It’s Advent time again!

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

HERE we go again! These words may be spoken either in cynicism or with much hope, expectation and excitement as we begin another liturgical year with the celebration of the Advent season.

Of course, we should try our best that we speak these words with joy and expectation as we make another proximatepreparation for the birth of Christ, our redeemer. With Advent we put ourselves in the liturgical dynamics of Christian life where we go through another year doing everything not only by ourselves, but also with Christ with the view of reaching our ultimate goal and not just any temporal goal.

That’s what the liturgy means. Christ, through the sacramental signs, takes the initiative to come and live with us, guiding and leading us to where we should be even as we immerse ourselves in our different conditions and circumstances in the world.

We need to be most aware of this basic truth of our faith.

We are not living by ourselves alone. We are living with Christ who continues to create and re-create us with his redemptive work. It would be a great pity to miss the significance of the liturgy and therefore fail to do our part in corresponding to Christ’s continuing redeeming action on us.

As we start another liturgical year, let us try to assume that attitude once expressed beautifully by St. Paul: “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.

“Therefore, I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.” (1 Cor 9,24-27)

With another liturgical year opening for us, we are given another chance to run our life with Christ. The different liturgical seasons, namely, Advent, Christmas, Ordinary Time, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, Ordinary Time again, provide us the complete life and teaching of Christ that is necessary for us to live our Christian life amid the different circumstances of our life.

Everyone of us should try our best to follow the liturgical cycle to be able to follow Christ closely and to be a more effective member of the Church, working together with Christ for the salvation of all humanity.

In other words, our life should be liturgical. It should develop at the instance of the liturgy which nourishes our moral and spiritual life, our love for God and for everybody else. It’s in the liturgy that we can be with Christ in the most intimate way here in our earthly sojourn.

Obviously, our participation in the liturgy should not be passive. Even if in the liturgy Christ takes the initiative and its effectiveness lies more on Christ’s power than on our disposition, just the same we are expected to correspond to Christ’s action in the liturgy as actively as we can. We should try our best to know what is happening in any liturgical celebration and what we are supposed to do to correspond to Christ’s action.

We have to do a lot of catechesis in this regard, because we cannot deny that nowadays, many people, especially the young, are ignorant of the true significance of the liturgy in our life.

Of course, we cannot ignore either the many efforts of some people to do some catechesis especially in the different cells of the Basic Ecclesial Communities (BEC) established in the different parishes in our country.

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The importance of ejaculatory prayers. We need to be more familiar with what are known as ejaculatory prayers, otherwise known also as aspirations. They are short prayers that spring rather quite spontaneously from the heart that is going through the different situations in life—happy, sad, tense, tired, excited, bored, etc. They reflect one’s relation with God and are inspired by faith, hope and charity.

To me, ejaculatory prayers are very helpful in quickly and easily putting ourselves in God’s presence, especially when we immerse ourselves deeply in the things of the world as we ought.

They help us relate ourselves and everything that happens to us to God, again as we ought. They help us in keeping a spiritual and supernatural outlook as we go through the different events of the day. In short, they help in keeping us spiritually alive, and not just alive in the body and to the world.

They help us see things better in the sense that we just would not see them with our senses and our human understanding alone, but also and more importantly with our faith, which is what is ideal and proper to us. They somehow put us in an intimate relation with our Father God. With them we will never feel alone nor distant from God.

My personal experience with ejaculatory prayers shows that they are very helpful even in making me calm and rested even in the middle of a tense situation for the mind or for the body. They help in making me breathe more deeply and thus give some relief.

Also, not to forget is that they are very helpful in protecting and defending us from temptations and sin. They make the spiritual combat and ascetical struggle, so unavoidable in life, more manageable.

They also help in preparing us for the more serious forms in our relationship with God as when we have to do our prayers, our sacrifices and our recourse to the sacraments.

We should all do our best to make it a habit to say ejaculatory prayers often during the day. Any short and earnest expression of our faith and piety will do. And also in this regard, the many vocal prayers that are already available can be very useful.

The “Our Father’s,” “Hail Mary’s” and “Glory be’s” are truly helpful.

We do not have to invent more prayers to be used as ejaculatory prayers. We may just even say, “Lord, I love you, I believe in you, I trust you,” or words to that effect. There are also many other prayers addressed to Our Lady, to St. Joseph, to St. Michael, and to other saints that can be used.

The important thing is that they are said with sincerity of heart and rectitude of intention. They definitely do not hamper us in our daily work and concerns. In fact, the contrary is true. They facilitate things a lot.

This business of saying ejaculatory prayers often during the day should be taught to children as early as possible. You cannot imagine what great benefits they will enjoy when they learn to do it as a habit when they grow up and get exposed to all sorts of things.

Let’s encourage everyone to do the same. There may be a little awkwardness in the beginning, but it’s not something that cannot be overcome. Especially when people experience the many benefits of the ejaculatory prayers, they will readily acquire the practice, since these prayers do not require a lot of effort to say them.

Let’s hope that we can create a general culture where the saying of ejaculatory prayers often during the day becomes an organic part of everyone’s life. There definitely will be an improvement in the quality of the spiritual life of people and society in general.

E-mail: roycimagala@gmail.com