Daily Thought For January 24, 2020

Encouraging Words

     “It is enough for you to be with Me.  This is all I ask of you.  I do not ask for elevated thoughts, or for emotional outpourings, or for nicely constructed phrases.  I ask only that you stay with Me.  I need your company even now, just as I needed the company of Peter, James, and John in Gethsemane.  They slept on, it is true, but I knew they were there, and their mere presence was a consolation to My agonizing Heart.
You are afraid of distractions, of daydreams, and of foolish thoughts; these do not offend Me because they are no more than flies buzzing in the background.
I am absorbed by your presence before Me.  Does it shock you that I should say such a thing?  But I am absorbed by you: My eyes rest upon you; My Heart is all yours; I am listening intently to you; and all My attention is focused on you when you come seeking Me.  Believe that I am totally absorbed by you, and soon you will be totally absorbed by Me.  I speak here using human terms, using the language of friendship, of affection, of love.  I am present here in all the sensitivity and tenderness of My humanity.  I am here offering you My friendship, ready to spend as much time with you as you are ready to spend with Me.  
I want you close to Me: as close as John was to Me when, at My last supper, he rested his head upon My breast.  Prayer such as this cannot be calculated or measured in terms of minutes and hours.  It is what it is—and this, for as long as you abide in My presence.
Even when the time of your adoration is ended, I remain with you.  I am in you, all attentive to you, all loving, ready at every moment to enter into conversation with you, to strengthen you in temptation, to comfort you in your sorrows, to be a light for you in your darkness.  It requires but a little bit of faith to realise that one is never alone, to become aware of My presence, of My readiness to communicate Myself to you wordlessly by an infusion of My grace.

Use what I am telling you now to comfort others who struggle in their prayer, who think that prayer is difficult, and arduous, and wholly exceptional in the lives of ordinary people.  For the man who seeks My Face and desires to rest upon My Heart, I make prayer something very simple: wordless, peace-giving, cleansing, and divinely fruitful.” 

from In Sinu Jesu, p. 247-248.