{"id":21050,"date":"2022-02-16T10:11:14","date_gmt":"2022-02-16T15:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=21050"},"modified":"2022-02-16T10:29:10","modified_gmt":"2022-02-16T15:29:10","slug":"21050","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=21050","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/34GcRkWIY3s\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Quality of Relationship<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Father Richard writes about the transformation that prayer can make in our lives. We begin living from a deeper self, united in God:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When we live from our true self in God, religion is not about requirements; it\u2019s about relationship, the quality and capacity of our relatedness to God and others. The essential self can say prayers, but this true self also&nbsp;<em>is&nbsp;<\/em>a prayer. Just by being, just by walking from here to there, it is a prayer. That\u2019s why Paul can say something like pray always (1 Thessalonians 5:17). He can\u2019t mean that we should walk around saying \u201cOur Fathers\u201d all day! But we&nbsp;<em>can&nbsp;<\/em>pray always when we live in conscious union with God. The surprise for most of us is that this place of relationship with God is really not about being perfect.&nbsp; The self in God will still make mistakes, but it lives from a center other than its own. It\u2019s <strong>hard to get a feel for this until we\u2019ve met a centered person, someone grounded and in union with God.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In fact, I\u2019d go <strong>so far as to say that we have to have met a saint<\/strong>. My definition of Christianity at one time was that a Christian is someone who\u2019s met one, because <strong>this whole thing is contagious<\/strong>! When we meet a person of a certain quality of maturity, we too can become more mature. We meet a patient person and we learn how to be patient. We meet a loving person and we learn how to be loving. That\u2019s the way human beings operate. When we meet a really grounded, happy, and free person, <strong>we become more like that because we\u2019ll be satisfied with nothing less. This whole thing, our faith, spreads through and by the quality of our relationships.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In prayer, it is possible to experience that quality of relationship with God. In that place, we know we\u2019re not being manipulated, we\u2019re not being used, we\u2019re not being judged, we\u2019re not being evaluated. Who wouldn\u2019t want to go there? It\u2019s the place of ultimate freedom. It\u2019s the state that every one of us wants to live in. That\u2019s <strong>why we tell people to go pray for some set time each day, because when we do, we slowly learn to live in this place<\/strong>. We become a reflection of our own experience. We ourselves become our best teacher\u2014yet it is the Spirit (see Romans 8:16).<strong> God rubs off on us.<\/strong> It\u2019s almost that simple. I don\u2019t know any other way to say it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I want to say as strongly as I can that all of the elements and practices of religion\u2014the Bible, sacraments, priesthood, churches, the rosary, contemplative sit, <strong>everything\u2014is to help us experience this essential and united self.<\/strong> Pure and simple. That\u2019s all. <strong>If our religion doesn\u2019t help us experience this undefended and beloved self, then change it, get rid of it, or do something very different.<\/strong><br><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Quality of Relationship Father Richard writes about the transformation that prayer can make in our lives. We begin living from a deeper self, united in God: When we live from our true self in God, religion is not about requirements; it\u2019s about relationship, the quality and capacity of our relatedness to God and others. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21050"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21050"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21055,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21050\/revisions\/21055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}