Speaker: Prayer the ‘building blocks’ for loving God and neighbor

Christian Clifford, an author and teacher, spoke Aug. 3 at St. Dunstan in Millbrae to the Bukas Loob Sa Diyos Singles Ministry conference. Clifford encouraged his listeners to develop prayer lives that help them grow closer to God and to walk with the saints on their spiritual journey.  (Courtesy photo)

Aug. 6, 2019
Nicholas Wolfram Smith

Find a way of praying that builds trust and closeness with God, local author and teacher Christian Clifford said at a recent conference.  

“As an adopted son of God, I know that I walk through life with Christ and this gives me great consolation amid the great noise and confusion in the world. It is a joy that destroys the ‘watchful dragons’, to borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis,” he said. 

Clifford, who authored three books about St. Junipero Serra and California mission history and is a teacher at Junipero Serra High School and adjunct instructor at St. Patrick Seminary & University, spoke August 3, 2019, at St. Dunstan Parish in Millbrae to about 150 people at a conference of the Bukas Loob Sa Diyos Singles Ministry. Participants came from the Bay Area and several states, with some groups traveling from as far as New Jersey and Ontario, Canada. 

Bukas Loob Sa Diyos is a Catholic charismatic community founded in 1985 in the Philippines, focused on evangelization and discipleship. The group often organizes retreats for families, married couples, single parents, youth and single people.  

Clifford said he could “spend lots of time talking about the formula of prayer and types of meditation. I will only briefly, however, because our church for 2,000 years has collected so many powerful and faithful prayers in her treasury. In short, they exist, we just need to discover them. For example, do a Google search of the term ‘Catholic prayers’ and you will get about 219,000,000 results.” 

Clifford highlighted several ways to start praying: Lectio Divina; "Pray As You Go," an audio prayer aid produced by British Jesuits, praying for the Pope’s intention on Twitter, eucharistic adoration, and the Stations of the Cross. 

He emphasized these different ways of praying are a “moot point and almost a novelty without making a choice -- to engage, as St. Paul so fittingly put it, the One who ‘blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing’ and to be transformed.”

Clifford also said he “highly recommend(s) walking with the saints,” in the spiritual life, highlighting several of them for the audience, including St. Junipero Serra, St. Kateri Tekakwitha, St. Pedro Calungsod,  St. Charles Lwanga, and St. Maria Teresa Goretti. “They have been through what you and I encounter or what may be on the horizon,” he said.   

In his talk, Clifford challenged attendees to leave their comfort zone in order to find new ways to encounter God’s grace. From his own experience writing a trio of books about the California Missions and being a pilgrim on the 800 mile California Missions Trail, Clifford spoke about how important it is to take the initiative to see God at work in the world. 

“I wanted to help the young people see that to get the most joy out of our Catholic faith, we must not be passive disciples, but intentional,” he told Catholic San Francisco. Clifford said it was “challenging” to write two books about St. Junipero Serra, because of his commitments to his family and work and the response from critics of Serra and the mission system. Through the choice to live his faith publicly and intentionally, he said, “a new world opened up to me and I've felt a joy that I have never felt before.”

Clifford proposed some practical ideas for putting prayer into action: volunteering at a senior center or shelter, peacefully attending a protest, emailing a legislator, attending a retreat, going to World Youth Day, or hosting a mini-pilgrimage in their home town. 

In his concluding remarks, Clifford said, “choose to live a life in Christ and you will never go wrong. There are many forms of prayer--find one that helps you talk to God.” He added, “Make a promise to yourself to be more of an apostle -- one who is sent. No matter what you do, the act of prayer will help one build on the foundation -- they will be like building blocks that will help one better love God and serve their neighbor.”

Clifford said the conference, his first introduction to Catholic charismatics, reminded him “of just how big of a tent the Catholic Church has,” and he praised the attendees he met for their openness about their faith and their inspirational example. 

“The young people at the conference really gave me a sense of hope for the future of the Church,” he said.