Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a year podcast,

where we encounter God's plan of sure goodness for us, revealed in scripture, and passed

down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in New Year is brought to by

Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity and God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home.

This is day 348. We're reading paragraphs 2725 to 2731. As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the foundations of faith approach.

But you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own catechism in a year reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com slash CIY, and you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications. Today is day 348. It is a day I've been longing for, waiting for, looking eagerly for, looking eagerly too. I don't know. Today paragraph 2725 to 2731, we begin today,

my favorite section in the entire catechism. I don't know why. I kind of know why. Here's the

reason why. We're talking about the battle of prayer today. And the very first line in 2725 is a line

that I will go over every time I talk to someone about prayer, almost every time.

But every time we go with our CIA class, you know, the right of Christian initiation for adults,

the people who are becoming Christian or becoming Catholic, they don't yet know how to pray.

This is one of the things that I always like to, what's the word?

I always like to emphasize.

I like to introduce them to because it says paragraph 2725, prayer is both a gift of grace and a determined response on our part.

On our part, it is a gift of grace.

Obviously, we know this.

Prayer is always a response, right?

When we pray, it's we're responding to God's initiation or God's initiative, is that the word.

And so it's a gift of grace. And it's a determined response on our part. And the very next sentence, we talked about this, I think, with Sister Miriam, says, it always presupposes effort. And this is so critical. This is critical for me. This is critical for every one of us. Because my vision or prayer for so many years was just, I guess it's supposed to be easy. This should be something like if I love God, this should all come easily, that if I'm trying to do his will, this should be simple. It should be piece of cake. In fact, the image I had in my head was it should be like getting into a warm hot tub. Just kind of soak in there. Just soak in the spirit. Just soak in God's grace. That's what it sounded like. When I read what other people described as like the prayers of the saints, I thought, that's what it should feel like. And it didn't. And I was troubled. And then I read this. This is why I love it so much. Is it just was such a consolation to me that, oh, prayer is difficult. That makes sense. And if that's the norm, then I'm not doing something wrong.

And something similar is true for... that, oh, prayer is difficult. That makes sense. If that's, and if that's the norm, then I'm not doing something wrong.

And something similar is true for all of us listening today.

Prayer is both a gift of grace and a determined response on our part.

...