I just found this today - on prayer and what it really is, and isn't. I tend to get frustrated with all the negativism in the hearts of the people, well-meaning sometimes, but still they need to think about what they are saying to God and to each other. I was at EWTN's TV station and Monastery in Alabama this last weekend (if you watched the Sunday Mass on Oct. 6th you would have seen me...I was the blonde one!). At the Monastery later I was silently praying by myself in a little cave-chapel that has a nativity scene in it. I had just lit a bunch of candles to represent my entire family and was talking to Jesus about bringing peace to all of them when a rather elderly woman came bounding in, and promptly began chatting with me about the corrupt government, our president, abortion, and then began telling me proudly how she had been arrested several times for her stand on abortion, how she was on some "hostiles" list with the police, and how we need to all wake up, and how the government is involved, and so on and so on. I so wanted to say, "We are in a place of PRAYER!!! Please stop!" But instead, I nodded and smiled and tried to keep my comments very small, not to fuel her conversation with anything else. It was so very hard, though. Not that I don't agree with some of the things she was saying, its just that this was NOT the place for that kind of discussion. Finally, after hugging me a couple of times (for what, I'm not sure) she finally left and I added her to my prayers for family peace. When I saw this from Pope Francis, it reminded me of what happened on Sunday. I don't know why God put her there in my path at that time...what I was supposed to learn from that encounter I do not know. http://www.ewtnnews.com/catholic-news/Vatican.php?id=8580
