Praying Like this Changed My Life (w/ Fr. Mike Schmitz)
4/30/20269 min
Struggling to pray?
Fr. Mike Schmitz shows how Ignatian prayer makes prayer simple again by using Scripture and your imagination to enter into the Gospel. Begin by asking the Holy Spirit for help, choosing a short Gospel passage, and slowly immersing yourself in it one sense at a time.
Rather than replacing other prayers, Ignatian prayer deepens them, helping you grow in trust and a more personal relationship with Christ.
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First 90 secondsMike Schmitz· Host0:00
Ignatian prayer changed my life, and I'll tell you why at the end. Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and this is Ascension Presents. We had a great crew of people go through OCIA this year, right? Just this massive group. But one of the questions they would bring up again and again is, "How do I pray?" I thought, "Oh, my gosh, that's a great question." Because regardless of whether someone was baptized earlier in their life or we got to baptize them at Easter, a lot of people just don't know how to pray. There's so many different ways to pray. We've talked about the pirate prayer here on this channel. We've talked about other ways to pray. Um, Lectio Divina. There's a way to pray that I don't know if we've shared on this channel before. It's called Ignatian prayer. It goes back to a guy named St. Ignatius of Loyola. It's a very simple way to pray, but it is a powerful way to pray. It engages the senses, it engages the imagination, it engages God's Word. Here are some steps to Ignatian prayer. Now, obviously, if there are some Jesuits who have been watching this, they'd be like, "This is, like, first-grade level Ignatian prayer," so go watch some Jesuits tell you how to do Ignatian prayer. They're, they're better at it. It's not a technique, but it's kinda... There are some, there are some steps here. First, as always, we ask the Holy Spirit to guide us. And one of the things I'm always so moved by our students, whenever it's like, "Hey, would... Joe, would you pray for us? You know, lead us in a prayer. Jennifer, would you start us off in a prayer?" A lot of times they'll say, "Okay." And they will always pray the same prayer. "Come, Holy Spirit. Teach us how to pray." And I think, "Oh, that's so good." So first step, ask the Holy Spirit to just guide you in your prayer, trust- trusting that, that God is gonna guide whatever there is. Okay, great. Number one, ask the Holy Spirit to guide you. Number two, pick a scripture, um, a scene typically from the Gospels. This is