MUNSTER, Ind. — The graces a Christian seeks in praying the Prayer of St. Ephrem are only possible if he or she cooperates with God, said Bishop Milan Lach, SJ, during an afternoon Lenten retreat Feb. 25.
The event, called “Lord and Master of My Life: A Catholic Pilgrimage in the Byzantine Tradition,” gathered 112 people from the eparchy’s Midwest region at the Carmelite Monastery in Munster.
It was the first event organized by the recently formed Fellowship of St. Ephrem, aimed at fostering community among Byzantine Catholic parishes in the region.
The bishop gave three talks to try to unpack the depth of the prayer, which reads: “Lord and Master of my life, spare me from the spirit of indifference, despair, lust for power and idle chatter. Instead, bestow on me, your servant, a spirit of integrity, humility, patience and love. Yes, O Lord and King, let me see my own sins and not judge by brothers and sisters, for you are blessed forever and ever. Amen.”
He said the prostrations that punctuate the prayer represent God’s condescension to mankind. They also express a person’s recognition that Jesus is God and Lord, he said.
“Why does this short and simple prayer occupy such an important position in our Lenten worship? Because this prayer enumerates in a unique way all the negative and positive elements of our patterns, and functions as a checklist for all of our Lenten efforts,” he said.
“If we want to make something positive of our life, first we need to clean our garden of the negatives,” he said. “We need to clean our heart, the most important part of our constitution… because it is the place of all of our decisions.”
The first step to attaining the conversion the prayer seeks is to “accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and your Master,” he said. “It is the first among the Ten Commandments.”
He urged everyone to reflect on whether they are putting someone or something else above God.
“If the Lord is not the Lord and master of my life, then I become my own lord and master, the absolute center of my own world, and I begin to evaluate everything in terms of my needs, my ideas, desires and judgments,” he said.
Indifference, he said, “is a form of spiritual laziness and passivity, which always pushes us down” and distracts us from prayer. It is at the root of cynicism.
“It is tremendous waste and poison that enters into our lives,” he said. He warned listeners to be vigilant against the devil, who tries to distract people from prayer.
The Church Fathers spoke of spiritual despair as “the greatest danger of our soul,” he continued.
“Despondency is the impossibility for man to see anything good or positive and the reduction of everything to negativism and pessimism,” he said. “Are we able to see nice things in our life or do we only have criticism” about everything?
Indifference and despair fill a person with lust for power, “because these attitudes lead us to want compensation from others in the form of power and manipulation,” he said.
In speaking of “the positives,” the bishop explained that integrity is a harmony or wholeness of one’s body, mind and soul.
“Christ restores wholeness in us in the Resurrection,” he said. “God is a God of rules and order, not disorder.” He urged his listeners to put their spiritual lives in order by going to confession monthly.
“Why do you shower every day?” he asked. “Because we stink, and our sin also smells.” But people have become habituated to the stench of their sin and shrug it off, saying, “Oh well, it’s life,” he said.
“No,” he said. “The priests in the eparchy are here to listen to confessions as part of their mission. It is my priority. It is what I received from my experience with God as a Byzantine Catholic, where sacraments have an important role in our life. It’s not enough to confess one time a year because you don’t shower once a year.”
Humility is the “elimination of all lies in which we usually live,” he said. It “is a process. We must grow into it, to accept order and rules.”
“Humility alone is capable of truth, of seeing and accepting things as they are and seeing God’s majesty and goodness and love in everything,” he said, reminding his listeners that “God gives grace to the humble and he resists the proud.”
The bishop said the patience that Christians seek is God’s patience.
“Mankind is naturally impatient and judgmental of others. We all have a PhD in judgment,” he said. “When you don’t understand the full situation, pray for (the people involved). Jesus doesn’t speak about judgment, but about forgiveness, prayer and blessing.”
“We need to pray for others, to bless others, because we received this power of blessing at our baptism. There are different degrees of blessing in the church, but every member of the church can bless. Parents bless their children. Spouses bless each other. To bless is our right and our privilege,” he said.
On love, he referenced St. Paul’s famous passage in 1 Corinthians 13.
“God alone loves,” the bishop said. “Our effort in our spiritual life is to be one with God, that my life will become the love of God in my relationships with others.”
In speaking about the last part of the prayer, the bishop cited St. John Chrysostom, who
said, “I prefer to see my own sins than to see angels.”
In an effort “to see our own errors,” he urged the faithful to do an examination of
conscience and to pray the Ten Commandments daily.
The examination of conscience would be “very helpful as preparation for a good confession, to be able to recognize your sins, to guard against pride, which is the source of all evil,” he said.
“When we see our own sins, and not judge our brothers and sisters, and practice integrity, humility, patience and love, then the ultimate enemy — pride — will be destroyed in us,” he said.
Caption 1:
Byzantine Catholic faithful pray Vespers in the chapel of the Carmelite Monastery in Munster, Indiana, Feb. 25, at the end of the regional Lenten pilgrimage.
Caption 2:
Bishop Milan Lach, SJ, apostolic administrator of Parma, preaches during the Vespers service that concluded the regional Lenten pilgrimage on the Prayer of St. Ephrem.
(Photos: Laura Ieraci)
As published in Horizons, March 25, 2018. Sign up for the e-newsletter.