Men Of Prayer

Men of Prayer

“Go before the tabernacle to establish with Jesus a simple and daily rapport of life. With the same naturalness with which you seek out a friend... in that same way go before the tabernacle to seek Jesus. Make of Jesus your dearest friend, the most trusted person, the most desired and the most loved.”

Jesus’ disciples pleaded with him: “Teach us how to pray” (cf. Lk 11:1–4). Jesus responds with that most profound of prayers, the Our Father. Just as Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, so must we, who continue the life and work of Jesus, teach our people how to pray. If we are to teach them how to pray, it presumes, of course, that we priests are men of prayers. People expect us to be so. I believe that we, too, expect ourselves to be so. Sadly, this is sometimes not the case; sometimes we are not really men of prayer.

It is true that we are busy about many things. It is no wonder that we have bred a society of workaholics. Are we happier because of it? Certainly not. There is more anger, frustration, and unhappiness in our very materially wealthy society than ever before. If a priest has no time for personal prayer then he hasn’t time to be a priest.

Why don’t Priests pray more?

It is easy to admonish priests to pray more and they dutifully acknowledge that they should. There are, no doubt many reasons why we not pray more. It was already noted that our priests are infected with the obsessive activism of our culture. They measure themselves the amount of work they do. Priests are not immediately and directly reinforced for praying. The opposite is usually the case. Another reason some priests do not pray privately is that they afraid of what will surface. This might sound odd. When we sit quietly in private prayer, we eventually face ourselves and the living God. Some priests do not pray because they are afraid that the personal hurts and pains buried in their own hearts will surface. They will have to face themselves; it is no accident that the spiritual masters have said the spiritual journey begins with self-knowledge. But facing ourselves is essential for a deep inner healing. The spiritual journey cannot begin in earnest without it.

It is sad note that a number of priests have an inner conviction that the good news applies to everyone else but themselves. Priests are great at preaching good news to others, but we have difficulty truly believing that the message of forgiveness and compassion applies to us too. Once priests recognize and truly take in the good news for themselves, it can be very exciting. They experience for themselves our wonderful, loving, and forgiving God. We priests can mouth words in a homily about how merciful and compassionate God is, but if we have not experienced it for ourselves, the words are hollow. When we are touched personally by Jesus, we know for ourselves what he has been trying to tell us and we are excited by what we have been given. This is a wonderful moment. It is good news that we spontaneously want to share.

A Taste for Prayer

Probably the most significant reason why priests, or other people, do not pray more is because they have not yet developed a taste for prayer. That is, they have not yet developed a personal taste for God. We spend a great deal of time training our seminarians in minor seminary, philosophy and theology. This is a good thing. We even teach them about spirituality. This too is important. But we typically spend a minimal amount of time teaching them to pray. We will need to build on these initial religious experiences and fervour in order to develop solid men of prayer.

As we grow into a deeper maturity in prayer, the priest will develop a familiarity with God, a kind of relaxed friendship. Saint Teresa of Avila is a fine guide in this. She spoke of becoming friends with God and about prayer as a conversation between friends. When we come to this familiarity with God, we naturally lose any neurotic fear of God while maintaining a holy fear of his awesome power. In such conversations we do not always expect to receive sensible consolations. Rather, merely being in the presence of God brings a sense of inner peace. What happens in the soul of the friends of God who regularly immerse themselves in prayer is hard to describe certainly the words “peace,” “rest,” and a “quiet joy” come to mind. The spirit expands and the eyes seem filled with light. Rather than fearing such divine encounters, we welcome them with delight.

Beginning to Pray

There is no one right method of prayer. A helpful way to begin with someone, including priest, who does not know how to pray is to suggest that the individual sit in a sacred place, such as a church, and honestly share one’s inner feelings and thoughts with God. If you are happy, tell God what is making you happy; if sad, share your sorrow. In other words, tell God exactly what you would tell your closest friend. While God already knows our innermost thoughts and feelings, the act of sharing develops trust and openness to God. It opens the heart to God and the openness allows divine grace to pour in.

It is particularly important to share one’s negative emotions with God, emotions such as anger, frustration, fear, and shame. We have a wonderful role model in Saint Teresa of Avila who said to God, “If this is how you treat your friends, it is no wonder you have so few” she was not loath to express her anger to God.

Praying the Scripture

The priest should have a special love of the sacred scriptures and pray them daily. If he is to be the people a unique presence of Jesus, he must tale on the mind and heart of Christ. They holy scriptures are an essential and foundational part of this presence. They embody the living heart and mind of Jesus. The priest ought to have a daily dose of this living word of God. By daily chewing on the word of God, in meditation and prayer including the Liturgy of the Hours, and by his own daily reception of the body and blood of Christ, the faithful priest will be slowly transformed. He will take on the heart and mind of Christ and, in fact, will truly become a living presence of Christ.

Concluding Remarks

The priest who does not pray privately and does not feed on the word of God will find that the fruits of his labours will be limited and that his ministry will lack sufficient depth. I would not want to reduce every personal problem to a lack of spirituality; there is an intimate connection between them. When our spiritual lives suffer and begin to deteriorate, the rest of our lives are not far behind. The ministry of prayer is a foundational work of the priest. We begin our service to the people by praying for them.

People want their priests to be men of prayer. They want someone who is in touch with this wonderful God of ours. They want a man whose eyes and face radiate God’s grace and whose heart is at peace. They want a priest who will love them and forgive them, just as God does. He can only do this if he is filled with the Spirit. He can only do this if he is a man of prayer. Praying is an act of faith. It is a simple statement that God is in charge, not us. Prayer is also an important way that God fills us with his divine presence. Now we hunger for God all the more. People want such men of prayer and men of God. We, ourselves, want to be such men. We begin and end this journey in prayer because our journey begins and ends with God.

(Thanks to Fr. Stephen J. Rossetti of his book the joy of priesthood)

Towards A Theology of the Suffering Body

“What is revealed about the body through suffering is its openness to the world in the form of vulnerability. This openness guides us to solidarity with our fellow men: the body becomes a place of communion by means of compassion.”

There is a chapter of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body that is still waiting to be written. This claim might be borne out by way of a statement from the author himself, who mentioned at least one aspect of his work that would be worthy of development: “These reflections do not include multiple problems which, with regard to their object, belong to the theology of the body (as, for example, the problem of suffering and death, so important in the biblical message). Suffering and death are especially important when we try to understand the redemption of the body brought about by Christ.

Now, let us remember that the catecheses are arranged according to a temporal pattern: from creation, to historical man (fallen and redeemed), to the resurrection of the body, that is, the last stage of history. This means that the missing chapter in the question is the one that would make the transition between the fallen and redeemed states of mankind: the very life and death of Christ, the exact moment and way in which the redemption of the body – and its renewed access to the original experience of Paradise – took place.

This article is an attempt of Josè Granados at a theological elaboration of this missing chapter, taking John Paul II’s theology of the body both as a point of departure and as a theological frame.

The boundary experience of suffering as a recovery of the original experience

Our consideration of man’s state after the Fall led us to affirm an ontological lack of a radiation of parenthood in human life from its very beginning. We have associated this lack with the boundary experience of shame. Shame, at least in some of its manifestations, is related to concupiscence, to a disorder that makes the body incapable of fully expressing love. At the same time, however, shame offers a way back into the original experience be3cause it recalls the dignity of the person in its connection with the human body.

The point we want to make in what follows is that the description of the experience of suffering offered by John Paul II in the apostolic letter Salvifici doloris runs parallel to the analysis of shame in The Theology of the Body. We could say, then, that suffering is also a boundary experience, which simultaneously veils and reveals the path towards the original state of man: towards original solitude, unity, and nakedness.

The first result of the pope’s analysis is that suffering reveals to man that he is different from the surrounding animal world. Suffering reveals to man the mystery of his being, albeit in the form of question: suffering seems to belong to man’s transcendence: it is one of those point in which man is in a certain sense “destined” to go beyond himself, and he is in a certain sense ‘destined’ to go beyond himself, and he is called to this in a mysterious way. (Salvific doloris, 2)

In the beginning the body was able to reveal to man (by the activity of tilling the ground and by the act of naming the animal in Genesis) his dignity as different from anything else on earth, because of his ultimate call to communion with Father. Suffering reveals to man precisely the possibility of a dialogue with God. We speak of suffering as bodily not because we equate suffering with pain, but rather because human suffering is rooted in the body and is possible because of the body. What is revealed about the body in suffering is its openness to the world in the form of vulnerability. This openness guides us to solidarity with our fellow men: the body becomes a place of communion , by means of compassion

John Paul II discerns the contents of the experience of the body by considering the redemptive act of Christ. First, we find the possibility of suffering as openness to others: if one becomes a sharer in the sufferings of Christ, this happens because Christ has opened his suffering to man, because he himself in the redemptive suffering has become, in a certain sense, a sharer in all human sufferings. Man, discovering through faith the redemptive suffering of Christ, also discovers in it his own sufferings; he rediscovers them, through faith, enriched with a new content and new meaning. (Salvifici doloris, 20).

In the letters of Paul, a paradox particularly experienced by the Apostle himself and together with him experienced by all who share Christ’s sufferings. Paul writes in the Second letter to the Corinthians: “I will all the more gladly boast of my weakness, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” In the second letter to Timothy we read: “And therefore I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed.” And in the letter to the Philippians he will even say: “ I can do all things in him who strengthens me.” A particular kind of weakness that becomes strength. In this way, the world of suffering becomes a world of communion, a world of solidarity: the people who suffer become similar to one another through the analogy of their situation, the trial of their destiny, or through their need for understanding and care, and perhaps above all through the persistent question of the meaning of suffering. Therefore, we find in suffering, as it were, a new grammar of the original experiences: original solitude, original unity, and original nakedness are attained by a different form of the dynamism of the gift, the dynamism of compassion. As the body revealed to Adam his dignity, so does suffering when it poses the question to God. As Adam was unable to find God without the encounter with Eve (original unity), so the man who suffers is unable to answer his question without encountering a compassionate gaze.

In seeing the suffering of the other, man understands the dignity of the sufferer: face to face with him, he discovers the reference to transcendence in the form of a painful question posed to God: Why? Man is then moved to compassion: compassion is the adequate answer to the call of suffering, an identification with the suffering person that awakens suffering in us. Through our neighbour’s suffering we are reminded of our reference to God, which is what constitutes our dignity. This is because our suffering with our neighbour, flesh of our flesh, means the reawakening in us, through our won compassionate suffering, of the question of the origin, of the need to look for the good that precedes all evil.

On the other hand, this movement of our compassion is a new revelation for the suffering person. Someone takes care of him, in the midst of his pain; even more: someone wishes to suffer with him. This compassion reawakens in him the sense of his own dignity. It is the beginning of the answer to his question to God regarding the meaning of his suffering. Compassion is also a call to love in return and by doing so to give one’s own suffering the form of love. The cycle of compassion is thus completed in the form of love, of a rebuilding of love in man’s heart and body. In this way, it leads to the recognition and acceptance of God, finding within suffering the blessing that allows us to encounter him again as the foundation of our existence.

Thanks to Josè Granados , His article in the periodical of Communio 2006

The church confronts the fault of the past

“No other historical community identifies itself with all of its members past and present.”

1. A Novelty and the Reactions it Produced

John Paul II’s invitation to the Church to acknowledge the faults of her own past and his own contribution to a “purification of memory” aimed at helping the People of God towards a credible renewal in the present are an undeniable novelty. There are only two (partial ) precedents in the entire history of the Church. The first was set by Pope Adrian VI in a message to the Diet of Nuremberg on 22 November 1522 in which he openly acknowledged “the abominations, abuses…. and falsehoods” of which the “Roman court” of his time was guilty. In this context, Adrian spoke of a “widespread disease” extending “from head to members.” Yet the Pontiff did not add any request for pardon to this sorrowful confession. The second precedent was set by Paul VI. In the opening discourse of the second session of the Second Vatican Council, the pope asked “forgiveness of God. . . and of our “separated brethren” of the East who feel that they have been injured “by us” ( the Catholic Church). Paul also declared his readiness to forgive any injuries done to the Catholic Church.

The novelty of John Paul II’s invitation and of the gestures that he has performed forces us to ask why he, of all the popes, should have been the first to promote a “purification of memory” of this kind. In attempting to answer this question, we need to keep three points in mind: First, the historical and cultural context of the late twentieth century; second, the strongly mystical bent of John Paul’s faith; third, his first-hand experience of the tragedies brought on by ideological totalitarianism.

With the end of what has been called the “brief century,” the modern development that began in the Enlightenment has reached a turning point. The ideologies, with their innumerable acts of violence, are in crisis. At the same time, we are witnessing a rejection of the absolutist claims of modern reason, the same modern reason that once decreed the death, or at least the irrelevance of, god and declared war on what it took to be the Church’s hopeless, obscurantism. Reacting against these ideologies and their history of religion, Catholics developed a kind of spontaneous self - defence mechanism that took the place of and older anti-Reformation apologetic. Ecumenical dialogue among Christians and the crisis of the ideologies and the regimes that they spawned has opened up a space in which believers are free to query the extent of their fidelity to God and to his demands. There is a new sense that the Christian vocation is not to defend the truth in opposition to others, but to bear witness to it in humble obedience.

The pope’s teaching, whether in word or in life, radiates the mystical depth of his Christian experience. John Paul is clearly driven more by the imperative to obey God and to please him alone than by any worldly calculus or, indeed, any worldly prudence. These factors help to explain why John Paul II has been the pope to initiate the practice of asking for pardon on the level of the Church. But they also help to understand why this practice has provoked such contradictory reactions within the Church. We find in the Church diverse historical and cultural contexts, diverse levels of engagement with the faith, and diverse degrees of knowledge of the ideologies born of modernity. Some have seen the pope’s initiative as a way of truth that can only increase the credibility of the Church’s message. Now, the International Theological Commission set out to do just that by making a study of the biblical, theological, hermeneutical, and moral presuppositions of the “ purification of memory” as well as of its possible rhetorical posturing or self-flagellation that might compromise an act reflecting the highest standards of the Gospel and promising a profound renewal of the entire community of the Church.

2. The Biblical Foundation

We find confessions of sin and corresponding petitions for forgiveness throughout the Scriptures. Particularly important for our theme are the texts in which the whole people confesses its sins, even on behalf of its ancestors. Think - to name just one example of the splendid prayer of Azariah in the Book of Daniel (Dan 3:3,6). “The Jews prayed thus after the Exile (cf, Bar 2:11-13), taking upon themselves the burden of their fathers’ sins. The Church imitates their example and asks pardon for her children’s sins, even sins of the past.” And also we could see in Jos 2-11, Dt 7:2, 1 Sam 15 and Dt 25:19. nevertheless, the Old Testament’s sense of inter-generational solidarity in sin and grace, which is expressed in the confession of the “sins of the fathers” before God, remains important for our theme.

The New Testament is suffused by the call to conversion in response to the gift of divine gift of divine mercy in Jesus Christ. Yet it contains no hint that the primitive Church concerned herself with asking forgiveness for the sins of the past. Furthermore, Jesus appeals to the biblical jubilee, the year of grace of the Lord, to explain his proclamation that the “today” of God’s salvation has come in his own person (Lk 4:21). And the jubilee- according to Lev 25:8-17- calls for acts whose purpose is to re-establish the order of God’s original plan for creation. This means that the “today” of grace initiated by Jesus Christ (Lk 4:21) must be present in his Church.

3. The Ecclesiological Aspect: The Singularity of the Ecclesial Subject

It is the singularity of the “ecclesial subject” that justifies the Church’s request for pardon for sins committed in the past by her children. No other historical community identifies itself with all of its members past and present. This identification flows directly from the Church’s awareness of having been established and kept in being by a gift from on high thanks to the mission of the Son and of the Spirit whom he has sent. It is the Spirit who generates and fosters the ecclesial community through the Word of God, the sacramental permanence of the Church’s generative principle throughout every stage of her history. The baptized of today are close to, and in solidarity with, those of yesterday, both in grace and in the wound of sin. We can therefore say that the Church, whose unity, founded in Christ and the Spirit, reaches across time and space, is truly “holy and in constant need of purification”.

We must distinguish, then, between the holiness of the Church and the holiness in the Church. The former rests upon the missions of the Son and the Spirit. It therefore guarantees continuity in the substantial fidelity of God’s gift in the community to the end of time. By the same token, it stimulates and helps believers to pursue personal holiness. The latter, on the other hand, refers to the particular gift granted to each believer, who accomplishes his personal mission and vocation precisely by welcoming this gift and making it bear fruit. In every instance, personal holiness is oriented towards God and others and is therefore essentially social. It is holiness “in the Church” and is ordered to the good of all. Now, the Church needs to care for this personal holiness of its members as the Greatest of goods. Analogously, the Church takes upon herself the consequences of their sins in the power of the Christ, her head, who himself took upon himself the sins of the world.

Continue…….. ( thanks to Communio-2000 an article of Bruno Forte)