Word to the Wise
Thursday, February 25, 2010 - Thursday in the First Week of Lent
[Esther C:12, 14-16, 23-25 and Matthew 7:7-12]Save us from the hand of our enemies; turn our mourning into gladness and our sorrows in wholeness. [Esther] Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the the one seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. [Matthew]
There is a liturgical principle, Lex orandi, Lex credendi, that, loosely translated, means the way we pray is the way we believe. Prayer should be a sign of our faith - the vocabulary of belief. This is why church authorities are so concerned about every single word used in public liturgy! However, public liturgy is not the only way in which we pray. In fact, most of our praying takes place outside of official public liturgy. Does the principle apply there? Do we have to be theologically exact or God won't "hear" us? The answer to that question has to be a resounding "NO!" There are times when our "popular" prayer expressions would curl the miters of church authorities. God makes allowances that they don't. Nevertheless, our prayer is not simply a private thing, no matter how we may "interiorize" it. We are part of the Body of Christ and we never pray alone. If our faith is shared then we need to be faithful to the core of belief, the teaching that we have received, so that we don't create "golden calves" by the way we pray. Queen Esther, the subject of the first scripture today, is a lady with some pretty serious concerns. She is about to become the victim of court intrigue, and her people may suffer as well. Her prayer springs from a mortal anguish and is a genuine expression of her faith in God as the deliverer of her people. Jesus' admonition in the Gospel of Matthew points to the necessity of maintaining the relationship to God on a steady basis and, like Queen Esther, we must believe that God will "hear" our prayer and be with us and will respond appropriately (no stones and snakes when bread and fish are called for). The persistence in prayer is itself a prayer. Lent offers an opportunity to take an inventory of our prayer. How do we pray? What does our prayer say about our belief? Is it related at all to our daily life and love of neighbor? Is prayer a part of our very identity or is it simply one "tool" among many that we use in the struggle to survive? Queen Esther wasn't starting from scratch in her prayer. Where do we start from? AMEN
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