Copyright 2017 John Bartunek
Published by Beacon Publishing
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture passages have been taken from the Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition. Copyright 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Quotes are taken from the English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for the United States of America (indicated as CCC), 2nd edition. Copyright 1997 by United States Catholic ConferenceLibreria Editrice Vaticana.
Design by Ashley Wirfel
ISBN 978-1-929266-29-6 (softcover)
eISBN 978-1-929266-30-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bartunek, John, author.
Title: A quiet place : how daily prayer can change your life / John
Bartunek, LC, SThD.
Description: North Palm Beach : Beacon Publishing, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017020564 | ISBN 9781929266296 (softcover)
Subjects: LCSH: PrayerChristianity. | Catholic ChurchDoctrines.
Classification: LCC BV210.3 .B373 2017 | DDC
248.3/2dc23
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TABLE of CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
When we were in kindergarten, we learned the alphabet. Since then, we have learned to read and write and have done an awful lot of it. We are certainly better readers and writers now than we were when we first learned the alphabet.
When we were getting ready for our first Communion, someone taught us to pray, or at least to say some prayers. Since then, has our prayer life grown and expanded the way it was meant to, the way our reading and writing grew and expanded after learning the alphabet? Is it still growing and expanding?
If you have a sense that somewhere along the line your prayer life stopped growing, or that it never really got much of a start in the first place, you need this book. You need to jump-start your prayer life.
Prayer is so much more than just saying your prayers. Prayer is a spiritual adventure. It brings interior depth and meaning that can come from nowhere elseabsolutely no where else.
If you feel a need or desire for greater spiritual depth, or even a slight suspicion that something is missing in your life, spiritually speaking, then I can guarantee that now is the right time for A Quiet Place. Keep reading, and let the adventure begin.
ONE
Why Pray?
Imagine you have an acorn in the palm of your left hand and a stone the same size and shape as an acorn in your right hand. Look at these items: They look similar, feel similar,and weigh almost the same. Whats the difference between them?
If you plant one of them in the right conditions, it will begin to put out shoots and roots and start to grow. And, once again given the right conditions, that growth will continue unabated for perhaps two centuries. A gorgeous oak tree will emerge from the acorn, giving beauty and fruitfulness to the world for hundreds of years.
But if you plant the stone in the same soil, under the same conditions, nothing will happen. The stone will just stay a stone. It will not sprout, or grow, or beautify the landscape, or give food and shelter and shade to people and animals and birds for centuries.
The acorn bears within itself the mysterious force of life. It is a seedsmall, vulnerable, but full of magnificent potential. All it needs in order to fulfill this potential are the right conditions: good soil, water, sunlight, and a healthy climate.
The stone, on the other hand, is inanimate. It is dead matter. It has no life, no potential to grow and organically develop into something magnificent and wonderful.
STONY SPIRITS
Before we were baptized, our souls were like that stone. Original sin had cut us off from grace, the life of God that alone can lead us to fulfillment as human beings. God created human beings in his own image and likeness; he created us to live in communion with him. That communion of life with God, in whom alone we can find lasting happiness, is what we mean by the word grace.
But, tempted by the devil, our first parents rebelled against Gods plan for their lives. And so they freely cut themselves and all their descendants off from Gods grace. The life, the potential for the spiritual growth and fruitfulness that can only come from living in communion with God, was drained from our spirits. Instead of the spiritual acorns that we were created to be, we became stones, spiritually speaking.
God in his goodness didnt abandon us there. He reached out to Adam and Eve, and he initiated a plan of salvation that would gradually unfold throughout the entire history of humanity. The central piece in that plan was his Incarnation. God didnt want to save us from afar. In Jesus Christ, God actually entered this fallen human race, this world of spiritual stones. He became one of us and restored the life of grace. When he shed his own blood by dying on the cross on the first Good Friday, his very own divine life was poured out upon the earth. Grace returned.
Since then, it has been his Churchs mission to spread this grace into every human heart, and to create the right conditions for the seed of divine life that grace brings to put out its shoots and roots, to grow and flourish and bear spiritual fruit for this fallen world. That is what we call redemption, and it is why Jesus Christ is known as the Savior and Redeemer.
As individuals, we begin to experience this redemption when we are baptized. Baptism is the way Jesus invented for restoring the life of grace after original sin. Through this sacrament, the spiritual stone within us is transformed into an acorn. We are brought back into communion with God, and given the hope of growing into the only form of spiritual maturity that can bring us fulfillment.
OUR SPIRITUAL DNA
When grace takes root in a soul and grows to maturity, it produces what the Bible calls the fruit of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (see Galatians 5:22). Just as acorns given the right conditions grow into magnificent oak trees that produce more acorns, so the spiritual seed of grace planted in our hearts and given the right conditions will grow and produce its own fruits. This gives our lives the meaning we were created to find, the meaning we yearn for and search for in so many mistaken places. Since grace is the seed of divine life within us, as it grows, it makes us more and more like God, restoring the image and likeness of God in which we were created, but which was damaged by original sin.
