay never have I heard him speak but I feel that he's within me at each moment he is guiding and

inspiring me and what I must say and what I must do let me give you an example of that out of TZ remember the uh incident where the nun in back of her is making the noise and Tres in that passage says I was I was tempted to turn around and give her that look you know that she would stop and she says Halfway Around she says I just felt that it would be better if I said nothing and not to disturb her peace and I think we've all had this experience where you're in a

conversation and you're about to say something but something inside of you says don't you didn't think about it it's just that Jesus was instructing you without the Power of Words what to say and what not not to say have you ever labeled that as God's presence in you guiding you guiding your tongue it just happens you don't do anything you know so I think this is what Tres is talking about that The Inspirations now don't come so much from books but they come from the inside out that Jesus is the one who inspires right in

daily life yeah so there's there's a perhaps a a deeper inspiration there something it's coming from a deeper place and so I mean maybe that can console some people who used to enjoy going to prayer and feel like they got a lot out of it and then now they sit down and prayer can feel like it's a drag and that they're they're not having the great insights for the good feelings that they did before it's with TZ kind of acknowledging that the fact that Jesus is still working and he's perhaps speaking to my soul in

this silence yeah and what are the ites for are they simply to make you feel good or the insights are as you go around the day they help you to love that's what you know Jesus um it's like in in in in chapter five of book two of The Dark Knight when John of the Cross defines the Dark Knight he says the Dark Knight is an inflow of God into the soul it's Grace which teaches us secretly in the Perfection of love without us doing anything or knowing how it happens if you're really attentive to

God's quiet voice within you he will teach you what to say and what not to say what to do and what not to do those that's what Insight is for you know uh so we can love Yeah knowledge always has to add and in love right I'm I'm seeing a thema in kind of all of these these topics that we're talking about between distractions drowsiness and and dryness and prayer it seems like a lot of it is um acceptance acceptance absolutely and that the don't Jud judge your uh spiritual life by your emotions and that's

through all all the CARiD Saints right you know when St Teresa speaking about the four Waters and and one passage when she speak about the water is consolation she says the the flowers the virtues can grow without the water it's not necessary it's it's always Union of Wills right yeah yeah and there's always a tendency right after the time of prayer to try to analyze or judge or rank like how good that time of prayer was I know I know you know you know even St Teresa says towards the very end of the Interior Castle

she speaks about these uh mystical experiences and she asks the question about are they necessary for Holiness and she says there are some people that God gives these great Graces to not because they're holy but because if they didn't get them they'd Fall Away there's others because they're very strong in virtue God never gives it to them because they don't need them so you can't judge a person's Holiness by their experiences you know if for example uh I saw father Pierre Georg was sitting over there uh levitating down the hall the only thing I know

is he's levitating down the hall I don't know I can't judge whether it's a sign of his Holiness or not I have no idea yeah and so how do we I mean how do we um assess our prayer then well I mean I think one thing you mentioned the very first thing you you mentioned is do we show up and St Teresa says in her autobi y you can only judge the quality of prayer outside your prayer are she says are the flowers growing the virtues if if during the day you find yourself uh more

open and loving towards your neighbor more responsible for the things that God wants you to do then everything's going fine in prayer prayer is not some isolated monad away uh separated from the rest of your life right yeah and that's what we just mentioned from TZ too is that she she would experience the lights less less so in the uh during the time of prayer and more so just throughout her Day St tresa says exactly the same thing yeah these kind of slight Inspirations of the Holy Spirit working within her yeah and her responding to

those yeah that's good um maybe we can uh close then by talking about uh there's one passage I want to look at where TZ kind of gives a definition of prayer I think so like what prayer was to her okay um and that's on page 242 she says uh for me prayer is an aspiration of the heart mhm it is a simple glance directed to Heaven it is a cry of gratitude and love in the midst of trial as well as Joy finally it is something great Supernatural which expands my soul and unites me to

Jesus In this passage is actually it's quoted um in the catechism on the section on prayer right at the beginning of the section on prayer quote this this passage of TZ so I don't know if you had any insights from from tz's definition there yeah you you you you speak out of your heart what's there um you know um St Teresa in the way of perfection she says you know when when you are sad see Jesus alone in the garden when you're happy think of Jesus as risen so tresa begins with our emotions and kind

of attach that to some image and I think what Tres is saying is something similar I begin with what I feel for me prayer is an aspiration of the heart it is simply a glance directed towards heaven there's no words is a glance it's like looking at an icon yeah it's very very simple yeah it's not again this is a word that comes up often in Tres not to force myself when we try to force ourselves to get insights or force ourselves to pray or force ourselves to say the rosary that Force should be a

red light we're doing something that is not coming from who we are yeah yeah something we've talked about a lot um in the season so far and I think it's true of Christian prayer but maybe especially emphasized in when it comes to the carite Saints yeah carite spirituality is uh Freedom yeah um there's a real Freedom that comes in in prayer it's it's not something that we we do out of um compulsion or um yeah it it's not so constrainted I guess there should be this flexibility and freedom that allows the Holy Spirit to be

the one leading the time of prayer well that's the thing where John John on the cross says U that you have to follow God's lead the difference between active prayer and passive prayer is when when you cross over we have to follow God's lead where God where God leads us and uh and no and no PE no two people pray the same I mean our our our personalities are different our psyches are different um what we what we like to meditate upon is different you know St Teresa for example she's talking about meditating upon the

passions uh you know and she says that's good but she says you know there are certain Souls they can't do that nor should they because of their temperament they get too depressed so you got to know yourself yeah yeah and and then in the face of you know again the the diff when we face those difficulties in prayer it seems like something that kind of summarizes something that that TZ writes in story of a soul even is she says that we should profit from our miseries that's right from our meory misery so rather than beating

ourselves up rather than being hard on ourselves or trying to analyze there's a there's a passage in there what she speaks about there isn't it on page 172 is where she quotes that she because there she talks about um you know all of this however does not prevent both distractions and sleepiness from visiting me no she still has those things and yet she finds a way to be happy and to profit yeah from her miseries yeah you know for example during the distractions and sleepiness you know and the Thanksgiving which I make so badly I

make a resolution to be thankful throughout the rest of the day now I suspect with Tres especially her scrupulosity being distracted and sleepy and falling asleep she probably felt guilty so what what she seems to be doing is I um made a resolution to be thankful she turned guilt into gratitude and also if I fell asleep if I'm grateful for uh during the day I'm praying so she's really turning this into a virtue yeah she's profiting by it right and it's the same I mean this is the same um same reaction we see in her

her Christmas Grace where she was you know upset and she wanted to just run up the stairs and cry and yet she made this conscious choice to overcome this this strong emotion and to uh choose to love in the midst of it that that's right and I think the the the last phrase you use is important in the midst of it the the emotion didn't go away but she loved in spite of how she felt whether it's she felt hurt what happened or feeling empty during prayer that's an emotion that you deal with right and

and so when we Face distraction when we Face drowsiness when we when we Face these difficulties in prayer we can make that same conscious Choice rather than choosing despair or choosing self-hate yeah we can choose to be thankful we can choose to love exactly exactly and that's really the the sign that our fruit the sign that our prayer is working that's the fruit fruit of the of the prayer yeah and I think also what happens in in the midst of it in everything is you grow in humility that you're not your own savior you can't

save yourself and uh and at the end of the life at the end of your life you're still going to get distracted you're still going to fall asleep during prayer you're still going to have temptation and but as long as we're doing our best and showing up and that's right showing up right that's what Woody Allen says 80% of life is showing up that's true well thank you so much again for joining us Father Mark you're welcome you're and uh a lot a lot of what we read from today comes from story of a soul

which is the autobiography of St terz um and this book as well as a Study Edition which was uh helped prepared by Father Mark uh you can buy on our website at icsp publications. org but buy buy this one I get royalties from it okay right right okay okay so Father Mark recommends the one that that he gets money for so no well thank you so much for joining us and and God bless you okay God bless