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Read the Catechism in a Year

At the beginning of this year the priests at our parish challenged us to "read the Catechism in a year." Much like their challenge that we "Read the Bible in a year" the previous year, I have found this practice to yield much fruit. Many times I have finished a paragraph or a section and thought to myself "where has this book been all my life?"

Tonight as I was reading through part 4 "The Revelation of Prayer" Section 1 "Christian Prayer" and paragraph 2729 in particular struck me and provided a "where has this book been all of my life?" moment.

"The habitual difficulty in prayer is distraction. It can affect words and their meaning in vocal prayer; it can concern, more profoundly, him to whom we are praying, in vocal prayer (liturgical or personal), meditation, and contemplative prayer. To set about hunting down distractions would be to fall into their trap, when all that is necessary is to turn back to our heart: for a distraction reveals to us what we are attached to, and this humble awareness before the Lord should awaken our preferential love for him and lead us resolutely to offer him our heart to be purified. Therein lies the battle, the choice of which master to serve"

While the content of the paragraph seems obvious sometimes having something articulated makes it much easier to use. As I read this paragraph, I could remember many times struggling against distraction or worse yet finishing a time of prayer and looking back on it and seeing that the whole time was distraction. I could also foresee many times to come of distraction in prayer and remembering this paragraph, turning back to my heart and choosing which master to serve. In other words, as I read this paragraph, I could already begin to see the fruit it would produce.
 
This is just one example of what I have gotten out of it reading the Catechism. That being said, I know that it is already June, but if you wanted to join us at this point you could easily catch up by doubling up on the reading. The standard reading takes literally 5 minutes or so a day. So if you started from the beginning today or tomorrow it would take 10 minutes a day.

This is the schedule we are following, jump in!

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