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Prayer as a school of hope
When no
one listens to me anymore, God still listens to me. When
I can no longer talk to anyone or call upon anyone, I
can always talk to God. When there is no longer anyone
to help me deal with a need or expectation that goes
beyond the human capacity for hope, He can help
me. When I have been plunged into complete solitude. . .
; if I pray I am never totally alone. . . .” The late
Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan, a prisoner for 13 years, nine
in solitary confinement, left us a precious book:
Prayers of Hope.
During
13 years in jail, a situation of seemingly utter
hopelessness, the fact that he could listen and speak to
God became for him an increasing power of hope, which
enabled him, after his release, to become for people all
over the world a witness to hope—to that great hope
which does not wane even in the nights of solitude.
Saint Augustine,
in a homily on the First Letter of John, describes the
intimate relationship between prayer and hope. He
defines prayer as an exercise of desire. Man was created
for greatness—for God Himself; he was created to be
filled by God. But his heart is too small for the
greatness to which it is destined. It must be stretched.
“By delaying [His gift], God strengthens our desire;
through desire He enlarges our soul and by expanding it
He increases its capacity [for receiving Him].”
Augustine uses a very beautiful image to describe this
enlargement and preparation of the human heart. “Suppose
that God wishes to fill you with honey [a symbol of
God’s tenderness and goodness]; but if you are full of
vinegar, where will you put the honey?” The vessel that
is your heart must first be enlarged and then cleansed,
freed from the vinegar and its taste. This requires hard
work and is painful, but in this way alone do we become
suited to that for which we are destined.
To pray
is not to step outside history and withdraw to our own
private corner of happiness. When we pray properly, we
undergo a process of inner purification which opens us
up to God and thus to our fellow human beings, as well.
In prayer we must learn what we can truly ask of
God—what is worthy of God. We must learn that we cannot
pray against others. We must learn that we cannot ask
for the superficial and comfortable things that we
desire at this moment. We must learn to purify our
desires and our hopes. We must free ourselves from the
hidden lies with which we deceive ourselves. God sees
through them, and when we come before God, we, too, are
forced to recognize them. “But who can discern his
errors? Clear me from hidden faults,” prays the Psalmist
(Psalm 19:12). Failure to recognize my guilt, the
illusion of my innocence, does not justify me and does
not save me, because I am culpable for the numbness of
my conscience and my incapacity to recognize the evil in
me for what it is.
If God
does not exist, perhaps I have to seek refuge in these
lies, because there is no one who can forgive me; no one
who is the true criterion. Yet, my encounter with God
awakens my conscience in such a way that it no longer
aims at self-justification, and is no longer a mere
reflection of me and those of my contemporaries who
shape my thinking, but it becomes a capacity for
listening to the Good itself.
For
prayer to develop this power of purification, it must be
something very personal, an encounter between the
intimate self and God, the living God. On the other
hand, it must be constantly guided and enlightened by
the great prayers of the Church and of the saints, by
liturgical prayer, in which the Lord teaches us again
and again how to pray properly.
Cardinal
Nguyen Van Thuan, in his book, tells us that during his
life there were long periods when he was unable to pray
and that he would hold fast to the texts of the Church’s
prayer: the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the prayers of
the liturgy. Praying must always involve this
intermingling of public and personal prayer. This is how
we can speak to God and how God speaks to us. In this
way we undergo purifications by which we become open to
God and are prepared for the service of our fellow human
beings. We become capable of the great hope, and thus we
become ministers of hope for others.
... To
be continued next week
Spe
Salvi Encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI to all “On
Christian Hope”
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