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