Spontaneous prayer with your boyfriend, The raw truth about fornication, and What to do when making love hurts. | ACW392

All right.

Are you ready now for a question from a patron? Let's

do it.

Hey, this question is from a patron named Jordan.

Hello, Jordan.

Thank you so much for believing in our mission.

Jordan says, We have been dating for several months and pray a rosary together every night, which has been a tremendous blessing for our relationship.

but I feel the need to expose my heart in prayer with Him in a way that the recitation of the Rosary does not fully allow.

I was not raised in a family that prayed aloud together, so I'm not sure where or how to start this practice with Him.

How did you first begin bearing your hearts to each other in prayer before the Lord, and what are some practical ways dating Catholic couples can deepen their prayer life together?

Jordan, what a great question.

I love your heart.

I love that you're seeking this.

And I first want to say, you know, there's no formula here for... personal prayer and sharing of hearts, and Wendy and I are more than happy to share things we've learned and things that are meaningful to us, but I just want to show just great reverence for everyone's heart and sensitivities and sensibilities and preferences and our manner of prayer is not going to be somebody else's manner of prayer, but for whatever it's worth, we're certainly happy to share things we've learned.

I just want to say that your desire to pray in a way that you're sharing your heart with your the person you love and are discerning marriage with, that already is prayer.

Have you opened that up to Him? Have you said, honey, I love praying the rosary with you at night, it's such a blessing for our relationship.

Can we maybe start, before we jump into the rosary, just by opening our hearts to the Lord together? What are our fears? What are our hopes? What are our desires? Prayer is an exercise of desire, St.

Augustine says.

The more we are in touch with our desires, the more we are learning to pray.

And St. Augustine says the only way we can pray always, right? Scripture calls us to pray always.

The only way we can pray always is by prayer.

Allowing ourselves to feel kind of the pulse, if I can put it that way, the pulse of our own hearts, the pulse of our own longings, the pulse of our own hopes and dreams and sorrows and disappointments and pains and sufferings and opening all of that, having a contemplative disposition where our hearts are... are open to the Lord.

So just the other day, I was driving to visit a friend and I had my iTunes on shuffle and a song came on that I hadn't heard for a long time.

And I love the guitar notes in this song.

They just speak to me.