Little Joseph and I attended our first ever silent retreat a few weeks ago at Featherock. It was a beautiful time of solitude with our Lord; I returned with a few prayerful resolutions that I hope will help me to grow in holiness.
One meditation talk in particular was about aspirations. What are aspirations? Well, they are little ejaculations or prayers to Our Lord that we pray unceasingly throughout the day. As a mother and homemaker, this is an incredibly efficient way to keep myself in God's presence. I do not have many quiet moments where I find myself able to sit and meditate and pray (except for the early morning before all the kids awaken--I do try and make time to do that regularly). But, there is always time to send little prayers and kisses to our Lord as I go about my everyday duties. I have always tried to remember to "pray unceasingly" but now I aspire to do more! :)
When you look up aspiration in the dictionary you get these definitions which I believe are all quite relevant in helping us to pray using aspiratinons:
aspiration
n 1: a will to succeed
2: a cherished desire; "his ambition is to own his own
business" [syn: ambition, dream]
3: a manner of articulation involving an audible release of
breath
4: the act of inhaling; the drawing in of air (or other gases)
as in breathing [syn: inhalation, inspiration,
breathing in]
The holy priest on our retreat likened our prayerful aspirations to breathing. In order to be able to live, we must breathe (aspire), so by taking these prayers/breaths all day long, we remain in God's presence by keeping ourselves close to Him. Then, when we do find time to sit down and rest in the Lord, we are truly able to "breathe in" His presence...we have kept close to Him through these little prayers and thus are able to truly be open to His Spirit during the brief moments where we can rest in His presence. Some examples of these little prayers:
"All for the glory of God." (Ps 51:12)
"A clean heart create for me, O God." (Ps 51:17)
"Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me." Lk 18:38
"Holy Mary, our hope, seat of wisdom, pray for us."
"Open a door to my heart, dear Lord."
Our priest told a story about Servant of God, John Paul II. The Holy Father used to pray an aspiration every time he went through a door asking for his heart to be like a door open to God's will at all times. So, each door he travelled through (and you know there must be many doorways in the Vatican!) was a reminder to him to pray this aspiration. An example from the life of such a saintly Pope is one I hope to emulate. Father talked about putting a reminder card on some doors in our homes to help us remember to pray our aspirations. I did this and here are a few doorways in my home:
If I ask my guardian angel for help in remembering to pray using aspirations, I know he will help me! A few nuggets of wisdom from one of my favorite prayer books:
Often, in order to keep Jesus present during the day, we will need to make use of those 'human devices,' those ejaculations, acts of love and reparation, spiritual Communions, 'glances' at a picture of Our Lady and some human means to remind us that some time has gone by (too much for love) during which we have not turned to Our Lord, Our Lady, our guardian angel...
Bit by bit, if we persevere, we will reach a point where being in the presence of God becomes our normal and natural state, although we will always have to put up a determined struggle to stay there.
--In Conversation with God, Vol. 2, Meditation 35: Contemplating Christ--Life of Piety
