You do not save your soul as you might save a treasured possession. You save it as you lose a treasured possession: in surrendering it. We must save ourselves collectively, we must arrive together before the good Lord. What would he say if we arrived before him, came home to him, without the others?
CHARLES PÉGUY
The most important thing you can say about God's love is that God loves us not because of anything we've done to earn that love, but because God, in total freedom, had decided to love us. At first sight, this doesn't seem to be very very inspiring; but if you reflect on it more deeply this thought can affect and influence your life greatly. We are inclined to see our whole existence in terms of quid pro quo. We assume that people will be nice to us if we are nice to them; that they will help us if we help them; that they will invite us if we invite them; that they will love us if we love them. And so the conviction is deeply rooted in us that being loved is something you have to earn. In our pragmatic and utilitarian times this conviction has become even stronger. We can scarcely conceive of getting something for nothing. Everything has to be worked for, even a kind word, an expression of gratitude, a sign of affection.
HENRI NOUWEN In My Own Words
In order to have the strength to contemplate affliction when we are afflicted, we need supernatural bread.
SIMONE WEIL Gravity and Grace
The past casts its shadow over the present whenever we brood about old failures and yesterday's choices. Of course we should ask God's forgiveness for our faults and should learn from them where appropriate. But once we've said we're sorry and meant it, that is enough. While seeking to make amends where possible for the harm we have caused, most of the time we should simply leave things in God's hands, trusting him to put everything right. We must put a stop to attitudes or thoughts that keep us from living trustingly in the present moment.
JACQUES PHILIPPE Interior Freedom
So every day God works with us, calling us to repentance: “Oh that today you would hear his voice: Harden not your hearts…" (Ps 95:7-8). God speaks in various ways. He speaks through his Word, through the people with whom we live, through all sorts of circumstances, joyful and painful. We dread the latter especially. We know all too well that God has something to say to us in affliction, sickness, death or misfortune. If we still sense this fear in our heart, it is because as yet we have eyes only for the wrath of God, and this means we have not yet discovered how, behind the external signs of wrath, his immeasurable love is concealed.
ANDRÉ LOUF Tuning Into Grace
I have noticed that when we are very careful to mortify and humble ourselves in everything, we sometimes become depressed and less ready to serve God. This is a temptation which we can conquer by thinking that God only asks these things of us through love. We should aim at humbling ourselves to please God as a good friend tries to please his friend, or a son his father. There must be no constraint but a holy liberty of spirit, for this liberty is one of the best signs of true love. It is easy to do things which we know will please one whom we love.
ST. CLAUDE DE LA COLOMBIÈRE
When the disciples ask him to teach them to pray, Jesus does not offer method or technique. “I like to sit quietly in a deserted place, focus on my breathing, and simply relax…” No. He tells them to say something. Speak. “Say, Our Father…” Jesus the beloved Son teaches us that we are as he is, children of a loving, attentive Father. And if Jesus’ opponents often expressed shock and outrage that he dared to call God his very own Father, thus making himself equal with God. It is perhaps little less shocking that he advises us to pray as he prayed. Jesus places us within his relationship with God, a relationship marked by tenderness and confidence.
And so each morning, at his command and formed by his divine teaching, we dare to say these words, to repeat Jesus’ own words. So accustomed to praying the Our Father, do we believe that we are doing something really daring? The prayer is not a formula but more a “shape, a pattern,” better still a situation. For when we pray the Our Father, we are situated with and in Jesus, thus intimately connected with God. We too are beloved children, and so we dare to pray with real confidence.
And after naming God our Father, a series of petitions follows. In the first place we ask that God’s name be sanctified. This hallowing of God’s name expresses the ancient desire that all people be gathered into one and given a new heart filed with God’s Spirit, so that all nations may witness God’s blessings and so reverence God’s name. There then follow a further series of petitions: for the coming to birth of God’s reign of true shalom, then for bread, for forgiveness, not to be led into temptation and to be delivered from evil. We are putting demands on God, as we depend on his initiative.
And if in another place Jesus will tell us not to babble on in prayer “as the pagans do,” assuring us that God knows our needs before we speak, here he tells us to ask. Tell God what you want. And to amplify the message, Jesus will follow with a parable of a desperate friend who comes at midnight. Could God be at least as responsive as that grouch, unhappily roused from his sleep by the persistent knocking and entreaty of a friend at midnight?
And it’s just what Abraham does in the First Reading with his relentless deal-making with God. There’s such tension in that passage, for even as Abraham is reverent and respectful as he repeats his requests, you fear God will suddenly lose his patience, get ticked off and tell Abraham, “Enough already.” But God does not.
Could it be that God wants to be entreated so insistently? Apparently so because he continues to comply with Abraham’s persistent pleading. And it seems Abraham knows his relationship with God can tolerate it. Perhaps we could even say that the relationship demands it. Abraham has chutzpah, that’s the Yiddish word derived from the original Hebrew, meaning nerve, audacity. It’s daring and in-your-face..
This is just what Jesus emphasizes in that parable of the persistent friend this morning. The friend who just won’t back down and keeps knocking. That’s chutzpah. The actual word used in the parable is the Greek a-nai’-daya; it means shameless persistence, refusing to take no for an answer. Could Jesus be telling us that our relationship with a loving Father God demands such chutzpah?
It brings to mind that little widow demanding her rights from the corrupt judge. “Because this widow keeps bothering me,” he says. “I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come back and hit me with her handbag.” Or that Syrophoenician woman. “Alright,” she says to Jesus. “Call me a dog if you want, but even the dogs get the scraps. Give me a scrap.” It’s all about persistence and a faith that asks for more.
Prayer can never be a time for ambivalence but daring desire. A great confidence, audacity grounded in our belovedness. The relationship that prayer is puts us in our place as sons and daughters of a loving Father who wants to hear. As children of our Father we know our incompleteness, our utter dependence on him for everything, and so we ask.
I am reminded of my first retreat. First meeting, I sit across from the director, and he advises me to tell the Lord what I want, what is my deepest desire, in my heart of hearts. “Oh no,” I assure him. “I’ve read a lot of Thomas Merton books. He says you don’t do that, you just trust and open your heart, and you know, you pray.” “That’s great,” says this priest. “I love Merton. Read a lot of his books myself. Terrific author. Now go tell God what you want and get back to me tomorrow morning.” I did. Things happened. For when we acknowledge our deepest desires, we step into God’s desire for us. For he wants our good. In our prayer we are not trying to wrestle God to the ground. We beg earnestly, with chutzpah and we trust his desire for us.
Our prayer even at its most apophatic, in its greatest simplicity and deepest imageless quietude, no matter how far beyond words and concepts is always grounded in our deepest desiring. Ultimately we seek union, the consummation of our relationship to God, that Jesus assures us is ours in our Father. Joyfully falling backwards into the Father’s attention, into the Spirit’s groaning on our behalf, into the Son’s ceaseless pleading for us, we surrender. Jesus is the Father’s best gift to us, the Heart of all desire, let us go up again to this altar to receive him our Daily Bread.