The 21 Consequences…

This was taken from over at A Mothers’s Rule of Life: Thoughts for Moms. Holly Pierlot wrote a book to help Catholic wives and mother’s develop a a schdeduled life similar to the Maxwell’s of Managers of Their Homes.

I was reading through her site and came across this. And boy is sure true in this day and time.

The 21 Consequences of Not Praying and of Praying

I was struck today by a priest’s teaching of the many consequences of not praying in the life of a Christian:

1. Having less and less of a desire for God
2. Stress as the world sucks us dry, instead of us bringing God Himself to our neighbors
3. lLoss of ongoing purification in our hearts and souls
4. Prayer gets’ hard’ to do
5. We miss out on the profoundness of our vocation
6. Other things fill God’s place
7. God ceases to be a person
we are intimate with and becomes an cold ‘idea’
8. In crisis, we turn to psychology instead of prayer or we give in to the crisis
9. We look around for other gods to fill the gap
10. We lose the meaning of our life
11. We live a practical atheism, professing Him in belief but living without Him
12. God does not make us happy in our heart
13. We experience an emptiness
14. We go on the lookout for someone/thing to affirm us in place
of God
15. We get involved with things to feel good about ourselves
16. We cease to think about eternal life and focus on this world’s concerns
17. Priests become laicized
18. We are not witnesses of God
19. We don’t bring God to others
20. We disappoint others in their search for God
21. We experience nausea, anguish, loneliness, nothingness, absurdity

[This list is compiled and paraphrased from] Sensing Your Hidden
Presence by Fr Ignacio Larranaga, Doubleday, NY, 1987, ideas from pages 21-27

Now , interestingly, if we just turned these 21 things
around, in order, we could see what would happen if we DO pray properly all the
time:

1. We’d want God more
2. We’d bring God & love to our
families and be less stressed
3. God would purify us of our sin
4. Prayer would become easy and enjoyable
5. We’d understand the profoundness of our vocation
6. God would fill our hearts
7. God would be a close intimate person we experienced
8. In crisis, prayer would help us
9. We would have no idols
10. We find deep meaning in life
11. We’d live and work with Him , in Him
12. God would make our hearts happy
13. We would be full of love and joy
14. We would not care about what others thought of us
15. We’d find deep peace and contentment in our daily life
16. We’d be relating everything on earth to our eternity of bliss with God.
17. Priests would become saints
18. We would be real witnesses of God
19. we would bring God to others
20. People who were looking for God would find him through us
21. We’d find fulfillment, meaning, peace, joy, love and all the other fruits of the Holy Spirit.

Hmmm.
Kinda makes it seem like our daily prayer is important and necessary to a good life and being a good Christian!

Make one think.

A married woman must often leave God at the altar in order to find Him in her housework ~~St. Francis of Rome