As we began our retreat last week Father Damian invited us to go to the well with Jesus and the Samaritan woman. And he quoted the Catechism on prayer.
"If you knew the gift of God!" The wonder of prayer is revealed
beside the well where we come seeking water: there, Christ comes to meet every
human being. It is he who first seeks us and asks us for a drink. Jesus thirsts;
his asking arises from the depths of God's desire for us. Whether we realize it
or not, prayer is the encounter of God's thirst with ours. God thirsts that we
may thirst for him.
"You would have asked him, and he would have
given you living water." Paradoxically our prayer of petition is a
response to the plea of the living God: "They have forsaken me, the fountain of
living waters, and hewn out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can
hold no water!" Prayer is the response of faith to the free promise
of salvation and also a response of love to the thirst of the only Son of
God.
As we return to the regularity of the monastic horarium, we pray that we will continue to be ceaselessly aware of God's desire, God's thirst for us.
Photograph of the Abbey church by Brother Casimir. Lines from The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2560, 2561.
As we return to the regularity of the monastic horarium, we pray that we will continue to be ceaselessly aware of God's desire, God's thirst for us.
Photograph of the Abbey church by Brother Casimir. Lines from The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2560, 2561.