ADVENT REFLECTIONS
Based on the book
The Breath of the Soul, Reflections on Prayer
by Joan Chittister
Advent Reflection, Week Four: Prayer and Action
I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
Frederick Douglass, escaped slave
Prayer as we know it can be very seductive. "Pray that Grandpa gets well," we tell a child- all the time knowing that the grandfather's time is already measured. "Pray for a nice day tomorrow," we say casually, as if the local meteorologist doesn't already know whether tomorrow it will rain or snow. "Dear God, please make Tom call, or the letter come, or the red light on the next corner turn green," we recite with a kind of Christian piety that smacks more of our own desire to run the world than it does to trust the God who entrusted it to us.
Too often, we use prayer to forgive ourselves for being less than we are meant to be. "Too often, I'm praying for it" means that I don't intend to do anything else but pray that someone else will do for us what we should be doing for ourselves.
But the situation is obvious. There is nothing done by humans that humans cannot undo. There is no reason to deny our own responsibility to get it done by foisting it on God. We must get up and do it ourselves.
Or we make prayer a child's game, one step beyond magic or fantasy or folly. When we don't get what we "prayed" for, we break the connection with the Spirit and call the rupture between us a new level of spiritual maturity.
It isn't that God cannot, has not, or will not intervene in nature. There are simply too many things that cannot be explained by nature as we know it to argue for God's indifference to the world. But God does not need to twist the natural law to do it. Once when thunder and lightning came, a more primitive people of another age argued that these things were the voice of an angry god and developed rituals of human sacrifice to appease them. it isn't that thunder and lightning were not real signs of God's presence in the world but, we learned later, not an unnatural one.
The truth is that we must pray for the strength to do what we are meant to do. We must pray for the courage to meet the challenges of life. We must pray for the endurance it will take to go on even when nothing changes. We must pray that the spirit of God is with us as we do what must be done whether we succeed in the process or not.
The ancients talked about four purposes of prayer: adoration, contrition, thanksgiving and supplication. Supplication, what we beg from God, reminds us of our dependence on God. Adoration, contrition and thanksgiving are simply logical extensions of the sense of dependence that reminds us that this God is our beginning and our end- not a magic act in the sky.
MANTRA: God, give me the qualities of character I need to do what you have put me here to do in your name.
Jesus went on a little further and fell prostrate in prayer: "Abba, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. But not what I want- what you want."
Matthew 26:39
Frederick Douglass, escaped slave
Prayer as we know it can be very seductive. "Pray that Grandpa gets well," we tell a child- all the time knowing that the grandfather's time is already measured. "Pray for a nice day tomorrow," we say casually, as if the local meteorologist doesn't already know whether tomorrow it will rain or snow. "Dear God, please make Tom call, or the letter come, or the red light on the next corner turn green," we recite with a kind of Christian piety that smacks more of our own desire to run the world than it does to trust the God who entrusted it to us.
Too often, we use prayer to forgive ourselves for being less than we are meant to be. "Too often, I'm praying for it" means that I don't intend to do anything else but pray that someone else will do for us what we should be doing for ourselves.
But the situation is obvious. There is nothing done by humans that humans cannot undo. There is no reason to deny our own responsibility to get it done by foisting it on God. We must get up and do it ourselves.
Or we make prayer a child's game, one step beyond magic or fantasy or folly. When we don't get what we "prayed" for, we break the connection with the Spirit and call the rupture between us a new level of spiritual maturity.
It isn't that God cannot, has not, or will not intervene in nature. There are simply too many things that cannot be explained by nature as we know it to argue for God's indifference to the world. But God does not need to twist the natural law to do it. Once when thunder and lightning came, a more primitive people of another age argued that these things were the voice of an angry god and developed rituals of human sacrifice to appease them. it isn't that thunder and lightning were not real signs of God's presence in the world but, we learned later, not an unnatural one.
The truth is that we must pray for the strength to do what we are meant to do. We must pray for the courage to meet the challenges of life. We must pray for the endurance it will take to go on even when nothing changes. We must pray that the spirit of God is with us as we do what must be done whether we succeed in the process or not.
The ancients talked about four purposes of prayer: adoration, contrition, thanksgiving and supplication. Supplication, what we beg from God, reminds us of our dependence on God. Adoration, contrition and thanksgiving are simply logical extensions of the sense of dependence that reminds us that this God is our beginning and our end- not a magic act in the sky.
MANTRA: God, give me the qualities of character I need to do what you have put me here to do in your name.
Jesus went on a little further and fell prostrate in prayer: "Abba, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. But not what I want- what you want."
Matthew 26:39
Advent Reflection, Week Three: Acceptance
That's our Lord's will...that our prayers and our trust be alike: large.
Julian of Norwich
We like to think that we know what's good for us. The right to take charge of our own lives is a rite of passage not to be denied. "It's her choice," we like to say. "She'll have to live with it. True.
The problem is that the desire to control our own lives often does as much to corrupt our spiritual lives as it seems to do to enhance our personal ones. It's one thing to set out to order a future we have determined for ourselves. It is entirely another to set out to govern God.
But the path to real prayer is a history of a lot of our attempts to do just that.
"I prayed for months," we say, "but he left me anyway."
"I fasted every Wednesday for a year," we muse, "but she died anyway and I was left with five kids to raise."
"I went to church every Sunday and gave twice what I could afford to the church," we moan, "and still was not accepted at graduate school."
But when we look back, we see clearly that the life that followed the divorce was clearly better than the one we'd had. Or that the second marriage was at least as good as the first. Or that I would never have been as happy doing medicine as I have been doing counseling.
Teresa of Avila puts it this way: "There are more tears shed over answered prayers," she says, "than over unanswered prayers." Sometimes, we get what we want and find out we're miserable with it. Sometimes, we get what we didn't want, and finally realize that it was the far better thing for me than my own choice would have been.
Prayer is the gift of being able to put my life into the hands of God- and trust the path that opens before me. Whether I think I would have wanted it or not.
After all, if God is with me, what real difference does it make in the end how I get to where I'm going? It's never what I do that counts. It's who I become because of what I do which, in the end, is the real measure of the beauty of my life.
MANTRA: Loving God, give me the grace to accept the fact that the path I'm on will, eventually, bring me home to myself and to you.
Give us today our daily bread.
Matthew 6:11
Julian of Norwich
We like to think that we know what's good for us. The right to take charge of our own lives is a rite of passage not to be denied. "It's her choice," we like to say. "She'll have to live with it. True.
The problem is that the desire to control our own lives often does as much to corrupt our spiritual lives as it seems to do to enhance our personal ones. It's one thing to set out to order a future we have determined for ourselves. It is entirely another to set out to govern God.
But the path to real prayer is a history of a lot of our attempts to do just that.
"I prayed for months," we say, "but he left me anyway."
"I fasted every Wednesday for a year," we muse, "but she died anyway and I was left with five kids to raise."
"I went to church every Sunday and gave twice what I could afford to the church," we moan, "and still was not accepted at graduate school."
But when we look back, we see clearly that the life that followed the divorce was clearly better than the one we'd had. Or that the second marriage was at least as good as the first. Or that I would never have been as happy doing medicine as I have been doing counseling.
Teresa of Avila puts it this way: "There are more tears shed over answered prayers," she says, "than over unanswered prayers." Sometimes, we get what we want and find out we're miserable with it. Sometimes, we get what we didn't want, and finally realize that it was the far better thing for me than my own choice would have been.
Prayer is the gift of being able to put my life into the hands of God- and trust the path that opens before me. Whether I think I would have wanted it or not.
After all, if God is with me, what real difference does it make in the end how I get to where I'm going? It's never what I do that counts. It's who I become because of what I do which, in the end, is the real measure of the beauty of my life.
MANTRA: Loving God, give me the grace to accept the fact that the path I'm on will, eventually, bring me home to myself and to you.
Give us today our daily bread.
Matthew 6:11
Advent Reflection, Week Two: Constancy
O Lord our God, under the shadow of Your wings let us hope in Your custody. Carry us when we are little. Bear us when our hair is white and we cry out in infirmity. When You grasp us, the grip is firm. When we try to sustain ourselves, the grasp is feeble. The only good we can know rests in You. St. Augustine
The search for God is the project of a lifetime. It does not come at the instant of an exercise completed. It does not come as an automatic reaction to the keeping of a prayer schedule. More directly, prayer is not the immediate answer to the search for God. Prayer is only the promise that there is purpose to the quest. When we are ready, God will be there. But readiness for God is something to be developed, not something that can be guaranteed.
The Israelites stood far off from Sinai because they knew that to see God face to face could destroy them, burn them to cinders, obliterate them as they had always known themselves to be. And we know that, too. Instinctively and timidly, we avoid any real encounter with God because we know it will change our lives. Oh, we go through the motions of seeking God, of course. But we find it hard to believe that God is God: all knowing, all merciful, all loving, all patient.
Because there is no time with God, only eternity, what we did yesterday- a lifetime of yesterdays- is nothing compared with what we finally come to be. Like the workers in the fields who come at the last hour, those of us who spend our lifetimes growing into God will find at the end the very same God that others may come to know long before we do.
Augustine is very clear: Our God does not change. It is we who change as time goes by. God is God always. And God is with us always. It is we who are so often somewhere else.
After we have sought and gone through all the baubles of life, God is still there waiting for us.
After we have spent our life avoiding God, we find, when we are finally ready and willing to look, that the love of God-still alive in us-still beckons us beyond the frills and fantasies of life to the meaning of what it means to be alive. To the basics of life itself.
It is being wise enough to pray for the grace of awareness of the presence of God that will eventually prepare us to see it in all the dimensions of life. Then we will not treat God as an answer to our problems. We will understand the God is more the Companion whose light shines within us to lead us through them.
There is no such thing as coming too late to God. All the way to God is the Way.
Clearly, we cannot lose God; we can only prepare ourselves to come to see the face of the eternal and ever immediate God in everything. How long will that take? What difference does it make? The God we find when we do will be the same God however long that takes, whenever it happens. It is the journey, not the end, that counts.
MANTRA: Loving God, give me grace to see your presence in my life and to serve you with unity, constancy and peace.
When those hired late in the afternoon came up, they received a full day's pay, and when the first group appeared, they assumed they would get more. Yet they all received the same daily wage. Thereupon they complained to the owner..."My friends,: said the owner to those who voiced the complaint, "I do you no injustice. You agreed on the usual wage, didn't you? Take your pay and go home. I intend to give this worker who was hired last the same pay as you. I'm free to do as I please with my money, aren't I? Or are you envious because I am generous?" Thus the last will be first and the first will be last. Matthew 20:9-11, 13-16
The search for God is the project of a lifetime. It does not come at the instant of an exercise completed. It does not come as an automatic reaction to the keeping of a prayer schedule. More directly, prayer is not the immediate answer to the search for God. Prayer is only the promise that there is purpose to the quest. When we are ready, God will be there. But readiness for God is something to be developed, not something that can be guaranteed.
The Israelites stood far off from Sinai because they knew that to see God face to face could destroy them, burn them to cinders, obliterate them as they had always known themselves to be. And we know that, too. Instinctively and timidly, we avoid any real encounter with God because we know it will change our lives. Oh, we go through the motions of seeking God, of course. But we find it hard to believe that God is God: all knowing, all merciful, all loving, all patient.
Because there is no time with God, only eternity, what we did yesterday- a lifetime of yesterdays- is nothing compared with what we finally come to be. Like the workers in the fields who come at the last hour, those of us who spend our lifetimes growing into God will find at the end the very same God that others may come to know long before we do.
Augustine is very clear: Our God does not change. It is we who change as time goes by. God is God always. And God is with us always. It is we who are so often somewhere else.
After we have sought and gone through all the baubles of life, God is still there waiting for us.
After we have spent our life avoiding God, we find, when we are finally ready and willing to look, that the love of God-still alive in us-still beckons us beyond the frills and fantasies of life to the meaning of what it means to be alive. To the basics of life itself.
It is being wise enough to pray for the grace of awareness of the presence of God that will eventually prepare us to see it in all the dimensions of life. Then we will not treat God as an answer to our problems. We will understand the God is more the Companion whose light shines within us to lead us through them.
There is no such thing as coming too late to God. All the way to God is the Way.
Clearly, we cannot lose God; we can only prepare ourselves to come to see the face of the eternal and ever immediate God in everything. How long will that take? What difference does it make? The God we find when we do will be the same God however long that takes, whenever it happens. It is the journey, not the end, that counts.
MANTRA: Loving God, give me grace to see your presence in my life and to serve you with unity, constancy and peace.
When those hired late in the afternoon came up, they received a full day's pay, and when the first group appeared, they assumed they would get more. Yet they all received the same daily wage. Thereupon they complained to the owner..."My friends,: said the owner to those who voiced the complaint, "I do you no injustice. You agreed on the usual wage, didn't you? Take your pay and go home. I intend to give this worker who was hired last the same pay as you. I'm free to do as I please with my money, aren't I? Or are you envious because I am generous?" Thus the last will be first and the first will be last. Matthew 20:9-11, 13-16
Advent Reflection, Week One: Responsibility
Never pray in a room without windows- The Talmud
The rabbis are clear: Prayer is not meant to make us into a world unto ourselves. We do not pray in order to escape the world around us. We pray with one eye on the world so that we can come to understand what is really being asked of us here and now, at times like this, as co-creators of the universe.
When God put humankind into a garden called earth, it was, scripture is clear, to steward it to fullness of life. We were intended to keep the earth in good condition, to use it and develop it, to be fruitful and multiply its creative em=nergies, to do our part in bringing every aspect of creation to fulfillment.
What God did not complete, we are meant to finish. God gave us the plants and intends us to garden and harvest them for the good of the entire world. God gave us the sun and intends us to use its energies in ways that maintain not destroy life. God gave us all the raw materials of life-physical, psychological and mental-and expects us to bring to full growth what was created in embryo.
We must learn to pray with more than ourselves in mind.
We do not pray for our own needs alone. We pray to become holy agents of the God who made us to care for the earth and all its peoples.
We are each workers in the garden of life.
Our most contemplative people—Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Catherine of Siena, Ignatius of Loyola, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day-are those who most actively sought the coming of the reign of God on earth. We pray to become like them.
To be assured that we are living an authentic prayer life we must forever and always examine its fruits in us. Are we really more concerned about others because we have come closer to the God who loves them? Or have we turned prayer into a refuge from what being fully human demands of us?
Prayer is meant to bring us to see the world as God sees the world. It is meant to expand our vision, not trap us in the world that is only ourselves.
Commitment to the needs of the world is a sign of the presence of God in us.
MANTRA: God, give me the grace to "till and keep" the part of the world you have given into my care.
God blessed them and said, “Bear fruit, in crease your numbers, and fill the earth-and be responsible for it! Watch over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things on the earth!”
Genesis 1:28
The rabbis are clear: Prayer is not meant to make us into a world unto ourselves. We do not pray in order to escape the world around us. We pray with one eye on the world so that we can come to understand what is really being asked of us here and now, at times like this, as co-creators of the universe.
When God put humankind into a garden called earth, it was, scripture is clear, to steward it to fullness of life. We were intended to keep the earth in good condition, to use it and develop it, to be fruitful and multiply its creative em=nergies, to do our part in bringing every aspect of creation to fulfillment.
What God did not complete, we are meant to finish. God gave us the plants and intends us to garden and harvest them for the good of the entire world. God gave us the sun and intends us to use its energies in ways that maintain not destroy life. God gave us all the raw materials of life-physical, psychological and mental-and expects us to bring to full growth what was created in embryo.
We must learn to pray with more than ourselves in mind.
We do not pray for our own needs alone. We pray to become holy agents of the God who made us to care for the earth and all its peoples.
We are each workers in the garden of life.
Our most contemplative people—Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Catherine of Siena, Ignatius of Loyola, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day-are those who most actively sought the coming of the reign of God on earth. We pray to become like them.
To be assured that we are living an authentic prayer life we must forever and always examine its fruits in us. Are we really more concerned about others because we have come closer to the God who loves them? Or have we turned prayer into a refuge from what being fully human demands of us?
Prayer is meant to bring us to see the world as God sees the world. It is meant to expand our vision, not trap us in the world that is only ourselves.
Commitment to the needs of the world is a sign of the presence of God in us.
MANTRA: God, give me the grace to "till and keep" the part of the world you have given into my care.
God blessed them and said, “Bear fruit, in crease your numbers, and fill the earth-and be responsible for it! Watch over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things on the earth!”
Genesis 1:28