The Unseen World

Trust in the Spirit Forces of the Unseen, not in those you see (God Calling: October 23).

 

Recently one night, our pastor and one of the men from our church stopped to help us change a very flat tire.  In gratitude, I ordered a book that I thought each of them might like.  When I gave God Calling to the layman Monday night, he remarked that he would treasure it, as for years, he has read and loved The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a'Kempis.  His casual remark started me thinking about "the unseen world" that exists all around us -- the world of prayer.  We go to church weekly and even daily in the company of ordinary people who live lives of intense devotion and prayer -- but ordinarily, we do not see it.

 

This man's chance remark opened my eyes to a phenomenon that I have 'seen" all my life and have not paid attention to:  Catholics pray! I know that it is not only Catholics who pray, but it is Catholics I see the most in prayer:  my mother said the rosary every day of her life since her entrance into the church, and now I have learned that some of my friends do the same.  My mother and father after they retired attended a small prayer group that met in church every day to say the Chaplet of the Divine Mercy at 3:00 p.m. -- and this, after daily Mass at 8:00 a.m.  At my former parish in Metairie, there was an adoration chapel, where someone was in prayer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  One group that has begun within the past few years is called, "Lord, Teach Me to Pray."  Based on the spiritual exercises of Ignatius Loyola, this group was started by a woman in Metairie, and now there are groups of both men and women all over the South who are learning to pray using the scriptures.

 

Once I started thinking about it, I could see a world of prayer just below the surface of life: parents praying for their children, children praying for their parents, men and women who begin each day with prayer and meditation before going to work; entire communities of religious men and women who live by prayer...the list goes on and on.  And of course, the greatest prayer of all -- the Mass -- said in every parish every day, with people in attendance.

 

God Calling for Oct. 24 says this:  "You are the salt of the earth: but if the salt has lost its savor, it is henceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under the foot of men."  Only in very close contact with Me is the keeping Power realized.  That keeping Power which mantains the salt at its freshest and best, and also preserves from corruption that portion of the world in which I place it.  What a work! Not by activity in this case, but simply by its existing, by its quality.

 

Listening to the men and women who speak up during our weekly class on the Holy Spirit and His Gifts has made me aware how much prayer has been going on all around me all these years -- and I was not aware of it.  One of the marks of the true church is that it promotes holiness in its members.  I guess I am amazed at the 'unseen' world of prayer, at the amazing number of men and women drawing their sustenance and life from Christ, their Source!  Who could have guessed that so much real prayer was going on all around us?