Good Friends,
Last week's Reflection failed to download on some of your computers. This week's Reflection on prayer, the subject of Sunday's readings, is 'open' and not on attachment. I hope to have a blog up and running later this week, when I return to town from the Mendocino coast.
In his poem, 'Adveniat Regnum Tuum' (Thy Kingdom Come), that great Catholic apologist of the 20th century, G.K. Chesterton, has the following line: 'Deep in the heart of everyman, where'ere his life be spent, / There is a holy weariness, a holy discontent.'
We do not live lives of contentment which are interrupted by moments of discontent. Our lives are basically restless, but interrupted by short periods of rest and relief. Much of our prayer arises from the 'holy discontent' that nags us day in and day out. We are pray-ers, people who cannot help asking God for assistance.
I learned as a schoolboy long ago one of the oldest definitions of prayer: 'prayer is a lifting up of our minds and hearts to God.' It has taken me a lifetime to figure out what that means. I've spend a large part of my life trying to lift mind and heart to God, only to have it destroyed by 'distraction' - tiredness, boredom, anger, frustration etc. My mistake was in trying to put these things aside (as if they didn't exist!) and lift what was left of 'heart and mind' to God.
The English Benedictine, John Chapman, in his marvellous 'Letters on Prayer,' points out that we can only pray out of who we are and where we are at, and not out of who we are not and where we are not at. When our minds and hearts are tired, angry, bored, distracted or frustrated, we lift it all to God. That, I suggest, is the great lesson of the Psalms, and the first condition of prayer.
Why does nothing happen to perfectly good prayers? Why do our prayers appear to go unanswered? The readings this Sunday assure us that God hears our prayers and will give us what we ask! How square today's teaching with our everyday experience? Our fourth century friend, St. Augustine, says we are usually not ready to receive what we ask because, in the large picture of things, we don't understand what we pray for. God's designs are deeper than our own; the gifts for which we pray are not always worthy of who we are. God waits until we are ready to receive Himself, the substance of all our asking. That is why we must keep asking over and over again. The second condition of prayer, clear from today's readings, is persistence and perseverance in prayer, believing that God hears and will answer.
'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.' A third condition of prayer is a sincere desire to forgive the person who has hurt, injured us, or done us an injustice. We need to ask God for the courage to forgive, keeping in mind that the person who has wronged us is greater than the action he or she performed in hurting us. Genuine Christian prayer should be accompanied by forgiveness, respecting the great commandment to love our neighbor.
Finally, all Christian prayer is directed to God the Father, through Jesus Christ. In praying to the Father through Christ, we identify with the prayer and attitude of Jesus Christ to his Father. Fathers dealt sternly with their sons in biblical times; they were tough and distant disciplinarians. Sons did not play with their fathers like today. In using the term 'Abba' - Dad - Jesus related to a Father who was warm, accessible and loving, much like modern Dads are with their kids. This is how it is between Jesus and his Father. This is the God to whom we pray in Jesus' name.
Pastor Emeritus
Good stuff.
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