Hey, I'm Father Mark Mary! — I'm Brother Elijah.
We are the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal and this is Ascension Presents.
With the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, there's about a hundred and twenty-five of us.
— Wow where'd you get those signs?
And we make our own props. And we using recycled paper.
— Amazing.
So there’s 125 friars and each of the friars,
with Liturgy of the Hours, meditation on scripture, praying the Mass, daily Eucharistic holy hour...
we pray about four hours a day.
*Paper rustling* [Laughter]
which means that we pray...
*paper rustling*
The Friars of the Renewal pray how many hours a day?
— Uh — 400 times125?
500 hours. *paper rustling*
There are how many days? — Uhh, 31.
31 days. 31 x’s 500 means that...
the Friars of the Renewal pray 15,500 hours in a month.
And as you see, that’s such a big number that we sort of ran out of space when we were making that card.
For some of you, you think “That's a lot of prayer.
Why are grown men wasting 15,500 hours a month praying?
It doesn't seem like it's really achieving a lot of good.”
So I invited Brother Elijah to sort of help navigate that question.
— Yeah. So, I think the first thing that came to mind is a story.
So, myself and one of our priests, Father Emmanuel, were doing a mission trip to Idaho,
and we try to go two-by-two on these mission trips
to keep our fraternity and have somebody accompanying us
to kinda keep up with our prayers as well, so we'd have somebody to pray with.
I remember towards the end of the mission —
we'd been giving talks and preaching, sharing our stories, stuff like that.
And this one woman — we wanted to leave time for questions at the end of the mission —
and so this woman got up... she was probably in her lower to mid-30’s, maybe....
Hopefully I'm right on that and she's not watching. [Laughter]
She stood up and I just remember she had this really, um...
look of desperation.
Like, on her on her face, just the way she was carrying herself —
you could tell there was this weight.
She basically said, “You know, throughout this mission, when I listened to both of you talk,
I just see and experience so much peace.”
And just with that pining, with that desperation in her heart, in her voice,
she said, “Where do you get that peace?”
And it really struck me because, well, first of all
I haven't experienced a whole lot of my life people just walking up to me and saying
“Hey, wow, you're really peaceful!”
So I knew it wasn't coming from me.
It was, of course, coming from Christ and that we’re consecrated,
but specifically, I knew that it came from our life of prayer.
That that peace, it doesn't come out of nowhere, it doesn't just happen.
But it comes from spending time, day in and day out,
in front of the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.
Together praying and in solitude in our rooms, just taking that time throughout the day —
which is significant, four to five hours a day as kinda the baseline for all the friars —
to experience the gaze of the Father.
I think that's really what it is.
And that's what Jesus reveals to us, that we're pining for that gaze of the Father,
for a gaze that communicates to us an unconditional love
so that we would experience in the midst of the loneliness of our human state
that we are not alone, that God is always gazing upon us.
And so prayer, we set aside specifically to call to mind that reality.
And not just to call it to mind, but really experience it —
to experience the gaze of the Father in Christ, to put our hearts at rest, at ease.
And, like this woman recognized, that God had given us by the grace of our poverty
and receiving his presence in prayer, his peace.
— Yeah Brother, I thank you so much for sharing that
‘cause I think one of the things the world needs most —
maybe the thing the world needs most is the peace of Christ.
And I don't know about you, but for me that certainly resonates
with the deepest — one of the deepest — yearnings of my heart.
It’s like, what's it matter if I do all sorts of stuff if I lose my peace?
And what good is it if I'm doing all sorts of activity but I'm not bringing people the peace of Christ?
And I'm not going to get filled with peace of Christ if I'm not praying.
And the good news about this is that the Lord wants to give us his peace
and it's not just available to religious who have this sort of freedom —
the schedule to pray, you know, four hours a day.
But the Lord can give you that peace just in your own lives.
5, 10, 15, maybe a half hour — just to receive that peace
and bring it to those you love in the world.
So we invite you to pray, to sort of re-commit to praying this week,
to be filled with the peace of Christ,
and we look forward to seeing you again next week.