Prayers Lead to Prayer

All over the world today, people are saying prayers -- Buddhist monks are chanting prayers that have been said for centuries; Roman Catholics are saying the Rosary or novenas; Sufis are whirling; Muslims are touching their foreheads to the earth, and Hindus are offering fruit in their temples.

According to Bishop Robert Barron, "prayers lead to prayer," or communion with God.  This is why people pray -- to touch the face of the invisible God.   And He, in turn, is passionately waiting to   touch our hearts.  When the energy of God meets our human energy, it is like the burning bush Moses encountered in the desert -- we are on fire but not consumed.

St. James put it this way:  Draw close to God, and He will draw close to you.  "Saying prayers" of whatever fashion is our way of stopping our lives momentarily to draw close to the God Who is "closer than a brother" to us.  He is "surely in this place," as Jacob discovered in the wilderness, though "we do not know it."  And so he called that place Bethel, meaning House (Dwelling Place) of God.

We are the living "Bethels" -- dwellings of the Most High God.  He is within us, and yet we do not know it.  If we stop looking around us long enough, close our eyes, and begin to approach the Temple of the Lord through prayers, we may find Him running to meet us, as the Prodigal Father ran to meet his returning son along the road.

What kind of prayers? people ask.  "I don't know how to pray."  St. Augustine has the answer: Pray as you can, not as you can't.  One reason every culture and race has developed formal prayers is that we are hesitant to approach the invisible God on our own -- and when we do, we are not sure our prayers are effective or heard.  We stumble and fall because we are on unfamiliar territory, and not even sure we are on the right path.

Thomas Merton's famous prayer is useful for almost all of us:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Here is truth -- that we don't know what we are doing, but that God is faithful to us in our simplicity of prayer, no matter what form it may take.

Learning to Pray

I think all of us must have had at some moment in our lives an encounter with God.  God is He Who from the beginning has revealed Himself to mankind -- and whatever He DID, He continues to DO, because He is eternal.

We read about such encounters in the Bible:  God meets Abraham; He meets Jacob on his journey, Moses, and Joshua.  He meets Mary.  And we tend to think these are unusual -- but I rather think these meetings are not unusual, but the common event for all of us.  And the encounters are all different, depending on the nature of the man himself.

God has a passion for communicating with us.  He wants us to know Him -- and the only way that can happen is for Him to reveal Himself to each one of us.  Our response to that revelation is prayer -- adoration, worship, thanksgiving, petition, intercession.  So many times, we try to pray without knowing Who it is we are praying TO!  Who is this God to whom we address our prayer?  Once we address that question, we are on our way to real prayer, or "intimate conversation with One who we know loves us," in the words of Teresa of Avila.  Until we can truly say, "You are MY God," we have not yet begun to pray.

One afternoon years ago, I sat in my office minding my own business.  Suddenly, a "voice" broke into my thoughts:  "Who are your favorite people in the Bible?"  Without thinking about it at all, I spontaneously answered, "Enoch, Deborah, and Abraham."  If I had pondered the question, I may have weighed different responses -- but these names just popped to the surface without thought.  Immediately came the reply:  "Walk with Me; Sit with Me; Stand with Me."

Surprised, I then began to think:  Enoch "walked" with God until he was no more; Deborah "sat" under a tree and "judged" Israel; and Abraham --- how did Abraham "stand" with God?  Curious, I pulled out my bible and searched -- and sure enough, it says Abraham "stood" with God and interceded with Him about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.  And this, after God says, "Should I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?" (Gen. 18:17).

Looking back now, years later, I realize that God was teaching me how to pray.  It's not always about praying the rosary or saying novenas -- although that, for some people, is how God has taught them to pray, and St. Augustine says, "Pray as you can, not as you can't!"  That is great advice, even though I'd bet most of us lament the ways we cannot pray, not realizing that the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness, uttering prayers with unutterable groans in us, and God hears the prayers we cannot say (Romans 8:26).

In other words, God Himself prays in us and through us; He breathes through us the prayers He wants to answer for the world around us.  "I never know what to say," said a friend of mine one day.  But maybe if we walk with Him long enough, sit with Him for awhile, and stand with Him in intercession for our friends and our cities, we'll eventually feel comfortable enough to "say" nothing at all!

Brilliance!

And how can they preach unless they are sent? (Romans 10:15)

I am amazed to be living in an age when I have access to the writings of ancient literature on my Kindle.  On this small device, I carry the libraries of the world -- and I can immediately read precious documents and books on which people once spent fortunes to purchase or gain access to.

There is no substitute for reading original works by the fathers of the church or by the saints.  For some reason, their writing is so clear, so reasonable, that what they proclaim seems obvious -- and yet, later, or modern, writers rarely seem to reach the same level of clarity.  When I read them, I understand the words "Proclaim the Gospel."  For example, for years, I have read many books and treatises on the Incarnation and why Christ had to die for our sins.  Yet, it was only St. Athanasius' On the Incarnation that unfolded for me the absolute reasonableness of Christ's necessary death on the cross.

In the same way, reading St. Francis de Sales' The Catholic Controversy has brought to light an amazing understanding of the error of the Protestant Reformation.  Born in 1567, Francis became Bishop of Geneva, the city of Calvin's spread of heresy.  One would expect Francis to write caustically about the Protestant Reformation, particularly in light of its accusations against the corruption of the Catholic church.  And yet, Francis writes his explanations with such humility and gentleness that it is estimated his writings re-converted 72,000 people who had left the church to follow Calvinism at the time, illustrating one of his sayings, "Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength."

In Part I of his treatise, entitled Mission, Francis points out that the office claimed by Luther, Calvin, and the other ministers of the Reformation was that of "ambassadors of Jesus Christ Our Lord."  And yet, the message they proclaimed was the declaration of "a formal divorce between Our Lord and the ancient church His spouse, and to arrange, as lawful procurators, a second and new marriage with this young madam, of better grace, said they, and more seemly than the other."

According to Francis, to say that the whole church has failed and all truth disappeared is to say that Jesus has abandoned His church and has broken the sacred tie of marriage He had contracted with her.  To put forward a new church is to thrust upon Jesus a new and second wife.  How interesting that I have never read before such a perspective!

Moreover, Francis goes on to question who "sent" these messengers, because as the Scripture says, "How can they preach unless they are sent?"  In fact, this issue of "sending" has always been one of the strongest marks of the true church: one, holy, catholic, apostolic.  Christ gave the sacred commission to his apostles; they have laid hands on and ordained others -- sending them forth from the Source of Truth to proclaim the Truth.  "We say mission is given mediately when we are sent by one who has from God the power of sending, according to the order which he has appointed in his church....as was the sending of Timothy by St. Paul."

If the mission is directly from God, as was that of Moses, then it is always verified by signs and wonders.  Mission is not given without blessings---and no one should allege an extraordinary mission unless he prove it by miracles.  Even Jesus said, "As the Father has sent me, so I also send you;  My teaching is not my own, but of Him that sent me."  "Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?  Otherwise, believe for the works themselves."  Anyone who claims an extraordinary mission without miracles should be taken for an imposter.  Even the messages given by Our Lady to her visionaries are supported by miracles.

I had never looked upon the Protestant reformers the way Francis de Sales does.  In fact, I had thought that maybe in the beginning they were indeed reformers, but that their message had gotten out of hand.  Now, however, I am seeing how critical it is that all teachers and preachers remain wholly united to the church itself, teaching only what the church teaches in unity with all the bishops.
I am so grateful to be able to go directly to the sources to find what St. Vincent of Lerins said "has been believed from the beginning."

Gazing Upon the Beauty of the Lord

One thing I ask of the Lord, 

and this I seek;

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord

all the days of my life,

to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord

and to seek him in His temple (Ps. 27).

Last evening, at a church gathering, someone asked if I had seen the sunset.  I had not, but she began extolling the inexpressible beauty of the day: "People were pulling over to the side of the road just to gaze at the sunset," she said.

The best things in life have no purpose except pure enjoyment -- just gazing at them in joy.  Bishop Robert Barron maintains that the very best parts of the newspaper are the sports pages and the comics, for they have no end outside of themselves -- just enjoyment.  (Now, however, with sports betting made legal, the commercialists have found a way to make the sports pages utilitarian, destroying the pure joy of reading.)

I can think of no better pastime than gazing upon Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.  C.S. Lewis, in his Reflections Upon the Psalms, ponders how on earth a man can "love" the "law," calling it "sweeter than honey" (Psalm 119), for example.  He understands how someone can respect the law, or appreciate it, but not how we can "love" it.  

For the Jews, however, the word "law" did/ and does not mean what we think of as "law."  Rather, to them, "the Law" was the instruction, inspiration, Truth, Order, Beauty of Creation, righteousness, the Breath and Wisdom of God revealed to mankind.  When we finally "see" it, or receive it, it takes our breath away, even more than the beauty of a sunset or the majesty of the mountains.  It is like seeing the very Face of God Himself.  

People think that the purpose of Christianity, or of any religion for that matter, is to "make us good and decent people."  And from that premise, they will eventually deduce that they can be good people without going to church.  Perhaps they can; I will not deny them that.  But "making us good" is a rather utilitarian end of religion, and not its primary purpose after all.  It is a secondary effect, much as a man might reform his life to be worthy of the woman he falls in love with.

The reason Jesus Christ came was not to reform us --- although He does do that, of course.  No, He came to re-form us into a different sort of creature altogether.  We are no longer children of Adam, but now children of God.  We are not only allowed, but now even invited, to gaze upon the beauty of His face and to inquire of Him whatever we want.  We are enjoined to "taste and see the goodness of the Lord," to rest in His Presence, to enter into fellowship with Him, to eat at His table.

Jesus wants for us the SAME relationship He has with the Father.  And not just "when we get to heaven," but NOW, on earth.  That is why we must be "born again," as "a new creation."  The old (man) is gone; the new has arrived in the Resurrection.  Now we too can pass through walls and doors; we can gaze upon His beauty now, and find TRUTH in His temple.  We can drink freely of the water of life.  

Going on vacation -- as long as we leave behind the cell phones and the internet -- and gazing at the stars for no other reason except to drink in as much as we can their exquisite beauty is much more akin to our Christianity than "becoming good people."  After seeing the sunset, after sleeping under the stars, or walking the forest, or canoeing the cold mountain stream; after hearing the birds sing for no "reason," we will undoubtedly be better people, but only because our lives have been touched by the most exquisite beauty we can imagine.  We need more gazing in our lives.