Context and Direction of Prayer
It was Thursday morning already and I realized with horror that there were only two more days left. I did intend to ask Peter if he would be able to come over on the Saturday morning to see me before I flew back to the mainland, but that might not be possible. As usual he arrived dead on time. I did feel sorry for him: he looked so hot and bothered as he sat down in his chair. It was another scorcher outside, even hotter than yesterday, but he would persist in wearing his massive woolly pullover. At least he’d left his jacket behind – I suppose that was something.
‘Would you like to take your sweater off?’ I asked.
‘No, I’m fine thanks, James,’ said Peter, shaking his head and raising his hands as if I were making some sort of improper suggestion. I couldn’t help smiling at him. He looked for all the world like a large bewildered polar bear that had taken a wrong turning and suddenly found himself in the tropics.
‘You’ve convinced me of the importance of time when it comes to prayer,’ I burst out, before Peter could finish wiping his face with his large red handkerchief. ‘But now I would be most grateful if you could give me some idea of how to fill that time.
‘What I mean is, now that you’ve convinced me that God’s love alone can change me, and that prayer is the way to expose myself to that love, could you please advise me how to start? Would you teach me how to pray, from the very beginning?’
Peter stuffed his napkin-sized handkerchief into his trouser pocket and paused for a moment, staring at the floor as if my question had confused him. Then he half laughed to himself, scratched the back of his head with his right hand and said: ‘I was just thinking of the first time that question was asked and of the answer that was given. I can’t do better than repeat it: “Our Father, who is in heaven …”’
Peter paused. ‘In the Lord’s Prayer, Christ gave us the pattern of all prayer. The first two words, “Our Father”, sum up the rest of the prayer and are the key to understanding the basic context and direction of all Christian prayer. Our trouble is that familiarity has anesthetized our minds, dulled our intellects so that the depth of meaning with which these words are charged simply passes us by.
‘Take the word “Our”. This one word sums up the whole context of all prayer. You see, prayer lifts us up out of ourselves and gradually draws us more deeply into Christ, and in him we are drawn into the total community of mankind.’
‘Could you explain a little more clearly what you mean?’ I asked.
‘Certainly,’ said Peter. ‘I said the other day that the Gospel is the story of what happens to a person who totally exposes themselves to the power of uncreated love. The Resurrection shows the inevitable consequences of this process in the life of Christ. It also makes it quite clear that what happened to him will happen to all who are prepared to follow him, to do what he did. Resurrection means that the person who continually opens him or herself to love, come what may, will in the end be possessed by it. As this process reaches its climax, they will be lifted out of themselves into a new mode of being altogether. We can see this happening to Christ at the end of the Gospel story. The Resurrection pinpoints the moment in time when Christ is so possessed by love that he is raised up outside of time into a new form of existence, beyond all the laws and limitations of the space-and-time world to which we belong, and into which he was born.
‘Before the Resurrection Jesus was subject to all the restrictions that bind the rest of us. He too could only be in one place at any given moment. Contact with him therefore was necessarily limited to where he happened to be, how long he was going to stay there, how many other people wanted to see him. Once love had lifted him out of the world of space and time, however, he was freed from all those limiting laws and restrictions. In the eternal dimension, he could be present to countless numbers of people at any given moment, because he could be present to them, not from the outside, but from the inside, through love. Now he was not just the “Man for all Seasons”, but the man for all times, for all ages, for all generations simultaneously. This is why he is sometimes called “the Eternal Contemporary”. And since Christ can come into contact with everyone through love, then everyone can contact each other in him. Just as the spokes of a wheel automatically come closer to one another as they draw nearer to the center, so everyone automatically comes closer to one another as they draw nearer to Christ. The world of the eternal dimension, or the Kingdom of love, is the only place where genuine community really exists.
‘When we say “Our Father”, then, we don’t just mean that we pray with Christ, and in him, but also that we pray together with all humankind who are alive in him, with the whole community of living or dead, because in him there is no death. We pray with Mary too, with Peter and Paul, with Francis and Dominic; we pray with loved ones now dead, who have been reborn in Christ. Prayer opens us to the world where space and time have no meaning; our prayer can reach out and unite us with other Christians now languishing in the prisons of the world for the Faith we can so easily take for granted. It can enable us to bring strength and comfort to an innocent victim of some vicious regime, who is about to be tortured at this moment.’
Peter paused for a moment’s respite and reached for his long red handkerchief to wipe away the perspiration that was gathering on his forehead.
‘You probably saw that doctor on the television some years ago – the one who’d been tortured in a Chilean jail. She had been given the electric shock treatment and been subjected to all sorts of indignities. She stated quite simply that she had received tremendous help from the prayers of friends back home. She likened their prayers to “waves of love” that sustained her through some of the darkest moments of her ordeal. Coming from anyone else, such a phrase could all too easily have sounded like pious hyperbole. On the same news program I heard the story of a group of Christians suffering behind the Iron Curtain who had risked imprisonment to smuggle a tape recording out of the Soviet Union. The tape consisted of an impassioned appeal for prayers, from the Russian Christians to their brothers in the West. Suffering always makes people of deep faith more sensitive to the extraordinary power of prayer. You may be alone in your own room, or in a deserted church, but when you begin to pray, you enter into the whole community of all who live and love in Christ. Through prayer we can reach out to others, share our faith and love with them, and receive their strength in return. The Church made an enclosed Carmelite nun, St Thérèse of Lisieux, patroness of the Missions, to emphasize that the prayer of love transcends all boundaries, even the boundaries of space and time.’
‘This is what some people call “the Mystical Body of Christ”,’ I said.
‘Yes …’ replied Peter, hesitantly. ‘But I always think that’s rather a clumsy phrase, and it has the added disadvantage of being a religious cliché that has been emptied of meaning through overuse. But the reality expressed by that traditional phrase is central to all prayer. It expresses the fundamental context in which all prayer begins, grows and is completed. All who allow themselves to be possessed by love will be swept up out of themselves, to be more deeply immersed into the life of the resurrected man, Jesus, through whom they will meet each other on a level that they never imagined possible.
‘This is why the first word of the Lord’s Prayer is “OUR”. There is no place for the self-conscious “I”. It is “OUR Father, who is in heaven, hallowed be thy Name; thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give US this day OUR daily bread, and forgive US OUR trespasses, as WE forgive those who trespass against US; and lead US not into temptation, but deliver US from evil.”
‘The whole Christian prayer tradition follows this pattern of prayer and is exemplified perfectly in the Liturgy of the Church. There is no such thing as private prayer for Christians, although they may be praying in solitary confinement. The context of prayer is so important both theologically and psychologically that we ought to begin prayer by mentally reminding ourselves of the all-embracing world into which we enter; of the vast community of believers with whom we are identifying ourselves, in Christ.’
‘I see the importance of what you’re saying, Peter, from a theological point of view, but I’m not clear what you mean by saying it’s psychologically important too.’
‘Well …’ said Peter, characteristically pausing for a moment. ‘The whole point of prayer is that it takes believers out of themselves into another world where they no longer live for themselves but for others, in a community that transcends the barriers of space and time. They are invited into a wholly new environment where they will gradually forget their own petty self-centered world, as they learn to live with and for all who are alive in Christ. In other words, don’t just say, “Lord, I am a sinner, help me”; say, “Lord, we are sinners, help us”. Don’t just say, “Lord, teach me to pray”; say, “Lord, teach us to pray”. And don’t just say, “Lord, I praise you!” Say, “Lord, we praise you!” For you are praying with the whole body of believers who are alive in Christ and not just by yourself, and you are praying for all humankind, not just for yourself.’
‘I do see what you mean,’ I said, ‘but do you believe that we should never use the word “I” and never make ourselves the subject of our prayers?’
‘No, I don’t,’ Peter replied. ‘There are times when we have to think of ourselves, put ourselves under a microscope and even pray in the first person. I’ll come back to this later, but as a general rule our prayer should place us in the brotherhood of Christ.’
Peter took out his watch and looked at it in disbelief.
‘Good gracious!’ he exclaimed. ‘We’ve spent almost an hour talking about one word. Still, it is rather an important one.’
‘That leaves you one more hour for the remaining word,’ I said.
‘So it does,’ answered Peter with a smile. ‘Our FATHER …’ He emphasized the last word. ‘Yes, the first word puts us in the right context; the second points us in the right direction. You see, the Gospels show how it is the Holy Spirit who progressively invades and fires the human personality of Jesus, until he is eventually set ablaze with the love that raises him irrevocably into the Father, to Eternity. It is the flame of the self-same Spirit which radiates between the Father and the Son that can reach out to us also, to fire us with the identical love that will enable all to be drawn into the community of their life.
‘Christ teaches us to call God “Father” when we pray, because this is precisely what he is to us now. The actual word Jesus uses is even more telling than the translation to which we have become accustomed. He didn’t in fact use the word that is the equivalent to our word “Father”; instead he chose the word Abba. This Aramaic word actually means “Daddy”, or at least the word “Daddy” is the closest we can get to the original meaning. Christ’s use of this familiar and homely pet name was not only new; it would also have been shocking to his fellow Jews. I don’t mean that God was never referred to as “Father” before. Only the other day, I was reading a book in which the author had actually gone to the trouble of counting the number of times God had been called “Father” in the Old Testament. He found there were thirteen occasions in all. However, each time the word was employed it was used as another word for “creator”. In other words, God was a Father insofar as he was responsible for his own handicraft, in the sense that we would say, “Michelangelo was the Father of his statue Moses” because he carved it, or “Herodotus was the Father of all History” because he created the literary genre.
‘The traditional word for “Father”, then, was already loaded with a meaning that Jesus wished to supersede. The word Abba or “Daddy”, or its equivalent in any language, can mean only one thing. What is a daddy? Who is a daddy but one who communicates life to his children? There can be no misunderstanding as to what is meant by this word. The nuance is crucial for the new understanding that Jesus wished to convey about God. God is now no longer to be understood merely as our Father, the One who created us, but the One who chooses to share his own life with us. This one word sums up the fullness of the Gospel message: namely, if we only allow the same Spirit of love that entered into the life of Jesus to enter into our lives too, then we will be able to share not only in his life, but also in his action, in his love of the Father and in the Father’s love of him.’
‘I know what you’re saying is all true,’ I said, ‘because I’ve studied theology for three years, but my trouble is that so often the world of faith seems far away. You’ve somehow made things alive for me again by the way you explain everything. But I know me, and in a few weeks everything will seem as dry as dust again and I’ll be back to the desert of daily drudgery.’
‘This is exactly why it is so imperative that from now onwards you seriously begin to pick up the traces again and rebuild a permanent prayer life,’ said Peter. ‘By faith we know that God is our Father, but it is only when that faith grows and ripens in prayer that we actually start to experience God’s love progressively entering into us. We can call God “Father” but what’s in a word, unless that word expresses something vital and real, something that we know because we have felt it. It is not enough just to accept the bald and undeniable fact that God is a Father. If this truth is to change our lives, which it can, then it must be translated into an experience. This can only happen if we put aside the time daily, create the space in which to allow God to become a loving Father to us. We can prevent this happening, and the truth of the matter is, we do, repeatedly. We just won’t allow God to be a Father or more precisely to be our Dad. We never seem to have the time. There’s always something else that’s more important, that simply has to be done. Until we come to realize that there is nothing more important than allowing God to be a Father, by letting him enter our lives through prayer, then we can never be changed deeply, and will never be able to change others either. Unless we allow God to touch us with his fatherly love, we may just as well call him Ra, Jupiter, or Zeus, for all the practical difference he will make to our lives. This is why Jesus made it clear that the one condition necessary to enter into the Kingdom of God’s love is to become as a little child, so that he can become a Father to us.’
‘I’ve never quite understood what Christ meant when he said that,’ I said. ‘We can all be sentimental about children and romanticize their innocent and simple goodness, but in reality they’re self-centered greedy little mites.’
‘What you say is quite right,’ Peter agreed, ‘but Jesus wasn’t a romantic sentimentalist when it came to children. He was aware of their shortcomings. He makes this quite clear when he castigates the Pharisees for acting like kids squabbling with each other on the street corner. But whatever the faults of little children, they have one redeeming feature that we cannot resist. They are irresistibly helpless and unable to manage for themselves. They have no illusions about their own strength; they are weak and incompetent and they make no bones about it. If there is anything that becomes too much for them, be it an untieable shoelace or a dribbling nose, off they run to Mummy or Daddy. They are utterly and completely dependent on their parents and they don’t care who knows it. This is the characteristic that Jesus is pointing to when he says we must become as little children if we want to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.’
‘We’re back to Anita again,’ I said.
‘Exactly! Who is going to belittle themselves by getting down on their knees to pray unless they are first aware that they are in need of help? Without the basic humility of the little child, we can’t even begin. This is why Jesus says it is as difficult for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Jesus isn’t just referring to the person with a fat wallet or a big bank balance; he means people who are rich in natural gifts and abilities too, the person with brains or flair, with administrative skills or business insight, with charm or artistic brilliance. None of these riches are evil in themselves – far from it – but they all have the same danger. They can so easily give a person a false impression of their own strength, their own importance and personal competence. Who needs God when money will get me all I want? Who needs God’s help when I can do it myself? Riches of any sort obscure this fundamental vision that all of us need to have quite clearly in mind; namely, that we are basically weak and incapable of achieving anything lasting or worthwhile without God. We are totally dependent on him for everything. If we don’t see this, we’re blind, and we’ll stumble around for a lifetime and never find the right road, never mind enter the Kingdom.’
‘I must say, I’d never thought of Jesus’ words in that way before,’ I said.
Peter always seemed to be able to see that little bit deeper than me, always seemed to go to the heart of things with a simple clarity that I envied. Yet all he said seemed to revolve around a few simple truths that he kept coming back to time and time again. Namely, the only power capable of changing a person is love, and it is the experience of the fatherly love of God which alone will radically change a person deeply and permanently for the better. Next, a person’s recognition of their own weakness is the only way they will come to feel their utter need of God’s help. Third, building a life of prayer is the only logical step for the person who genuinely believes that they are completely dependent upon God. This means turning your lifestyle upside down if needs be, to find the necessary daily time for prayer; otherwise you are just kidding yourself and will get nowhere. Prayer isn’t just a luxury for priests or religious, or people who happen to have spare time on their hands; it’s an absolute necessity for everyone who wants to plunge themselves effectively into the mystery of Christ’s life.
‘Now perhaps you can see what I mean by saying that the two words “Our Father” not only sum up the whole of the Lord’s Prayer, but actually embody the basic pattern and direction of all authentic Christian prayer,’ said Peter. ‘The word “Our” immediately sites our prayer in the center of the Christian community, what tradition calls “the Community of Saints”. In this community we are all bound to each other in Christ, inextricably set in a single direction – God-wards. We are inevitably drawn into the endless ecstasy of life and love that unceasingly surges out of the Son towards the Father, and are filled to the measure of our weakness by the Father’s richness. The more we are filled with his fullness, the more we are lifted up out of ourselves in a self-forgetfulness that enables us to pray properly for the first time. The more we are tangibly immersed in the mystery of God’s love, the more we begin to see that all prayer leads to praise, to give glory to him and to lose ourselves in his inexhaustible goodness. The only petition that now seems to make sense is “Hallowed by thy Name, thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. From now on, we begin to live for God alone. Suddenly everything else seems unimportant and trivial compared to living for him.’
‘I suppose this is what the Gospel means by saying “Seek first the Kingdom of God and everything else will be given to you”,’ I said.
‘That’s just what I mean,’ agreed Peter. ‘Once a person begins to forget themselves and starts to live for God alone, then they are enveloped in the world of his Kingdom of love. Once a person is plunged into the environment of God’s love, their deepest yearnings reach out towards their fulfillment, and they know that nothing less than total immersion will satisfy them completely. Once they sense and experience, in some measure, the home for which they are destined, everything else pales into insignificance. The paltry pleasures that the world calls joy appear as dross to pure gold.’
Peter was on his feet again. I looked at my watch; incredible – it was dead on four o’clock. It was hard to believe how he always knew to the minute when it was time to go. This time, he didn’t even bother to consult his own bedraggled ‘timepiece’!
‘Oh, before you go,’ I said hurriedly, ‘I was wondering if you could come over on Saturday morning for a couple of hours? The plane doesn’t leave till 2.30 in the afternoon.’
He paused for a moment and looked a little pensive before he said, ‘Yes, that’ll be fine.’
My heart jumped. That meant two more meetings. It ought to be enough to put me firmly on the right path.
‘I don’t want to be mean with my time or hospitality,’ said Peter, ‘but I’m rather “up to the eyes” in things at the moment. I’m in the process of redecorating my cottage, and every available minute is precious.’
‘Why didn’t you say?’ I asked. ‘I could have given you a hand.’
‘Oh, not at all!’ said Peter. ‘You’re supposed to be on holiday. I’m just sorry I’ve been unable to invite you over.’
My heart missed a beat. I’d never thought that there was the remotest possibility of actually visiting Calvay and Peter’s own home.
‘Anyway,’ he said in a casual nonchalant voice that struck me ‘fair and square’ between the eyes, ‘there will always be a next time.’
My heart missed two more beats. I’d never thought there would be a possibility of that either. I couldn’t believe my ears. Now I knew that I’d not only discovered my own personal guru, but I’d found a friend for life!