How did Matthew Kelly learn to Pray?

thank you thank you good evening how are you all good good girls great to be with you thank you for coming i want to thank the parish for hosting i want to thank scott for his introduction i want to thank all the people who all across the country um watching me on television they prefer that most of them prefer that we offered them to have me come live in person and they said no we'll watch the screen thanks but it's a it's a great experience for us it's a great experience for dynamic catholic for dynamic parish and it's it's an honor to be here again in louisiana i have so many great friends here and i i love it here it's a tough time to be catholic in america yes so yes the question that needs to be asked that we mostly dare not ask is will catholicism survive in america amidst the incredible secular pressures and our own self-destruction in many cases at this point in history will catholicism survive in america and we are going to answer that question tonight in perhaps the most indirect of ways perhaps the most indirect of ways when you look at any group of people there's always some people who are more engaged than other people you look around at work some people are very engaged some people acquit and stay some people are somewhere in the middle you look around any group of people there's always various levels of engagement and that's true for catholics it's true for christians it's true in every parish when you look at any group of people that is highly engaged they always have a few qualities a few characteristics that are shared universally that are not unique to them number one they're hungry for best practices what are they hungry for hungry for best practices what does that mean if you ask them to do something they've never done before the first thing they do is ask themselves who is the best in the world at this and what can i learn from them you ask them to run a marathon they've never run a marathon before they ask themselves who is the best in the world are training people to run marathons who've never run marathons before you ask them to ship a hundred thousand packages a day they ask themselves okay how does amazon and ups ship millions and millions and millions of packages every day they're hungry for best practices number one number two they're committed to continuous learning what are they committed to they're committed to continuous learning constantly learning new things constantly feeding their minds reading great books listening to great programs going out on a saturday night to listen to crazy australians speak they're constantly feeling their committed to continuous learning and and the combination the combination of being hungry for best practices and committed to continuous learning creates continuous improvement and so you've been in this process with scott and jack and the rest of the consultants you know being in this process and what do you see all the time in everything they do you see i you see incredible intentionality okay nothing is just done randomly there's incredible intentionality it's driven by a real hunger for best practice commitment to continuous learning and and together they bring this just continuous improvement that makes dynamic catholic better every day that makes dynamic parish every better every day that makes you and me better every day and that hopefully ultimately transforms our parishes into dynamic parishes the third thing that people have got when they're massively engaged they've got personal clarity what do they have well what does that mean they know who they are they know what they're here for they know what matters most and they know what matters the least okay you answer those four questions and life gets a lot simpler why because you get better at saying yes and you get better at saying no and most people on the planet are horrible at saying no most people say yes to stuff all the time they should say no to most people say yes to stuff every day they should say no to and those most people turns out to be you and me it's not some people off in some far distant galaxy we are saying yes to stuff every day that we should be saying no to why well we don't upset people we don't disappoint people we think if we don't go the world will fall down but mostly the main reason the main reason we say yes to stuff we should say no to is because um we want everyone to like us yeah they want everyone to like us even the people we don't like i'm not kidding this is serious it's like listen let's be really clear from the start i do not like you okay never gonna happen but it's very important to my emotional psychological health and well-being that you like me foundation of life is choices decisions life is choices making hundreds of choices every single day most of them unconsciously we're making a lot of choices every single day of our life life is choices we are the people we are today in the situations we are today in the circumstances we are today because of all the choices we've made before today life is choices and so one of the things we have to understand i mean there's so many reasons to pray there's so many reasons to develop a really dynamic daily routine of prayer but one of the reasons one of the fruits is that god wants you to become a phenomenal decision maker what does god want you to become he wants to become a phenomenal decision maker why because he is a parent he's a parent if you've got kids say uh huh all right if i said to you i can guarantee you your kids are always going to make phenomenal decisions how much would you worry about your kids right just have to worry about all the other idiots sorry it might be inappropriate but it's true yeah as a parent you want your kids to make great decisions why where'd you get that from because it's part of the divine parental dream it's part of god's dream for us to be great decision makers and so we take on his dream for us we take on those same dreams for our children when we're aligned with him and so we want our kids to be great decision makers and yet almost nowhere in our society do we teach people to make great decisions nowhere through the education of a child in the modern advanced western world where we have everything and we think we know everything nowhere in the process of education do we actually sit people down and say i'm going to teach you how to make great decisions it's going to be the most important lesson you learn in your life or one of the top 10 i'm going to teach you how to make great decisions and so god as father as parent wants to take us into the classroom of silence on a daily basis and he wants to teach us how to make great decisions because he knows it will make all the difference in everything in your relationships in your parenting in your marriage in your personal finances and your health and wellbeing in your career in your friend in everything he knows that if he can teach you to make great decisions to become a phenomenal decision maker it will change your life forever and it will empower you to go out and share those same teachings with other people god wants you to become a phenomenal decision maker and it's not going to happen out there in a crazy noisy busy world it's not going to happen out there and so he invites us ever patiently ever persistently he invites us into the classroom of silence and he says will you give me a few minutes today no god we're busy today we give me a few minutes today now we're busy today why are we always so busy why are we so afraid why do we avoid prayer there's a lot of reasons one reason is that we live in a culture that's obsessed with effectiveness and accomplishing things and when you sit down in a quiet place and you close your eyes and in your heart you talk to god it doesn't look like you're accomplishing anything and you don't look very effective at all to the world okay and so the world completely dismisses the inner life okay the world completely dismisses not just prayer but the inner life emotionally psychologically spiritually in lots of other ways the world completely dismisses the inner life because the world has become so focused on secularism so focused on consumerism so focused on efficiency and accomplishment that the world looks at the person praying and says she's doing nothing he's wasting his time he's not accomplishing anything this is very ineffective one of the reasons we don't pray another one of the reasons we don't pray is because because in this world obsessed with accomplishments effectiveness we also we're in love with credentials you know we're in love with credentials um we love to ask people what are your credentials because you're in love with credentials what are your credentials and you know what else we love we love getting credentials or if i'm going to do that will i get any credentials or what credentials will i get oh yeah we're going to put you through this certification and then you're going to get these credentials we're going to put you through this course and then you're going to get these these credentials or we're going to we're going to have this training and then you'll have these credentials and god's inviting you to a daily habit experience of prayer but you're not going to get any credentials um it's difficult isn't it it's going to be the most difficult most intense most rewarding experience of your life but you're not going to get any credentials it's going to appear to other people like you're not accomplishing anything it's incredibly inefficient all relationships are i don't know if you've ever tried to get a five-year-old to do anything okay it's more effective to negotiate with the taliban okay trust me i've got a five-year-old he told me yesterday he said daddy what you have to remember is i am your master and you are still the student said well how many lessons until i become the master i'll let you know but the number one reason i really believe this the number one reason we don't pray also turns out to be the biggest tragedy in the history of christianity number one reason we don't pray is because no one ever taught us no one ever taught us i mean really how to pray no one ever taught us and when we did our research this was one of many many things that stunned me you asked people who taught you to pray have you ever been taught how to pray not really i picked up so few things along the way we talk so much about prayer think about how many books there are about prayer think about how many speeches get made homilies get made about prayer but we don't actually teach people how to step into the classroom of silence and sit down with their god and have the epic conversation the most important conversation of your life most important conversation of our lives that just goes on and on and on it goes on through every situation in every circumstance the conversation is just always there goes on and on and on but nobody ever taught us as scott mentioned i'm thinking a lot about prayer this year because uh i'm writing a book about prayer about the daily habit of prayer the daily routine of prayer how important it is to our lives how important it is to our relationships how important it is to helping us discover who we are and what we're here for and what matters most and what matters least giving us that clarity that sets off really decisive decision making but also you know helps us to to discover the mission that god is calling us to to have confidence in in hearing god's voice in our lives because he does talk to us it's one of the questions that comes up all the time does god really talk to us yes he does really talk to us you know and he has really talked to us and he will continue to really talk to us and you know if you crack open the bible the most common preface to any sentence in the bible is god said god said to adam and god said to eve and god said to noah and god said to moses and god said to abraham and jacob and god said to mary and god said to the poor and god has been saying he's been speaking to people everything about revelation tells us what the god wants relationship with us that god wants relationship with us but we live in a transactional world and many of our relationships are transactional and very often we bring that transactional approach to our relationship with god and so when we've got a big decision to make that's when we pray that's what we pray we even stop by church got a big decision to make we come by church we sit in our big beautiful empty quiet churches we sit with our god and we say god i got this great big decision to make what should i do and god says how are you what do you mean god i got this big decision to make what do you think i should do and god says how are you what's happening in your life haven't seen you in a while i've been wondering did i do something and we're like yeah okay god we'll get to that later but right now i've got this really big decision to make it's like if someone walks up to you on the street and says tell me your deepest darkest secret right what are your chances of answering that question okay why because it's disproportionate to the intimacy that you have with that person okay and god desires intimacy with us he wants relationship with us he wants intimacy with us what is intermediate mutual self-revelation god teaches us intimacy through revelation he reveals himself to us because revelation is intimacy most of the gods that have been worshipped throughout history are what they're cold distant impersonal gods there was no intimacy it was like god's up there and we're down here but our god is not a cold distant impersonal god he's warm he is close he wants to walk with us he wants a deeply personal relationship he wants to be in intimacy with us he wants to be part of those conversations and it takes time to develop it takes time to develop that relationship i grew up in australia and like many catholics i grew up catholic i was baptized as a child i i went to catholic schools i went to church on sunday i have seven brothers and um my parents used to sit us right in that pew right there in the front row every sunday nobody else at the parish would even sit there for 10 a.m mass it's like it wouldn't matter if we came in at 9 59 that whole pew would be completely empty and they'd sit us in there father's watching he's like right there i asked my dad about that many years later he said he said i wanted to put as many distractions behind you kids as possible i thought that's pretty smart i went to church every sunday um i didn't get it i didn't get it you know the four signs of dynamic catholic obviously was groundbreaking and a lot of people missed the epilogue which actually is critically important and the epilogue is about trigger experiences what takes a person from not getting it to getting it when it comes to their faith when it comes to catholicism and you can tell the difference beside between someone who who gets it and doesn't get it and there's people who don't get it who come to church every sunday faithfully they come to church every sunday they're there every sunday but they haven't had that they haven't had that trigger experience yet and people often ask me like what are your dreams for dynamic catholic i want dynamic catholic to be a game changer factory constantly creating game changers for catholics and their parishes and a lot of those game changes are trigger experiences a lot of those game changes that trigger experiences because once people are triggered into engagement they'll go out and find ways to feed themselves they'll do a lot of stuff on their own once they're triggered into engagement but until they're triggered into engagement you can't actually engage them you can't actually engage them in a conversation you can't actually engage them in continuous improvement hunger for best practices around the faith you can't engage them in these things and so i was one of those people who didn't get it and i was about 15 years old and i was playing basketball with some friends of mine and a bunch of people all sorts of ages there was another guy used to play he's about 15 years older than me at the time um and he's a friend of my families and we got talking and he said to me one day he said you know matthew most of your friends will stop practicing their faith in the next 10 years i'm like hadn't really thought of that 10 years is like i'm 15 years old the only thing i know about 10 years is that it's further than 10 minutes away i said okay he said i think it's i think it's time you really gave your faith a good look you know and he said to me he said i'm okay if you reject catholicism as long as you know what you're rejecting he says i want you to take a look at it you've been swimming in it your whole life but you've never really taken a look at it i want you to think about what role religion spirituality faith is going to play in your life this is really important and it was one of those situations where like you're 15 and you're you're pretending to listen out of respect because this this guy is like your elder he was like 30. but you're not really listening right you're not really listening but he wouldn't let go he wouldn't let go and um his next challenge to me was uh he challenged me to stop by church every day for 10 minutes and i had to walk past church to get to school so it was difficult to walk past there wasn't another route so i literally had to walk past every day i remember one day i stopped in and um i sat up the back of the church and i i just sat there for ten minutes and like i literally like ten minutes i just sat there for ten minutes and then i left i didn't say any prayers i didn't do any prayer i didn't anything any prayer i just sat there for ten minutes and i thought about my day and i noticed that my day was different just by sitting there just by thinking about my day i noticed that my day was different i noticed that i was just calmer i was more peaceful i was more focused i came back again the next day i sat up the back just sit there just thought about my day i did this for a couple weeks and then i i thought this can be more efficient i can accomplish more in this 10 minutes and so i started planning my day and i would come in the back of church and sit way up the back second last few i remember it second last view every day and i'd i planned my day i hadn't muttered a word to god yet okay this been going on for weeks and weeks you know jesus sitting up there at a tabernacle thinking what is this kid doing down there hello i'm up here well i'm planning my day planning my day but just something about it just brought peace it brought calm it brought focus it brought clarity however minimal it did bring clarity and i and i started to see value in this and then one day i did i had a decision to make i had this decision to make and i i remember looking up towards the tabernacle and and just in my heart just saying god listen god i got a problem here i got a problem here i got a decision to make and i remember just in a a mental conversation with god saying this is the problem these are the circumstances god what do you think i should do that question changed my life i call it the big question it's the question where we we pause and we turn to god and we say all right god what do you what do you think i should do and i stumbled upon it i mean i just stumbled upon it but it changed my life forever when you think about it we don't ask it very often we ask a lot of people for advice you know we ask a lot of people for advice people who know just about nothing about just about nothing just about nowhere i've got this really big decision to make what do you think i should do we're usually not looking for their advice we're looking for someone to tell us we should do what we want to do yeah we go around i got this big decision to make what do you think i should do oh yeah thanks listen i got this big decision what do you think would you come up with that idea then they think themselves i know what i'll do i'll ask a priest they go to the priests father i got this really big decision to make what do you what do you think really then they ask another priest and then finally they come upon someone who says to them you know what i think you should do this which is exactly what we've already decided we want to do and we say to that person you're a very wise person the spirit is with you god is working in you and through you and with you and thank you and i'm so grateful anyway i'm sitting down the back of the church and i'm like god what do you think i should do and i i began to pray i began to pray it changed my life people often you know they read my books hear me speak where do you get that stuff from how'd you know all that stuff so really i really believe that it's in prayer that god teaches us and forms us and guides us shows us who we are who we're not shows us what we're here for what we're not here for shows us what matters most and what matters least and out of that clarity incredible things begin to happen but it it takes this daily habit it takes this daily habit not occasionally not once a week it takes this daily habit and it takes saying okay this is going to be the most important thing i do every day you know it takes i'm gonna put on my schedule i don't know if you've noticed but most of the most important things we do every day don't go on our schedule we put the least important things on the schedule and the most important things will do them when we get around to them which in the case of prayer usually means we end up practicing prayer at the end of the day i'll just lay down and do my prayers our father who art in heaven the question is not uh are we going to pray not only that but are we going to make it a priority we're going to make it this this central piece this this sacred thing in our schedule this this this non-negotiable thing i had a great spiritual director when i first started traveling and speaking you know and he said to me he said to me when i was going out on the road for the first time he said listen you start to travel the thing that is most at risk is your spiritual life okay you go out there you start to travel you start to speak all of these great things are going to happen but the thing that is most at risk is your spiritual life is your daily prayer he says i'll give you one immutable rule when it comes to your daily prayer he said to me never put it off never put it off he says if you have a conflict if you have a genuine scheduling conflict bring it forward but never put it off never do it later always do it earlier he said if you're going to miss an hour of sleep better to miss an hour of sleep than to delay your prayer even 20 minutes he says because the minute you start delaying your prayer you're just you're just not going to do it sooner or later you're not going to do it you just keep pushing it back and pushing it back and and pushing it back and so we start to create this experience of prayer there are some seismic shifts in our spiritual life okay seismic shifts the first one is when we ask the big question you know we stop like giving god instructions i mean remember coming in the back of church sitting up in that second last view all right hi god uh how i got good um i want this i want this one this one this one this one this i want this i want this i want this i want this i want this i want this i want this have a great day god get busy with that and i'll see you tomorrow that's like beyond that's beyond listen lord your servant is speaking it's like here's your instructions for the day lord and how often we pray like that why because no one ever taught us to pray no one ever taught us to pray you know but the first seismic shift is when we say all right god what do you think i should do we actually open ourselves the idea that god might have a better plan for you and your life than the plan you have for you and your life you don't have to accept it as a truth or as a reality as anything just to open yourself up that maybe just maybe it could be possible that god has a better plan for you and your life than the than the one we can come up with ourselves it's it's one of the first seismic shifts that we experience in the spiritual life and there are a number along the way another one of those seismic shifts is when we stop doing prayer and we just start giving ourselves to prayer giving ourselves to prayer same old priest he told me he just keep showing up just keep showing up just keep showing up doesn't matter what happened you get discouraged keep showing up you know break your leg just keep showing up you know you feel like god's far away just keep showing up just keep showing up when it comes to your daily routine of prayer your number one job is to do what just keep showing up okay he's always working he's always working just got to keep showing up and we live in a society that's very much about doing accomplishing effectiveness efficiencies doing and so we tend to want to bring that to our prayer right let's do our prayer i'm going to do my prayer now next seismic shift i don't know if this next one but another one of the seismic shifts is when we stop doing our prayer and we just start giving ourselves to prayer we just show up and all right god what do you want to do with me today what do you want to do with me today because it's in these surrenders it's in these surrenders that god begins to work with us that god begins to work in us in very very powerful ways now we've got a problem here the problem here is that you're only going to surrender to a certain type of god and so our image of god the image of god you hold in your mind in your heart is very very important okay if you've got an image of god that god is like a dictator you know that god is like always out to get people to god is always this type of thing you're not going to surrender to that god so you've got to do a bit of image work first right you got to work out okay what is my image of god why do i have that image of god where'd i get that image of god and and and what if that is true and what if that is not true because if we if we don't get the image of god right the image we hold of god we're not going to surrender to that type of god and it's critical to the process and so i've been doing this for i don't know nearly 30 years now and i've talked about the 10 minutes a day a lot i've told people just pray for 10 minutes a day people always say do i have to do it in church then i say my church is locked yeah your church is locked because you're not there if we were all in our church our church wouldn't be locked 10 minutes a day 30 years i've been talking to people just start with 10 minutes a day just have the discipline of 10 minutes a day and as i said i'm i'm working on this book this year the book's called i i heard god laugh and it's about it's about the daily routine of prayer but it starts off with the question does god have a sense of humor you know and and and the idea that humor is so essential to the human experience okay and and if you read the gospels there's no evidence that jesus had a sense of humor you know i mean except that he did raise peter's mother-in-law from the dead in other than that other than that there's no evidence that that jesus had a sense of humor but you think about jesus right and the disciples you got these 13 guys walking down these dusty roads for almost three years you got to believe there were some epic moments of humor yes or yes i want to know the god who created us with a sense of humor i want you to know the god that gave you a sense of humor and in order for us to know that god i think we have to to think differently about how we vision god what our image of god is but i'm working on this book and i'm thinking about my own journey of prayer and i realized for 30 years i have left one critical piece of the story out i've been telling people for 30 years yep where did it start for me it started for me 10 minutes a day this guy encouraged me to stop by church 10 minutes a day i started by stopping by 10 minutes a day then started doing a little bit longer a little bit longer it's become one of the foundational habits of my life i've been telling that story for 30 years i've written a story a couple of times in a couple of different books but i just realized about a month ago i have left one critical piece of the story out for about 30 years you see this guy the old guy the 30 year old after about six eight ten weeks i don't know how long it was into the process but it's six eight ten weeks into the process we're playing basketball he's like you're doing your ten minutes i say yep i walk past church every day you think i'm gonna walk past now i've got like a guilty conscience if i walk past and that's your fault and then one day we were going somewhere i think we were going to play basketball somewhere and he was driving we're driving past church and he said to me um do you do you 10 minutes today i say yeah so why don't we stop and do another 10 minutes so all right maybe that'll help with the basketball so he pulls up to church he sits there and i go to get out of the car he says just hold on a minute matthew i want to tell you a little bit about what we're going to do here i said all right i said i thought we're going to do like 3 or 10 minutes he said yeah we're going to do that but i want to explain a couple of things we're going to do he says when we go in there why don't we sit you know next to each other and um i'll start us off with a little prayer and then what i like to do is i like to i'd like to read a couple of lines from the spiritual book i got and then i'll talk to god about whatever's in those lines for me and and you talk to god about whatever's in those lines for you and then after a couple of minutes i'll read another couple lines and um we'll do the same thing and we'll do that for about 10 or 15 minutes and then we got out of the car we went into church probably sat about halfway down the church church completely empty middle of the afternoon you know and he sits down there and he prays this little prayer just to sort of get us in the presence of god just to focus us and then he um he just sits there and quiet for a minute we just sort of sink into the experience and then he takes out this book and he just reads a couple of lines from the spiritual book and then he told me what to do just have a conversation with god about those couple of lines a couple minutes pass he read the couple lines again and i just talked about to god about you know what those lines were saying to me how they were challenging me how they were encouraging me how they were inspiring me you know and he did this a few times and and then after what i assumed was 10 or 12 minutes he um he just did like a little closing prayer and we left it turns out we've been in there for like 25 30 minutes completely changed my life what did he do he taught me how to pray the great saints the great mystics talk about this conversation with god this this prayer of conversation they talk about it as contemplation they talk about it as meditation they talk about it as so many things we have placed it as something for the saints for the mystics for the giants but all of them were very clear that this should be the prayer of every single one of us that the prayer of every single one of us should be this prayer this conversation with god this intimate conversation with god about everything and anything that's happening in our lives about the things that are troubling us about the things that are inspiring us whatever's going on my life literally changed forever that day you don't realize it at the time we are we're oblivious to the most important moments in our lives very often when they're happening it's only in hindsight it's only in retrospect it's only with a lot more experience that we're able to say wow my life changed forever in that moment how important was those 20 minutes in that church that day how important were they well i'm in louisiana tonight i am very very confident that without those 20 minutes i would not be in louisiana tonight the past 30 years i've traveled in more than 50 countries spoken live to more than 5 million people written so many books i literally don't know how many books i've written books that have sold 40 million copies in english and who knows how many copies in the other 25 languages they've been published in add into the mix things like dynamic catholic out into the mix things like dynamic parish i am very very confident that without that 20 minutes that day none of that would have happened that's how important it is that we teach people how to pray that's how important it is that we teach people how to pray not talk to people about prayer not talk to people about prayer you know not even write books about prayer i know i'm writing a book about prayer but it's like one of the first things i say is like first things i say is that every book has a promise and and one of the promises i'm trying to keep this book is to keep it as short as possible because i don't want to write a book about prayer i want to write a book that triggers people into the prayer experience and i want you to learn how to pray not for yourself not only for yourself but i want you to learn how to pray so that you can teach other people how to pray because most people i'm telling you 99 of catholics in america never been taught how to pray i don't know why i don't know why i don't know how it doesn't matter it doesn't matter what matters is what do we do now what do we do now we developed the um four signs out of the research you know we announced okay these are the four signs for dynamic catholic what happens people become critics people like well no that's not the four signs where's mary you left mary out how can it be the four signs it doesn't even have mary and then we got people oh that can't be the four signs because where's where's sunday mass how can you be a dynamic catholic without sunday mass what are you doing we've got to get people to come to church what we did was we studied the research we studied the behaviors and we studied these things and we looked at sunday mass and daily prayer is a perfect example okay we study the cause and effect relationship what did we study okay now i can tell you that somebody who prays every day a catholic who prays every day who really has a rigorous dynamic routine habit of daily prayer the chances of that person missing sunday mass is what next to zero okay on the other hand i know there are almost 20 million american catholics who come to church every sunday who don't pray every day so the reverse is not true daily prayer a rigorous experience of daily prayer does lead to sunday mass participation sunday mass participation does not naturally lead to a rigorous daily routine of prayer so we studied these things we we thought about these things and then i thought to myself okay catholics in america don't know how to pray we've got to teach them how to pray there's 77 million catholics in america okay and i asked myself if you could teach every catholic in america just how to pray how would you do it it's a pretty big question isn't it it's a bold question okay that's the kind of stuff we think about a dynamic catholic because we're really crazy it's like most people think oh if i could teach these 10 people over here how to pray how we do it no we think okay 77 million catholics in america we teach them all how to pray how would we do that you see everything we do we want to be scalable and sustainable what do we want it to be yeah it's important lesson especially in this dynamic parish experience because there's going to be times when you're going to think well we should do this or we should do that or we should do the other thing and what are we trying to do we're trying to help you become a dynamic catholic we're trying to help your parish become a dynamic parish and we're trying to work out the model there's 15 000 catholic parishes in america today we're trying to work out the model that can apply to 15 000 catholic parishes and so sometimes you're going to say well we should do this and what are we going to do we're going to put it through a whole series of discernment one of which is okay is this scalable is it sustainable if we started here now will it be sustained in this parish will it only be sustained in this parish while this person is here or while this little group is here and if this little group leaves this parish what will happen to this thing will it be sustainable anymore no okay we've got to ask ourselves should we even start it we want it to be scalable we want it to be sustainable can we take what's happening here to 15 000 parishes around the united states because people are hungry yes or yes yeah people are hungry that's one thing i know about this dynamic parish thing is like everyone wants to belong to a dynamic parish everyone wants to belong to a dynamic parish god bless them even those people only come to church once a year at christmas what kind of parish they want to come to once a year at christmas yeah everybody wants to belong to a dynamic parish will the catholic church in america survive well that depends on another question will we become a people of prayer see catholics and the church we're no longer considered a spiritual people yes every single day the catholic church feeds more people houses more people clothes more people visits more imprisoned people takes care of more sick people and educates more people than any other institution on the planet earth and that comes from our spiritual roots but we're no longer considered a spiritual people if you take a poll of a hundred people downtown any city in america and ask them give me three words to describe catholics what percentage those people would say prayerful or spiritual that's the heart of the problem that's the tragedy that's the crisis that's the opportunity well the catholic church in america survived yes to some extent you know and people say yeah the gates of hell not prevail against that's in the bible yet great i'm concerned about all the collateral damage which is what your kids your grandkids your friends your extended family the strangers you meet at work i'm concerned about all of those people in the meantime and all of those people depends on if we become a people of prayer we become a spiritual people again so in thinking about how do we teach 77 million catholics to pray we come up with something called the prayer process ten years ago i would have stood up here and i would have explained the prayer process to you i would have walked you through the prayer process because that's what i would have done but i realized that that day when that guy stopped at the church and took me into church and sat down next to me and taught me how to pray i realized that's a critical piece of the process so i'm not going to explain the prayer process to you tonight i'm not going to walk you through it i'm going to um i'm going to sit down there and we're going to we'll pray our way through it together how's that sound because we cannot we absolutely cannot teach people to pray by talking to them about prayer i believe that absolutely cannot teach people to pray by talking to them about prayer if we want to teach people how to pray the only way to do that is to um is to pray with them i think somewhere on your way in you've got a little prayer process card did you okay you're welcome to um you're welcome to have it out you don't have to have it out i am going to walk us through it but i think it's um it's my hope that that will become a very treasured possession for you in the days weeks and uh and months ahead of us so i want you to get yourself comfortable you know if you've got to put some things on the ground make a little bit of room for yourself put your phone down do whatever else it is you got to do let's do that and uh let's pray a little bit i'm gonna i'm gonna guide you through it just ask you to be open to the process just ask you to be open to the process that's all i ask we just take a moment and just still ourselves we have busy lives we live in a busy world we live in a troubled world and life is messy our own lives are messy because humanity is messy and our own humanity is messy so we just take a couple of minutes and take a couple of deep breaths and just still yourself and get comfortable so you can relax into prayer so you can relax into god so you can relax into the experience the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit amen my lord and my god i firmly believe that you are here that you see us and that you hear us we adore you our hearts are filled with gratitude for all the ways you bless us especially those we're unaware of and even oblivious to we ask you to open our hearts and our minds to what is possible to all the possibilities that exist only in you we ask you to give us the grace the courage and the wisdom to align ourselves with you so that those possibilities can [Music] come to be and bear abundant fruit in our lives um there are seven steps in the prayer process the first step is gratitude the instruction is just to begin by thanking god in a personal dialogue talk to him for whatever you are most grateful for today and just encourage you to talk to god in a personal dialogue for a moment or two about whoever and whatever you are most grateful for today uh um the second step is awareness the directive is revisit the times in the past 24 hours when you were and were not the best version of yourself talk to god about these situations and what you have learned from them um the third step is significant moments identify something you experienced in the last 24 hours and explore what god might be trying to say to you through that event or person what has been the most significant or what has been a significant experience in the last 24 hours and what do you think god's trying to say to you through that person or event you the fourth piece is the fourth part is about peace and the direction is ask god to forgive you for any wrong you have committed against yourself another person or him and to fill you with a deep and abiding peace so you um the fifth step is about freedom speak with god about how he is inviting you to change your life so that you can experience the freedom to be the best version of yourself you step six is about other people lift up to god anyone you feel called to pray for today asking god to bless and guide them using your own words just talk to god and lift up the people you feel called to pray for you the final piece the seventh step we pray together our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name the kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil amen in the name of the father and the son the holy spirit amen so when we were putting the prayer process together thinking about okay how do we teach 77 million catholics to pray it was a challenge it was a great challenge and it's just one of those challenges the team at dynamic catholic loves you know i think the power of the the prayer the form of the prayer is that it leads you into that conversation yes so yes it leads you into the conversation it it um [Music] it gets the conversation started but it's it's infinitely expandable you know a monk who spent 50 years in the monastery could use that same prayer and have a powerful experience yes so yes yeah because it's it's got nothing to do with it's just a context it's just a format it's just it's just like an introduction it's just like talk to god about this and then all the content comes from the the monks heart comes from the monks life comes from what the monk is struggling with what the monks challenges are what the monks encouragements are someone who's never prayed before could have an incredibly powerful experience why because it's it's not about what's on the card it's about what's in the person's heart and what's happening in the person's life and that's what god wants to talk to us about that's the kind of intimacy that's the kind of personal relationship that he yearns to have with us the question is will we make it a priority in our day we make it a priority now today we make it a sacred priority in our day and maybe some of us sit there and say well i've been praying every day for 116 years the question i would ask is is the holy spirit calling you to pray in a new way so that you can teach others to pray in a new way at this time in your life in this season in your life because learning to listen to god in our life means recognizing that he calls us to new things in new seasons for new reasons but always for great reasons we come here tonight we have this experience the question isn't about the experience the question is about what you will do when you go home tonight and what you'll do when you wake up tomorrow our lives change when our habits change when do our lives change our lives change when our habits change god's constantly inviting us to fill our lives with richer more rewarding habits not only for ourselves but for other people god's constantly inviting us to fill our lives with habits that bear better fruit and more fruit not just for ourselves but for other people will the catholic church america survive what i know about that question for sure is it is up to you and me it is not controlled by some far distant force it is up to you and me you know i opened my book from 2001 rediscover catholicism i opened the book by saying the catholic church is not something that we inherit from generations past we often think about it like that we go into these great old churches you know you go downtown new orleans you go into some of these great old churches and the danger is to think catholic church is something we inherited from generations past but it isn't it's on loan to us it's on loan to us from future generations your great grandchildren and their great-grandchildren and their great-grandchildren have loaned you this parish have loaned you this church this thing we call catholicism question is or will we return to them what kind of church will we return to them what kind of parish will we give to them i close the same book rediscover catholicism by saying there are more than 70 million catholics in america okay there are 1.2 billion catholics on the planet more than 70 million catholics in america if we multiplied your life just your life if we multiplied your life by 1.2 billion what would the church be like how engaged or disengaged would the church be if we multiplied your life by 1.2 billion what would the church be like how engaged would it be how disengaged would it be if you look at the four signs if we multiplied your life by 1.2 billion how prayerful would the church be how how much of a continuous learner would the church be how generous would the church be and how missionary how much evangelization would be taking place in the church where we multiplied your life by 1.2 we multiplied your life by 1.2 billion what would that church look like what would the catholic church in america look like 20 years from now i have no idea but i do know we get to decide we get to decide and so i'll leave you with one story once upon a time there was a uh a very successful businessman and he was known for having these lavish parties these fabulous parties and he honed a number of residences around the world and one of the homes he had was a castle in england and so one summer he decided to have a party to host the party at this castle he invited friends acquaintances to come to the party and the the guest list was like a who's who of the whole world you had business leaders you have political leaders you had great artists and great musicians and sprinkled in amongst them you had a handful of ordinary people lifelong friends of the host when the guests showed up to the castle the castle was lit up with all these open flames and it it just looked spectacular and they were ushered into this incredible dining hall where they enjoyed the most phenomenal foods and wines and after dinner uh but before dessert the host stood up and he he thanked these guests for coming and he explained to them that usually at his parties he had music and dancing but that this evening instead of music for entertainment it invited one of england's premier shakespearean actors to present a series of excerpts from the writings of william shakespeare and to that the actor stood up to thunderous applause and began to present these excerpts from the writings of shakespeare one after another he presented them brilliantly phenomenally breathtakingly and after each episode the uh the audience erupted again in applause and the applause echoed up through the castle off the stone walls and out into the courtyards and after about 25 minutes of brilliance the actor announced that he was finished but if anybody had any favorite shakespearean passages that he had not presented that he would take requests and one woman raised her hand and requested the 13th sonnet and he presented it brilliantly another man raised his hand and requested the soliloquy from macbeth and he presented it brilliantly let an old man raise his hand way down the back of the dining hall the actor called on the old man and as it turned out the old man was a was a priest catholic priest childhood friend of the host the priest said to the actor he said sir i realize it's not shakespeare but i was wondering would you present for us the 23rd psalm the actor smiled and he said father when i was in fourth grade my teacher loved the 23rd psalm and she had us all learn the 23rd psalm by heart and every morning one of the students was invited to the front of the classroom to recite the 23rd psalm the actor said to the priest father i i will be delighted to recite the psalm but i do have one condition priest was little taken aback wasn't expecting conditions old priests said to the actor what's your condition the actor said i will recite the psalm if when i'm finished you will recite the psalm the old priest was really taken aback now but he very much wanted to hear the actor recite the psalm and so he begrudgingly agreed and the actor began the lord is my shepherd there is nothing i shall want and when he finished the people stood up they clapped they cheered they clapped and they cheered like they would never stop clapping and cheering when they did finally settled down the actor looked down towards the old priest he said father it's your turn now the old priest stood up in his place and he he fidgeted with the tablecloth in front of him a little bit and then in a voice that was firm and deeply reflective he began the lord is my shepherd there is nothing i shall want he lets me lie down in green pastures he leads me besides peaceful waters he restores my soul he leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake even though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death i will not be afraid for the lord he is at my side his staff and his rod they comfort and protect me he prepares a table for me in the presence of my enemy he anoints my head with oil my cup overflows surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and i will live in the house of the lord forever and when the priest had finished nobody clapped nobody spoke nobody moved it was as if he had mesmerize them standing back up the actor said to the people he said do you do you realize what you've just seen do you realize what you've just witnessed what you've just experienced and the people they they looked at the actor with blank stares he said to them i'll tell you i'll tell you i know the psalm i know the psalm i have known a psalm my whole life but why was the priest so much more powerful why did he have that effect on you i'll tell you because i know the psalm but he knows the shepherd he knows the shepherd he knows the shepherd if you do nothing else with your life literally not figuratively metaphorically nice thing to say literally if you do nothing else with your life get to know the shepherd because the future not the future of catholicism in america the future of everything depends upon that god bless you [Music] you

Channel: Matthew Kelly

Views: 109,194

Rating: 4.9037948 out of 5

Keywords: matthew kelly, prayer, the best version of yourself, personal development, spirituality

Id: _WE3dy0HEck

Length: 91min 45sec (5505 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 10 2021