Peace to you in the Lover of humankind!Here is a reflection on prayer. Most of us do it frequently but rarely do we reflect on what we are doing when we do it... pray that is....
So ask yourself.....What does one do when one prays? Why is that prayer and not something else? And what is prayed for? Over the past 25 years there has been more written on prayer than in the last century or millennium. Clearly the quest and hunger of the human heart speaks of a deeper desire to know, encounter and see God.
In the Syriac Maronite spirituality, the oldest of the 22 traditions of the Catholic Church, prayer is best understood as ‘being in the presence of God who is always present’. To pray is to make sense of reality and life experiences as disciples of the Divine One. Since the Divine speaks and enfleshes his/her words in the acts of creation - “let there be light, and there was light”, etc, to encounter creation and humankind is to meet and embrace God.
Prayer becomes the process of making oneself present to God as God presences the divine self to us in every moment of existence. This privilege of being aware of the Holy One, being in the divine presence, and called (divine vocation) to reciprocate presence is the working of the Spirit. The life of prayer is simply then to realize God’s presence with us as Mystery-Presence and as Lover of humankind.
All the various forms of prayer in all of the faith traditions are ‘tactics,’ which provide means to and icons of God. Since God is eternal presence, meaning never comes or goes, we never wait for God to come to us since God is always with us. Conversely, Mystery-Presence waits for us to make ourselves present to God.
Praying then is knowing, seeing and believing we are ‘living’ in the presence of God, and are engulfed and imbued by the divine mystery.
For the believer faith become the clearest vision one has of reality. Here prayer is coming face to face with God who dwells in creation, and responding to his invitation to live in communion with God and all creation.
Faith becomes the tool that penetrates the hidden abode and silence of God. However, we should not be contented with images, reflections and symbols of the divine even though God wants to be known through ‘the things that he has made”, as St Paul says.
For the person who can really see there is no single moment, no act in life, which is not prayer, and each is a reflection of God’s presence dwelling in all things, all places and all moments. Note well, prayer here is not an escape from the life and work entrusted to us by God, rather prayer allows us to live life as experiencing all things by transfiguring them.
Life and all activities become holy because all we do falls within the realm of mystery, and there is no way that we can place outside of the Mystery-Presence. As Zorba the Greek reminds us in his portrayal of life, life is the ‘stuff’ of prayer, and prayer is the ‘stuff’ of life. Hence life leads to prayers, and prayers expresses life.
So this TGIF 4th of July weekend, turn all your thoughts into conversation with God or prayer. Don’t just think about God or talk to God, but lead all your thoughts – conscious and unconscious, day dreams and night dreams - out of fearful isolation into loving communion with God.
Fr Ron
