Prayer from January 20 to Lent

Run to the Battle!

Posted by Cor Unum Abbey on October 24, 2017
Posted in: 40 days of Prayer, Prayer for the Nation, Prayer from January 20 to Lent, Uncategorized. Tagged: , . Leave a comment

 

graffiti_in_upper_manhattan_november_3_2013

 

 

We don’t claim to be a crack regiment, but the Battle Maidens of Cor Unum Abbey know where a giant keeps his forehead, and we have been practicing with smooth stones.

We realized that to say, “we will run to the battle” made us feel afraid, so we hitched up our skirts and tore through the lines of on-lookers. Let me explain.

We have seen all that everyone else has seen. Rage and murderous intent in our streets. More couples divorcing than marrying. Single parent families. Children devoted to destruction. Sexual promiscuity in the highest places. Abortion on demand. Fatherless sons and daughters taught almost from infancy to parade a lasciviousness that grows up with them. The new normal is horrifying.

The Scripture says that, because of lawlessness and wickedness, the love of many will grow cold. (Matthew 24:12) The nuns in this Abbey have decided that, before our souls ice over, we will train our hearts to love those lawless and those wicked with all that is within us.

We began praying for one boy who would walk past each day, dressed in black, face hooded from view, pants riding low beneath his underwear, and if ever we got a glimpse of him, his visage was mean and very evidently meant to frighten.

It is perfect love that casts out fear (1 John 4:18.) We applied it in prayer.  He glanced our way and if looks could kill … well, they can’t, so we began to ask God’s best for him, wisdom, discernment, mercy, kindness, and beneficial friendships.  He was the first; others followed. It did not take long for us to see that those most frightening were those most fearful.

That emboldened us, and we began to pray more and more diligently for those in high places who don’t show their fear with tattooed faces and skull-deco fashions.  There are plenty of frightened and fearsome men and women who wear their power and their contempt the way our passerby wore a hoodie and a spiked cuff.

We ran to the battle, because the light dawned in our hearts and we saw that all we had to do was love more and better, and yes, that we could do.  It cost us little more than time and a softening of our hearts  When we see the fear behind the face masks, it changes everything. Spiritual darkness is paralyzing at any age, no matter whether one lives in the projects or a gated community. The “wages of sin is death” at every address, and the human soul mercifully knows this truth and trembles until the grace of salvation prevails. Yes, good is touted as evil and evil as good in this world, in this hour, but things are changing, turning as on the head of a pin.

That young man … before he moved, he had lost the hood, the black overcoat, and the frightened look in his eyes. God bless him, wherever he is. We love him. We love this country and those lost and dying in it. We will pray continually, specifically, and fervently. May God make America great again, a phrase we were using years before the current administration honored it … greater than ever we have been before. May God bless America, for Jesus’ sake. While our neighbors live in torment, we will pray and abide in hope, here in this monastery of the heart. Come, run with us …

Grafitti on a retaining wall, upper Manhattan

Anthony 22, by permission, Wikipedia

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Battle Maidens

Posted by Cor Unum Abbey on January 18, 2017
Posted in: 40 days of Prayer, Prayer for families, Prayer for the Nation, Prayer from January 20 to Lent. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

 

 

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Here in Cor Unum Abbey, we are suiting up for our first 40-day fast of the year. We happened to realize that there are exactly 40 days from January 20, Inauguration Day, to the start of Lent, March 1st this year, so it looks like we will be 80 days in fasting mode, and we are pretty excited about it!

We are quick to make clear … a fast for us is not necessarily a matter of food deprivation. Each of us seeks the Lord, asks what would be most beneficial or effective, and we make our commitment. We have been known to fast television, griping and complaining, one meal per day, two meals each day, book reading, ingratitude, coffee, desserts, and recreational shopping! … whatever the Lord puts on our hearts, individually, that we do.

This will be for us a Battle Maiden fast. We have long been asking the questions that others are asking:

“What has happened to us in America?”

“Why is there tragedy and loss in nearly every family?”

“Why are we so divided?”

“Where are the leaders, the shepherds and the evangelists of old, speaking wisdom and able to deliver?”

“What can we possibly do? How much difference can we make in this dark hour?”

“What is our role? Is it dangerous?”

At this time, we are corporately done with lamenting questions. We spent the holidays asking for answers enough to get us started. For instance, when the disciples asked Jesus why they could not cast out the devil from the tormented boy in Matthew 17, He told them it was because of their little faith, and then comes the verse that most versions of the Bible say was not found in the earliest manuscripts: “However, this kind goeth not forth but by fasting and prayer.” For too long have we asked, “Did You really say that? Why is it not included in the early manuscripts? Is that valid?” “Does that mean, fast for more faith or to cast out the devil?”

Now we are saying, if those that oppress the ones for whom we pray are still oppressing, we will fast. Our understanding does not have to be perfect at the outset. That verse does not have to be part of the canon of Scripture for us to know we that we must take part in seeing those around us set free from sin and torment. It is easy to ask the theological questions and miss the thousand other instructions that bid us watch and pray and fast and war until our enemies turn back and take flight. (Psalm 18:37-40)

I do not say that there will not be answers along the way; we know that answers will be provided as we need them, but more to the point, we already know what to do, at least enough to make a start. We already know a few things, at least a handful of things, to ask of God, and so we shall ask, in faith, believing.

May those we love and those for whom we pray be delivered from every evil work. (1 John 3:8)

 
May they be given grace to rise up and shake off the dust and remove the shackles that have kept them in bondage. (Isaiah 52:2)

 
May they, and may we, be quick to repent and quick to forgive, for the sake of our souls. (1 John 1:9)

 
May God be glorified in His Church and in our families, as we begin to fight the good fight of faith. (Ephesians 6:10-18)

 
It should be easy not to be overwhelmed by the corruption and upheaval around us; it is there already, we have long been living with it. We have given it our attention, and now we turn our attention. Any activity is rousing in comparison with the grousing and finger-pointings that have only made matters worse. Now we will lift up our eyes to the hills. That’s where our help comes from.

We are going to pray for this new administration, as we prayed for the last one. We see the shaking and turbulence, but we also see great opportunities regarding an end to abortion, the restoration of our national conscience, and a renewal of American friendship with Israel, which we in Cor Unum consider to be vitally important in the affairs of men.

We are going to single out a small number of families or individuals whose lives seem torn and poisoned nearly beyond repair … like our nation. The Lord Jesus Christ said that we would tread upon lions and scorpions and have power over all the power of the enemy. (Luke 10:19 and Psalm 91:13) We say then that those we have been given to love are not meant to be torn and poisoned. Tempted at times, yes, and suffer tribulation and persecution, guaranteed, but torn and poisoned – no.

“And nothing will injure us.” That we say, not with any degree of cocky self-assurance or fist-shaking at the devil, but if we will believe the one, we will also believe the other, for these words are also to be found in Luke 10:19. Thanks be to God.

 

 

 

 

 

Photo of a quarter dollar, Wikipedia

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