{"id":18400,"date":"2017-04-05T01:01:43","date_gmt":"2017-04-05T06:01:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/?p=18400"},"modified":"2017-03-04T20:26:32","modified_gmt":"2017-03-05T01:26:32","slug":"18400","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/2017\/04\/05\/18400\/","title":{"rendered":"Prayer: A Friendship with God"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>It is God who takes the initiative to be beside us and connect us to establish an intimate relationship, friendship<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><span lang=\"en\">&#8220;Prayer is a Pact of friendship with God&#8221;, St. Teresa teaches us. To w<\/span><span lang=\"en\">orship God in spirit and in truth is to make the experience of love, to seek\u00a0him and acknowledge that we can no longer walk without him. The Lord s<\/span><span lang=\"en\">educed us, attracted us to him\u00a0and now it is impossible to live without love.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"en\">When I wrote the song &#8220;Juras de amor&#8221; [Vows of Love], my heart was inflamed with love for God. <\/span><span lang=\"en\">I lived the experience of the Prophet Jeremiah: &#8220;You seduced me!&#8221;. <\/span><span lang=\"en\">My soul and my entire being can&#8217;t do anything other than love God.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"en\">The hearts of worshipers have no other motivation for prayer or love of God. <\/span><span lang=\"en\">It is the love that drives us and moves us. <\/span><span lang=\"en\">Love is, therefore, a dialogue of love. Adoration<\/span><span lang=\"en\">\u00a0is a gift of God and not of our own effort. <\/span><span lang=\"en\">The first step is always God&#8217;s. <\/span><span lang=\"en\">It is <strong>He who takes the initiative to be with us, to relate with us to establish an intimate relationship, friendship.<\/strong> <\/span><span lang=\"en\">Therefore, adoration is not only a desire of our heart, but, more than that, it is a desire of the Lord.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Your brother,<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Monsignor Jonas Abib<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Founder of the Can\u00e7\u00e3o Nova community<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/padrejonas.cancaonova.com\/mensagem-do-dia\/oracao-um-trato-de-amizade-com-deus\/\">Portuguese version<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is God who takes the initiative to be beside us and connect us to establish an intimate relationship, friendship &#8220;Prayer is a Pact of friendship with God&#8221;, St. Teresa teaches us. To worship God in spirit and in truth&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[141700],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18400"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18400"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18402,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18400\/revisions\/18402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}