Google Earth Pictorial: St. James Academy
[Download and Install Google Earth]

Is a thought a prayer?

A conversation with the Divine?

An instant of suspended perception. 

Where the crescendo of understanding 

Dances with a moment? 

A million possibilities race

Across the ethereal projection

Somewhere within me.

A name, a word, a face.

A song, a date, a place. 

And do you see them too?

And do they come from you? 

And do you smile as you see?

Or are they just for me?  

The most famous prayer by St. Ignatius is the Sucipe, the prayer of surrender. One of the things the prayer asks us to be surrender to God is our. I’ve often wondered, “How do you surrender your thoughts to God?” I mean, I get the whole science fiction “mind-control” thing. It is a technique that often gets used to make a story interesting, but I don’t know if it is really possible to surrender your thoughts. 

I guess I’m thinking about thought because I had an experience a Mass today that was challenging. I attended Mass at my nephew’s high school, St. James Academy. It is a new Catholic High school in which the Catholic faith is built into the design of the school from the ground up. From any classroom in the school, you can see the Tabernacle which is in the chapel. The chapel roof is the highest point in the building. But on a more practical level, the students are all excited because they are all issued a laptop computer which enables all sorts of cool virtual experiences in education and homework. If you have downloaded Google Earth onto your computer, you can view my pictorial of St. James’ chapel by clicking here. 

At Mass, the homilist asked us to look at someone near to us for 5 seconds and then for 10 seconds, do whatever we want. I looked at my sister and my mom and looking at them made me think of all the good times we’ve had together, so I smiled.

The priest then challenged us. He asked what we did with our 10 seconds, and if we didn’t, why we didn’t use that time to say a prayer for the person. It only takes a couple seconds to say a prayer for someone.  It is a beautiful reflection. We can use simple moments in our day, to commit our spiritual energies to the benefit of someone in need. It doesn’t take much, but it makes all the difference in the world.  

You could tell that many of the young people who attended Mass felt a little guilty about the 10 seconds that they “wasted.” I, for some reason, didn’t. I didn’t overtly say a prayer for my sister or my mom, but they were in my thoughts and made me smile. I can’t think of a prayer I would rather repeat. We often say, “Keep me in your thoughts and prayers.”

How are thoughts different than prayers? It occurs to me that thoughts are gifts. The ability to think is a gift. I’m not sure that it is edifying to use all of our time thinking and never prayibg, but it does strike me that the best way to surrender our thoughts is to use them thinking about the betterment of our brothers, our sisters, our mothers, our fathers, and even to think about God. When we do this, our thoughts are indeed prayers, and if we’re lucky, these thoughts will make us smile, (and maybe God too.)