            <div id="father_cummings_title">Father Cummings Homilies</div>
            <div id="father_cummings_excerpts">Excerpts</div><br/><br/>
            <div id="father_cummings_homily_title">Pray Always</div>  

            <div class="frcummings_content_paragraph">
                <p>Missionaries 
                    around the world have understood <i>the necessity of praying always and 
                    not giving up</i>. How essential it is for us to stop and ponder this 
                    teaching today! The issue of <i>whether the Son of Man will find faith 
                    on earth</i> and whether He will find faith in us, the question of whether 
                    we will find our vocation in life or stick to it if we do, the key to 
                    whether we will be happy ourselves and make others happy around us, everything, 
                    in short, worth hoping for, depends upon our ability to grasp and meet 
                    <i>the necessity of praying always and not giving up</i>. </p>
                  <p>The spiritual 
                    life is a relationship with the Almighty. Prayer is the expression and 
                    fuel of this vital, constant relationship. Like a young boy or girl who 
                    has fallen head over heels in love, they do not only think of their beloved 
                    when they are speaking with them, but at all times. They feel like they 
                    have a new energy and purpose, making every activity, however dreary, 
                    exciting. This innocent idolizing of the beloved is a small image of what 
                    it should be like to "pray always" to God, <i>worshiping in spirit and 
                    truth</i>. </p>
                  <p>Now Christ 
                    is, of course, the example par excellence of someone who "prayed always". 
                    His whole life was a striving to please God, as He indicated when He said 
                    <i>My food is to do the will of my father</i>. Likewise, the Blessed Virgin, 
                    another exemplar of prayer, is portrayed as <i>pondering all these things 
                    in her heart</i> - she kept the mysterious plan of God at the center of 
                    her soul as she went about her daily routine. She was a woman of prayer, 
                    so that prayer defined who she was, not what she was doing at a given 
                    moment. Her whole being <i>exulted in God her Savior</i>, not just her 
                    voice from time to time. </p>
                  <p>But how 
                    do we approach this happy state, so necessary for a holy life, where prayer 
                    is the air, the background, the source of our energy and life? We must 
                    transform our lives bit by bit, day by day. We must begin to pray with 
                    the express purpose of changing our own will and not God's. We must ask 
                    what changes the Lord wants in our life, concretely, every day, then strive 
                    to carry them out. Our choices throughout the day will bring us closer 
                    to God, and be themselves a source of glory for Him, conformed as they 
                    will be to his holy will. Prayer without growth in virtue is talking to 
                    yourself; growing in virtue without prayer is impossible. </p>
                  <p>This mental 
                    prayer, the point of which, according to St. Teresa of Avila, is not to 
                    think much but to love much, is an essential for every Christian. It must 
                    remain a constant in our life; in times of consolation or desolation, 
                    distraction or ecstasy, we must be faithful to praying. Soon enough, progress 
                    must be made in improving the quality of the time we give: deepening the 
                    intensity of our love, the delicacy of our conscience, the generosity 
                    of our resolutions. One will experience the amazing phenomenon that men 
                    and women of prayer accomplish so much more than others, even in the proportion 
                    as they give their time generously to prayer. Gradually, our whole life 
                    becomes an offering to God: <i>like living stones be yourselves built 
                    into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices 
                    acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (I Pet. 2.5) </i></p>
    
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