Presence of God. Stop for a few minutes from your day, retreat from the world and think about the serious and important act of speaking to God - This act of prayer which you are beginning.
Grace I Ask: A great desire to satisfy Jesus' thirst for souls.
Mental Picture (cf. John 19: 28-29): Lifted above the heads of the crowd at the top of a small hill, Christ hangs on the cross. In front of Him is the unthinking mob - God's chosen people trying to destroy their Savior. And in His mind's eye He sees the many generations of God's new chosen people and their hatred, oppression, wars and revolutions, persecutions - the sins of all of us... and He says, "I am thirsty".
My Personal Application: He was thirsty. Physical thirst, yes, but more than that. He saw how His suffering would be as nothing for so many men, and He was thirsty for their souls. Can I relieve Jesus' thirst? Yes, by giving myself to Him first, and then by bringing others to Him.
I intensified His thirst on the Cross because by my sins I was actually present to Him as He hung there. So I also relieve His thirst as I make reparation, whenever, for instance, I am really sorry for my sins, when I offer up some slight pain for His great pain, when I make the Church known to my non-Catholic as well as lapsed Catholic friends, when I say prayers at the end of Mass for thanksgiving and for the conversion of sinners.
I Speak to Christ: My suffering Lord, I know that too often I am not very sorry for having done this to you, that I do not love you and thank you as I ought. I know that I am so indifferent to whether others love you; but O my Lord Jesus, I want to; give me the grace to be really sorry... and grateful...to be your apostle.
Thought for Today: "And Jesus said, "I am thirsty!"
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Adapted from Mental Prayer, Challenge to the Lay Apostle
by The Queen's Work,(© 1958)
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