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This is our home on the Internet. Here you will find our latest news and information. Please visit the online Calendar for upcoming events and our News page for featured articles. Visitors are invited to sign up for our online mailing list for special news and announcements. We hope you enjoy your visit and encourage you to check back often for updates!
Our Lady of the Adirondacks House of Prayer is a small renovated country schoolhouse surrounded by open fields in a rural setting between the St. Lawrence River Valley and the Adirondack Mountains. A House of Prayer is a home set apart from the distractions of responsibilities and the daily services to others, where a person may go to experience various kinds of prayer leading one into the very Mystery of Christ Himself. God's Presence in the House of Prayer calls all people to recognize His active participation in their lives and homes. Unique to our House is a Poustinia experience. A person may enter a small cabin (hermitage) for a day, a half-day, or less. The time is spent in absolute solitude with the Lord, fasting on bread and water, coffee, or tea.
This is our home on the Internet. Here you will find our latest news and information. Please visit the online Calendar for upcoming events and our News page for featured articles. Visitors are invited to sign up for our online mailing list for special news and announcements. We hope you enjoy your visit and encourage you to check back often for updates!
Our Lady of the Adirondacks House of Prayer is a small renovated country schoolhouse surrounded by open fields in a rural setting between the St. Lawrence River Valley and the Adirondack Mountains. A House of Prayer is a home set apart from the distractions of responsibilities and the daily services to others, where a person may go to experience various kinds of prayer leading one into the very Mystery of Christ Himself. God's Presence in the House of Prayer calls all people to recognize His active participation in their lives and homes. Unique to our House is a Poustinia experience. A person may enter a small cabin (hermitage) for a day, a half-day, or less. The time is spent in absolute solitude with the Lord, fasting on bread and water, coffee, or tea.
House Prayer
Our daily prayer:
O Most Holy Trinity, lead us daily to carry out Your work in the Spirit. May silence, solitude, prayer and praise of You help us to lead each other and all others to rejoice with You in heaven in Your Glory promised us. May we learn to give service to those most needy without counting the cost. Praise to You always, Our Father, for Your peace and love sent to us through Your Son, Jesus. Praise to You, Holy Spirit, as You assist us in bringing Your joy to all who come to our houses for prayer and to all to whom You send us. Thank You for Your love and peace, Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Saviour. Amen.
O Most Holy Trinity, lead us daily to carry out Your work in the Spirit. May silence, solitude, prayer and praise of You help us to lead each other and all others to rejoice with You in heaven in Your Glory promised us. May we learn to give service to those most needy without counting the cost. Praise to You always, Our Father, for Your peace and love sent to us through Your Son, Jesus. Praise to You, Holy Spirit, as You assist us in bringing Your joy to all who come to our houses for prayer and to all to whom You send us. Thank You for Your love and peace, Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Saviour. Amen.
Message from Fr. Jack
A Message from Fr. Jack Downs
Advent 2014
Dear Friends,
Do you like to wait? How do you handle waiting at the checkout counter? At a construction site on the highway? At the doctor’s office? At the airport for a delayed flight? The Advent wait? I’d like to explore with you this waiting for Christ’s coming this Advent. I’d like you to think about waiting with patience this Advent. To be honest with you, my idea of praying for patience is to say: “Lord, give me patience – and give it to me RIGHT NOW!”
As I picture the teenage Mary, mother-to-be, plodding along to Bethlehem on a very slow donkey, Advent seems the prime time to consider waiting as a positive experience, even a moment of grace. Advent (which means coming) and waiting (for whatever is coming) seem linked in the life of the Church. I’d like to link them in your thinking and actions as well.
Why is patience considered a virtue? Just what is a virtue? Virtue comes from the Latin word for strength or worthiness. Virtues are attitudes and actions that benefit you and others. Patience is to act calmly, without unnecessary hurry or worry, even when provoked or stressed. God gives us the grace to be patient, to wait with calmness so that we can live our lives in a safe, healthy, spiritual and service-filled way. How can you practice an outlook on life that leads to patience? I can count four lessons right away.
SLOW DOWN. You live in a world that promises things quickly: email, faxes, drive-through windows. These promises (which don’t always deliver) can cause impatience since you can grow used to getting your letters or your french fries in a flash. Sometimes it can be hard to slow down in such an instant world. You want to be up to something all the time – even if that something doesn’t look like much. This training in instant activity and response can make you jumpy and even irritable. Consider channel surfing when you watch TV: more than 100 channels but nothing satisfies. This is boring – CLICK – that’s dumb– CLICK – rerun – CLICK – another commercial – CLICK. It’s the same with the Internet. If you have a slow computer and you can’t download stuff from the web fast enough, you can start talking to the screen: “Let’s go, come on!” Being impatient like this can make you so fixed on what you want when you want it that you can’t allow any other options. In a sense, you try to tie God’s hands. And God wants to take your hand and walk with you, setting the pace for your journey. By slowing down, you invite that to happen. You open yourself to alternative plans or gifts that God knows are open, available and good for you.
PUT YOUR TRUST IN GOD. Much evidence exists – Scripture and in history – that God will give us what we really need when we really need it. St. Paul told us that when we pray we don’t even know what we should pray for, but God knows what we need and when (see Romans 8:26). By waiting with patience for your life to unfold, you are placing your trust in God. This is the prayer of Psalm 37; “commit to the Lord your way; trust in him, and He will act…leave it to the Lord, and wait for Him…” Trusting in God might mean putting a decision in God’s hands. You probably tire
sometimes of people asking you what your future plans are. The constant questioning can make you feel you must have an answer when you don’t have to know for some time yet. Truth is, you may not know but you’re thinking fairly often about what happens next. Waiting isn’t a do-nothing state of affairs. The activities that interest you, the volunteering you do, are all a part of waiting for the future to unfold. Let lots of options percolate in your brain and heart. Listen, do what you can, then trust that God will show the right path at the right time. Trust brings us to the next thing patience can teach us.
CONSIDER GOD’S VIEW OF TIME. When we say we want things to happen for us, we almost always mean when we want them to happen. We want to set the pace. We want to do something. A patient person knows that he or she has limited power over time. Even God waited many centuries for the world to be ready for the birth of Jesus. God made time just as God made the world. If a day in the Book of Genesis really means a million years – give or take a few – then clearly God’s idea of time is different from ours. God is saying good things take time. Advent is a time when God blessed a people who waited. Advent can be a time you can be blessed while you wait. What would that mean? Let’s say that you’re ready to give up on a friend. You say to yourself: If she or he doesn’t call in a week, we’re history. Week’s up, no call, no more friend, you say. You give up trying. Three weeks later, the phone rings. What will you say? I know that more than patience is required to make a friendship work. Yet the ability to give relationships the time they need to grow and develop is a part of the picture.
KEEP THE FAITH. So what are we supposed to do in the meantime? Simple - keep the faith, and I mean this very literally. Faith means believing in something that you cannot necessarily see or hold in your hands all the time. Patient people do more than sit. You go to work, to church, to family parties, to friend’s houses, to games and movies. You keep living your life. Look at it this way: You’re waiting for a notice about a job interview outcome. You’re waiting for a reply from the bank about a loan you sought. You’re waiting for the arrival of a special gift you ordered for a loved one. Around the day you think they’ll arrive, you tear home from work to check the mailbox. If it’s empty, what do you do? Do you stand frozen until the letter carrier arrives the next day? Do you say, “Darn” (or worse) go inside, change your clothes and start to clean up the yard or the garage? If you’re keeping the faith, you keep living your life, hope for the future.
Several saints advise us to “work as though everything depends on us and pray as though everything depends on God.” Notice how that advice reads. It’s not one OR the other, work OR pray. It’s one AND the other: work AND pray. Patience can help you do both in a positive, cheerful way.
We can add something to this idea from a comment made in the middle of the 1100’s by St. Bernard of Clairvaux who was writing to the pope, of all people, to tell him to be patient. “Plant, water, be concerned, and you have done your part.” St. Bernard said: “To be sure, God, not you, will give the growth when He wishes.” In other words, do what you can, but don’t worry. Be patient happily. Otherwise, you’ll spend your life sadly waiting by the mailbox while other opportunities pass you by.
Let’s go back to the idea of a pregnant woman looking at an Advent example of the lessons of patience: Mary. She trusted the angel Gabriel nine months earlier, but she must have wondered what this special baby, Jesus, was going to look like. What did Mary do? She kept the faith and trusted in God. She did her part and let God take care of things according to God’s watch.
In Advent, the Church gives us an annual time of waiting, especially with Mary during her pregnancy. The Advent readings give an encouraging message of patience. They tell us not to be afraid, that good times are coming. These barren, challenging empty times will pass. By listening to these messages, we can use this time to learn how to wait, to watch and to listen for reminders of God’s presence. Advent does not have to be a time of anxiety where we say: “I’m stuck in the mud and I’ll be here forever.” Rather, by looking at patience as holy waiting, we can see our own waiting as a time of hope, dreaming and preparation. It can be a time to learn, to regroup, to rest, and to grow. This doesn’t mean that as you wait you won’t have moments where you wonder or worry. You might even have outright fear. But we can learn to keep the faith like Mary.
Father Jack Downs,
Spiritual Director,
Prayer of Our Lady of the Adirondacks House of Prayer
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
"Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you. Receive the Holy Spirit." Jn. 20:21-22
Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness, our hope. To you do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To you do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears. Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Oh clement, Oh loving, Oh sweet Virgin Mary.
Pray for us Holy Mother of God that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
Our Lady of Combermere, pray for us.
Our Lady of the Adirondacks, pray for us.
Our Lady of the Atonement, pray for us.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.
St. Joseph, the Worker, pray for us.
St. Isaac Jogues, Rene Goupil and Jean de Lalande, pray for us.
All North American Martyrs and Companions, pray for us.
Holy Martyrs, St. Joseph Balikuddembe and all Martyrs of Uganda, pray for us.
St. Francis of Assisi, pray for us.
St. Benedict, pray for us.
St. Pius X, pray for us.
St. Francis Xavier, pray for us.
St. Therese Lisieux, pray for us.
St. Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us.
St. Martin de Porres, pray for us.
St. Rose of Lima, pray for us.
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, pray for us.
St.John Neumann, pray for us.
St. Elizabeth Seton, pray for us.
St. Rose Phillipine Duchesne, pray for us.
Blessed Kateri Tekawitha, pray for us.
Blessed Andre Bessett, pray for us.
Blessed Junipera Serra, pray for us.
Blessed Katherine Drexel, pray for us.
Blessed Juan Diego, pray for us.
May all the living and deceaced members of this association be given the peace of the Risen Lord Jesus Christ, Our Savior.
Oh Most Holy Trinity, lead us daily to carry out Your work in the Spirit. May silence, solitude, prayer and praise of You help us to lead each other and all others to rejoice with You in Heaven, in Your Glory, promised us. May we learn to give service to those most needy, without counting the cost. Praise to You always, Our Father, for Your Peace and Love, sent us through Your Son, Jesus. Praise to You, Holy Spirit, as You assist us in bringing Your Joy to all who come to our house for prayer, and to all to whom You send us. Thank You for Your Love and Peace, Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior. Amen.
IMPRIMATUR STANISLAUS J. BRZANA BISHOP of OGDENSBURG September 20, 1976