{"id":15261,"date":"2010-01-04T12:29:36","date_gmt":"2010-01-04T16:29:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.firstthings.com\/blogs\/theanchoress\/?p=15261"},"modified":"2017-03-10T22:54:43","modified_gmt":"2017-03-10T22:54:43","slug":"power-of-the-perfect-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theanchoress\/2010\/01\/04\/power-of-the-perfect-prayer\/","title":{"rendered":"Power of the Perfect Prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Another thought about<\/strong> Marcella Dubuque<\/a>, who was last Christmas preparing for imminent death, and whose story I linked to this morning<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe acceptance was so total that there were no regrets, just gratitude for the life, for the family. Realizing how lucky I was,\u201d she says.
\n\u2026
\nOver the course of a week, more than 100 people came to see her in what has been described as a living wake. They exchanged old stories and brought her rosary beads, prayer cards, holy oil, even blessed salt. Lella assured anyone who asked about her illness that she was \u201clooking forward to the journey\u201d and to being with her relatives in Heaven.<\/p>\n

Judique\u2019s parish priest, Father Allan MacMillan, performed what was once known as the Last Rites, but is now more optimistically called the Sacrament of the Sick. Afterward, the family gathered on the veranda with a bottle of wine and Lella asked Fr. Allan, a Gaelic singer, for a song.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A while back I wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Obedience, for all it is decried, is in fact, the Royal Highway by which His Majesty speeds along his love, and his glory. It is the Autobahn of the Spirit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It strikes me that this lady took on was the scary cloak of \u201cobedience,\u201d<\/strong> fitted to perfection by the twin tailors of \u201ctrusth\u201d and \u201cthanksgiving,\u201d and worn with a panache of great love. In preparing to die, Dubuque was obeying what she believed to be God\u2019s will for her, and she made her preparations with a heart full of thankfulness. Over all of that she \u2013 as St. Paul taught \u2013 \u201cput on love;\u201d she opened herself to the world and everyone in it.<\/p>\n

Perfect prayer is prayer that surrenders, gives thanks and reaches out in love \u2013 it is, in the end, suffused with real joy, joy that radiates outward. That\u2019s how we\u2019re supposed to do it, but so few of us have ever managed to pull it off.<\/p>\n

But look what power there is, in the perfect prayer.<\/p>\n

And if you really think her perfect prayer through, step-by-step, it began with obedience, which is part-and-parcel with childlike trust.<\/p>\n

Perhaps God\u2019s will for Marcella Dubuque was not that she die, but that she learn the means, and the power, of perfect prayer.<\/p>\n

How humbling. I have so much to learn.<\/p>\n

\nI will tell you what is my own great help. I once read or heard that an interior life means but the continuation of our Savior\u2019s life in us; that the great object of all his mysteries is to merit for us the grace of his interior life and communicate it to us, it being the end of his mission to lead us into the sweet land of promise, a life of constant union with himself. And what was the first rule of our dear Savior\u2019s life? You know it was to do his Father\u2019s will. Well, then, the first end I propose in our daily work is to do the will of God; secondly, to do it in the manner he wills; and thirdly, to do it because it is his will.<\/em>
\n \u2014 St. Elizabeth Ann Seton* (Source<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

*First American-born Catholic Saint. Her feastday is today and this is from a conference given to her spiritual daughters, included in today\u2019s Office of Readings, in the Liturgy of the Hours<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another thought about Marcella Dubuque, who was last Christmas preparing for imminent death, and whose story I linked to this morning. \u201cThe acceptance was so total that there were no regrets, just gratitude for the life, for the family. Realizing how lucky I was,\u201d she says. \u2026 Over the course of a week, more than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,14,43,44,54,61,62,96,163,209,225],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-remaking-ourselves","category-american-genius","category-catholic-vocations","category-catholicism","category-communion-of-saints","category-crucible-of-faith","category-culture-of-lifedeath","category-faith","category-liturgy-of-the-hours","category-prayer","category-saints"],"yoast_head":"\nPower of the Perfect Prayer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Another thought about Marcella Dubuque, who was last Christmas preparing for imminent death, and whose story I linked to this morning. 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