Stay with it – even when you're bored. If you're still there, it is still pleasing to God. … Your prayer and my prayer do not glorify God the way we think it does. You can't add to God's glory. He already has it. God didn't create us because he was lonesome. He didn't create us because he needed more glory. He can't have more glory than he always has. He never changes. He is infinite - without end. But we glorify Him in our prayer - because his glory shows itself in us.
Prayer is a dialogue between God and a human being. Prayer is not a feeling; it’s opening the heart to God. In this talk, Monsignor Lavalley discusses what Jesus – the ultimate authority – says about prayer in Matthew’s Gospel.
In his third talk, Monsignor Lavalley distinguishes between two types of silence. One is just a void. The other is contemplation. It's preparing a place where God is in control. Embrace the silence, he urges, where God is in control.
In the second of a series on silent prayer, Monsignor Lavalley addresses our felt need to appear better than we are - even when we're alone with God. "You can't earn God's love," he says. "I'm going to repeat that. You can't earn God's love - because you already have it. The imposter does not need to exist in front of God."
Today, there's a hunger for God, and a hunger for prayer. With this talk, Msgr. Lavalley begins a series on contemplative prayer. Practicing contemplative prayer is not for the chosen few, an exclusive club, he says.
All of us are sinners. All of us are loved by God. Christ comes to us in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The kiss of Christ is in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
"The Father said, "This is my Son in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him." At the Wedding at Cana, his mother said, "Do as he tells you." Listen to him. Do as he tells you." - Monsignor Lavalley
Monsignor Lavalley wraps up his Advent mission at Holy Name of Jesus parish. Evening 3. He offers thoughts on St. Peter, a broken church, and us. "Are you broken? Are you broken?” he asks. “St. Therese says, ‘That's where the sun comes in. That's where the Son comes in.’”
Monsignor Lavalley continues his Advent retreat. Evening 2. "A college student once asked me, 'Father, if you learned that the Eucharist was just a symbol, would it change your life?' And, I said, 'change my life? It would absolutely devastate me - because I would have to adjust to the fact that God loves me less than I thought."
He is near – An Advent retreat with Monsignor Lavalley at the Holy Name of Jesus Parish in Morrisville (VT). First conference. “We are broken and we are weak. And we are a broken church, and we are weak. We do not save ourselves. Jesus does.”
Today, we celebrate the feast of Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception. And I want to put the emphasis right here on Jesus himself to explain the Immaculate Conception. Because Jesus was the cause of the Immaculate Conception, the reason for the Immaculate Conception, and the fruit of the Immaculate Conception.