Word to the Wise
Thursday, October 12, 2006 - 27th Thursday in Ordinary Time
[Galatians 3:1-5 and Luke 11:5-13]"And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened."
I do a lot of retreat ministry. Much of it is for members of women's religious orders or for priests in a given diocese. One of the topics I always address is prayer. This means I hear myself talking about this subject a lot as well. I have to be the first audience! I can't be saying things I don't believe or practice. It will show. Prayer is a very sensitive issue for folks who are in religious life and ministry because of the public nature of the commitment these folks have made. They are supposed to be "professional pray-ers!" They will note if what I am saying is simply a lot of "shoulds" and "oughts" or one of those long discussions of the "kinds of prayer" from which you choose as if choosing from a shelf of different shampoos at a store! This does not mean prayer is less important to layfolks. On the contrary! However, I don't get to do a lot of retreats for laity (except for Deacons and wives). So everybody in the Beloved Congregation is getting the same thing today! In reflecting on Jesus' words about prayer above, the primary things, as I see it, are truth and persistence. The reason I say this is that prayer is essentially the expression of a relationship between a human person and God. The kind of prayer, or even the words, is not as important as the relationship. Nevertheless those words are still important because they tell us if we are telling the truth about our relationship to God. How many times must a spouse say to a spouse, "I love you!"? In a healthy marriage, this takes place daily and maybe several or more times daily! This kind of communication continually reinforces and nurtures the relationship. The same thing is true about prayer. What is important is that we use language that tells the truth about our relationship to God and that we do it continually. Whether the words are of a traditional devotional nature and taken from a prayerbook or whether they spring spontaneously from the emotion of the moment, as long as they tell the truth about our relationship to God and we persist in the process, that's what I would call "praying as Jesus taught us!" If "Centering Prayer" tells the truth about a "pray-er" and God, then that's the right thing to do. If the Rosary tells the same truth, then celebrate that. Together as a church, we celebrate the sacraments, but individually we have a lot of freedom to express our relationship to God. The important thing is to do it and do it often! AMEN
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