1. In the Beginning there was Love
God chose us before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4), and while we were sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).
Contemplate the loving nature of God who has loved us with everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3), and does not deal with us according to our sins (Psalm 103:10). His love is made new each morning (Lamentation 3:22).
Reflection: Consider the way you recognize this unique love of God for you and how you have loved Him back in your daily life activities.
2. Human Heart, Restless and Needy
Human heart is poor, restless and needy, lost, frustrated and in deep desire. It yearns for happiness. Many a time it cries out for help thus: “O God, you are my God, I seek thee, my soul thirsts for thee; my flesh faints for thee, as in a dry and weary land where no water is” (Psalm 63:1).
Reflection: Consider your innate desire for happiness in God and your quests for it in this life, your feeling of God’s presence even in difficult situations, how a pathway of faith, prayer and life in Christ is opened to all seekers in need through the way of humility. Rightly did St. Augustine say, “my heart is restless until it rests in God’’. “Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth (Psalm 124:8), for it is in God we live, move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Apostleship of Prayer teaches us to learn to put our lives trustfully in God’s hand.
3. Living in a Broken World
The Lord said, “… my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns, that hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13).
Reflection: Consider the state of the broken world. The world seems to have no heart and is filled with wickedness- injustice, greed, and children of God deny Him daily for pleasures and worldly gains. Think of your role in healing the broken world and start your way back home through the path of personal prayer and commitment with God.
4. The Father Sends His Son to Save.
The heavenly Father has not forsaken us in this broken world but has saved us through His Son for the Son of man came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10).
Contemplate the kind and merciful nature of God who did not abandon us in our sinful state but came to redeem us.
Reflection: Consider how God takes us as special treasures to His Heart and personally seeks us out, wants to establish with us an intimate relationship and lasting union with Himself because He desires to fulfill the plans he has for us: plans for good and not for evil, to give us future and hope (Jeremiah 29:11).
5. He call Us His Friends
Jesus calls us His friends and Promises to be with us always to the close of the age (Matthew, 28: 20). He thus said: “I have called you by name: you are mine … you are precious in My eyes, and honored, and I love you” (Isaiah 43:4).
Contemplate Christ’s depth of humility, goodness and lowliness in making us His friends.
Reflection: Consider this friendship with you and your personal relationship with Him as a friend. His friendship is an invitation to you for a personal and intimate covenant of love with Him, such that will also make you see the world through His eyes, be one with His joys and suffering and offer yourself to work with Him for your brothers and sisters in need.
6. Christ Abides in Us
Jesus wants to remain in us and dwell in our hearts. The Lord said, “I will live in them and move among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (II Corinthians 6:16c).
Contemplate God’s infinite love for us and His desire to inhabit our hearts and make us one with Him.
Reflection: Consider your relationship with God, how you recognize his voice speaking to you daily and your desire to live out what you hear. This pathway is through a life of intimate union with the Lord.
7. We Offer Our Lives Along With Him
Jesus said, “This poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury …” (Matthew 12:43-44). A member of Apostleship of Prayer makes a daily offering of all he has for the day out of a poor heart while seeking to live out his life of total union with the heart of Jesus. Being conscious of his weakness, he renews this offering during the day while living the life of the Eucharist which is a life of sacrifice.
Reflection: Consider how coming closer to the Heart of Jesus makes us live for others as He did, how you live daily the life of the Eucharist.
8. A Mission of Compassion
The word of God said, “The Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted, … to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound” (Isaiah 61:1-3, Luke 4:18-19).
Reflection: Consider how the love of the Heart of Jesus commands us to make His compassionate presence felt through us in the world through prayer and action to relieve the suffering of those in need and how you respond to that love.
9. A Worldwide Network of Prayer and Service
As members of Apostleship of Prayer sent out from the Heart of the Father to the heart of the world, we need not give God any rest in addressing our needs, the needs of humanity and that of the Church which are reflected in the Pope’s monthly intentions. Isaiah 62:6-7b says: “you who put the Lord in remembrance, take no rest, and give Him no rest until He establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth”. Members of Apostles of Prayer do not only pray for the Church and for the world but also for each other with their morning offering. Just as the scripture states, “All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers” (Acts 1:14). Apostleship of Prayer is a Pope’s world-wide network of prayer and service for the good of mankind. Those who make themselves available through the daily morning offering of their lives and living it in any place they find themselves, form this network of prayer.
Reflection: Consider how making and living the daily offering bring us closer to realizing Christ’s mission both for the world and for the Church: how they edify you.