Behold I make all things new. (Rev. 21:5)

ONLY PROFOUND PRAYER, A CRY FROM THE DEPTHS OF OUR HEARTS, WILL MAKE THIS A NEW DAY

Remember the Gospel story of the storm at sea? When the disciples wake Jesus up and say to him Lord we are perishing? Jesus stops the storm then and there.

These people with storms in a boat and storms all about them
and probably within too. And fear! They were smart enough with faith to cry out, from the toes up, to Jesus.

We all experience some fears. There are many disguises of fear. With me I shout! My MOther and I were in the subway one time when it suddenly stopped with a crash. We were "strap-hanging". I said to Mother, 'someone really yelled'. She responded: 'that was you'! Each of us has a way of fear: comfort-seeking, collecting, condescension, complaining, gossip, preoccupation with the faults of others, sarcasm, withdrawal. We can get swallowed up in disguising fear. It is our human condition.

But there is another way. The way of compassion. As John 23rd said “I do not believe in the prophets of gloom.” Instead, it is crying for help that opens our hearts to the healing power of God. to the Divine energy of Goodness and Mercy.

We cannot afford to take prayer for granted. Let us always enter into time for prayer by expressing in faith our desire for mercy, our desire to do the will of God, our faith in the reality of the Presence of God. Like those people in that storm with Jesus, we can cry out “wake up Jesus, doesn’t it bother you that we are drowning” We may be drowning in troubles or we may be drowning in apathy, or a feeling of dullness of life or fear. In that storm at sea Jesus answered their cries by saying 'Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?'

The Good News is that when life is at its worst or at its dullest, we are still totally loved. God is inviting us into the mystery of the other side, which we do not yet know, but which we know is there because of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Remember Job? He cried to God with all his being. And then what? Life became more mysterious. Yet he was content because he had indeed the profound experience of having been heard by God.

I always liked it that in the course of his praying he said “Have I not wept for those whose life is hard.” God had given him a compassionate heart. Then we see that God led Job beyond a narrow sense of justice connected with retribution into a sense of the freedom and love of God. We learn from Job that the language of the prophet must be grounded in the language of worship and contemplation. Rock bottom for both prophet and contemplative is the Presence of God. From Job’s intimate exchange with God, Job has changed his mind about gloom and entered into a new day! *

Let me read to you the words of Luis Espinal, a priest murdered in Bolivia: “Train us, O Lord, to fling ourselves upon the impossible, for behind the impossible is your grace and your presence. We cannot fall into emptiness, Our future is an enigma, our road covered with mist, but we want to go on giving ourselves, because YOU continue hoping amid the night and weeping tears through a thousand human eyes.” It is not that we are to be silent in the face of human suffering. Rather we enter into silence of meditation in order to entrust all to the amazing love that God has for us - the many sparrows. Not even one falls to the ground with out the attention of our Father in heaven. Who raises us up. Let us pray.

*Gustave Gutierrez: On Job: God-talk and the suffering of the innocent. 1988. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY

Consent to the world as a whole

“Neither happiness not contemplation is possible except on the basis of consent to the world as a whole “ pg 106, Josef Peiper: Happiness and Contemplation. St. Augustine’s Press, South Bend, IN 1998

And this consent is based on the great gift of faith: faith that the world even as it is this moment is redeemable. That all is gift. That Jesus, true God and true man experienced in Gethsemane and on the cross what human suffering is like and yet he trusted. Remember? If it be possible, let this chalice pass from me, yet not my will but thine be done. And our faith tells us that all the suffering Jesus then endured was not at all the end of the story. Jesus rose from the dead.

This is the mystery in which we live. This is the mystery to which we give our consent. We do not deny human suffering, human wickedness. Perhaps we weep over it all as Jesus did over Jerusalem.
We find ways to help alleviate suffering. We are indeed called to works of mercy, in some way or other. But in the end by the gift of faith we give our consent to the world as a whole. And in this consent we are able to live ever more contemplatively.

Living more contemplatively means living ever more attentive to the reality of the Presence of God. We are ever in the Presence of God. In Him we live and move and have our being. Can we of ourselves make ourselves more attentive? I do not think so. But as God gives us the desire, so God gives us the path to follow and bids us come along.

One great way is the gift of Christian Meditation. When we meditate we let go of running our own lives for 20-30 minutes. We just rest in God. And we let God bless us as He wills. And for sure one gift given is the gift of faith in the reality that we are always immersed in God. that God is ever with us.

When we meditate, we are mindful that God is with us, loving us. We let go of all our imaginations, thoughts, worries, feelings. We just sit and repeat a prayer word or phrase as a way to focus. It is a word of faith. It is a time of faith. It is a time of consent. Let us pray.