A most recommended prayer

Fr. Roy Cimagala *

THE Feast of the Visitation of Our Lady to her cousin Elizabeth, celebrated on May 31, brings us to that wonderful prayer of the “Magnificat,” the response of our Lady after her cousin praised her to high heavens, describing her as the most blessed among women. (cfr. Lk 1,39-56)

It’s a prayer that we should try our best to also make as our own, for it expresses what our heart and soul should regard us the most important in our life. It’s the most ideal condition for us to be in. It shows what and who should attract us the most.

We should repeat the words of the Magnificat daily, and, in fact, often during the day. We should repeat them from the heart, especially when we encounter difficulties and failures in life, because they remind us that God never fails to bless us. Yes, we should always feel blessed even amidst our problems and mistakes.

Feeling blessed is important and indispensable to us. Without it, we would be putting ourselves in great danger as we would simply stand on an unstable ground, totally dependent on the shifting world of chance, luck and fortune.

When these latter mundane and temporal values are missing, we cannot help but feel doomed, our life losing meaning and purpose, and our activities would simply become means to pass the time. Nothing more and beyond!

To be able to assume the spirit of the Magnificat, we should try our best to adapt the attitude of Mary. She was most humble and most docile. She asked for a clarification when she was told that she was going to become the Mother of the Son of God, but it was not out of doubt and lack of faith. It was simply to make her cooperation with God’s will and ways most complete.

When we are truly humble like Our Lady, we would know who should attract us most. Definitely, it should be God and none other. Better said, if we make God the source and cause of all our attraction, of all our joy and pleasures, of what ultimately gives us perfect satisfaction and ultimate fulfillment, all the other things can attract us and give us joy in the proper way, always respecting our true dignity as persons and as children of God.

Otherwise, there is no other way but for us to merely have a fake kind of joy, pleasure and satisfaction that can only lead us to bigger dangers. We really have to train ourselves to make God and to make following his will and ways the constant source and cause of our attraction and joy.

For this, we first of all should ask for God’s grace which is actually given to us in abundance. And from there, let’s go through some systematic plan of life that will nourish and strengthen our constant and intimate relationship with God, a relationship that should involve our entire self—body and soul, feelings, emotions and passions down to our very instincts, as well as our mind and heart.

It should be a plan that should obviously include prayer in all its forms—vocal, liturgical, ejaculatory, mental, contemplative, etc. Our life of prayer should be such that even when we are immersed in the things of the world due to our work and our temporal duties, we would still be aware of God’s presence, and it is doing God’s will that should always motivate us.

* Chaplain Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com