Reflection on Prayer

We desire to pray because we were created by Love. When we are in love, we desire to contemplate, we think about our lover all the time.  This is a form of prayer. It is in our instinct, or as the great doctor of our Church, Thomas Aquinas said, it is a natural desire (natural law) which is imprinted within each one of us. God leads us to pray through his compassion for us, and he never condemns us nor forces us against our will to have a relationship with him. Through his mercy he allows us to see how little we are in comparison to everything, and yet we are an essential and unique part of something larger.  In God’s creation everyone and everything belongs; light and dark; victim and victor; sin and grace; life and death; good and evil. 

We fall to our knees when recognize ourselves and who we really are; what we are capable of.  In our realization of our human condition, we may weep and lament. These are tears of grace and these tears point out our journey. I am learning to understand through prayer that my tears are a sign of God’s presence.  It is through my tears while in prayer that I have learned to love, to be loved, to forgive, and to be forgiven.

Jesus is the beginning of our journey of transformation.  Often we may cling to guideposts along our journey, but we realize that our journey is to be in constant conversion.  We must be aware of our tendency to want to “settle in” or become too comfortable with our guideposts; this tendency becomes an obstacle for us.  Jesus shows us that he is an entry gate to some place, He as our Messiah points us to our eternal destination.  Do we realize that he was all about a process of transformation more than he was concerned with a belonging system?  Jesus  affirms wherever we are on our journey, reminding us that when we understand the greatest commandment (Mk. 12:34) we may not be far from the kingdom of God. Jesus encourages us to search for God, not to settle for guideposts, as they in of themselves are not the destination.  When we become seekers of God-it leads us to prayer.

Let’s remember too, God does not love us because of anything we did, he loves us because He is good. My favorite quote is “God loved us first.” Before I existed, he loved me into being.  This understanding changed everything for me. I can’t earn his love but I can surrender into it. We can’t lose it either.  We are today, on our life long conversion journey, because we are aware of this and we desire to enjoy God’s love.  When we don’t let go our life becomes a serious of obstacles, but upon surrendering and trusting in God our life is transformed from fear of God to love of God.  This is prayer, an active and willful surrender to God. When we can honestly say, “your will Lord, not my own”, then we are praying.

I can fool myself very easily by saying “I love Jesus”, and yet avoid what he is asking me to do. That is not prayer my friends.  Prayer is more than knowing Jesus...Prayer leads us deeper into areas of our soul that allows God’s kingdom to be present right now.  Jesus taught us to pray…”thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven”.  God can and does enter our world if we surrender to him.

God led me back through his compassion towards my soul, never by condemnation, I had condemned myself. When I encountered Jesus the Christ I found my heavenly Father who had already forgiven me for not having surrendered sooner. I found a loving Father who had been touched by my lamentations, who had cried with me, suffered for me, and loved me anyway.  He had heard everyone one of my prayers.

Praying is dangerous, because it takes us to God space, and it transforms us if we allow it. A prayerful heart requires openness, honesty, humility and discipline.  Jesus is our example on how to pray.   Prayer is powerful stuff. 

Period of Purification & Enlightenment

As I prepared this week for a presentation at our diocesan RCIA Institute entitled “Lent; A Time of Spiritual Preparation and to Purify Hearts” I thought about the elements and techniques that are involved in preparing our catechumens for this period which begins with Ash Wednesday.  Our RCIA gatherings change in tone from a catechetical approach to an approach that is more reflective and focused on deepening our awareness of all that keeps us from being intimately close with Our Father. This is a time where our pedagogy  becomes one of providing an environment for a deeper and more intimate encounter with Christ. It is a time to be open and honest with ourselves;to  ask the kind of reflective questions that take us past the edge of where we feel safe, and we carefully probe the untouched wounded areas of our heart. 

As a pregnant mother cares for herself and her unborn child, caressing her growing belly knowing that she will soon give birth to her child, the Church continues to tenderly care for her  unborn members.  She has been nourishing them, protecting them, instructing them, and helping them to see with new eyes and to appreciate our Catholic way of interpreting life. We help our new members to see the signs and symbols of our salvation story through a Christian lens.  The lenten season is a time to look really really closely, as a surgeon would with a microscope, uncovering any spiritual dis-ease that may exist so that it may be treated and removed; allowing for our freedom to live in Christ.

In the early Church, the catechumens, who in this period become known as the Elect, were presented with our Creed and The Lord’s Prayer.  St. Augustine saw the presentations of the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer during this period as an important milestone, for many of them it would be the first time they would hear them. I wonder, perhaps for many of us already baptized who publicly proclaim our Creed and pray the Our Father ever try to “hear them for the first time” again?

As we all prepare for their spiritual transformation that is experienced in plunging into their baptismal waters, we all should prepare too for our own spiritual renewal. This liturgical period is one of surrender, of death to our old ways so that we can become healed.  We face our fears; we become profoundly aware of our need for salvation through Jesus Christ. 

What a gift the Elect are to our community, with them we can all be born anew and we join them at our Lord's table where we share in his sacred body and blood. We become one body in Christ!