Wednesday March 11th. – Lent 2009

An article by Frank    No Comments

To Pray is to Become

There are three main pillars of Lent, practices that we draw on to help shape and grow us. Those three things are fasting (restoration in ourselves), praying (restoration with God) and giving (restoration amongst our neighbours).

Today I want to look at the depth of prayer, something often overlooked or sidelined in our lives. The following quote gives us a wonderful picture of prayer, consider it throughout today and consider what it means to truly “become” that which you pray for – to enter into empathy and compassion, not from a distance, but from within.

This was written by Henri Nouwen on September 23rd, 1974 from Genesee Abbey:

Often I have said to people, “I will pray for you,” but how often did I really enter into the full reality of what that means? When I really bring my friends and the many I pray for into my innermost being and feel their pains, their struggles, their cries in my own soul, then I leave myself, so to speak, and become them, then I have compassion.

Compassion lies at the heart of our prayer for our fellow human beings. When I pray for the world, I become the world, when I pray for the endless needs of the million, my soul expands and wants to embrace them all and bring them into the presence of God. But in the midst of that experience I realize that compassion is not mine but God’s gift to me. I cannot embrace the world, but God can. I cannot pray, but God can pray in me. When God became as we are, that is, when God allowed all of us to enter into the intimacy of the divine life, it became possible for us to share in God’s infinite compassion.

In praying for others, I lose myself and become the other, only to be found by the divine love which holds the whole of humanity in a compassionate embrace.

Superb. Think about it throughout today.