Prayer is Practical

The past couple of weeks have brought the chaos and danger of Iraq and Syria out of the headlines and frighteningly close to the daily lives of "First World" people like me.

As much as I might try to empathize with suffering throughout the whole world, I can't help feeling viscerally close to the sudden violent disruption of environments that are familiar to me, like airplanes and cafes and concert halls. The range of emotion is difficult to grapple with.

I don't know what to do with all of this experience of being overwhelmed and bewildered, this sudden reminder of the fragility of life, of the fact that events are beyond my control.

When I feel most helpless, I tend to think, "All I can do is pray." In fact, it is in these moments that I draw more closely to the truth of who I am.

Recent events have recalled me to the need for prayer.

I'm not talking about a sentimental or pious cop out, or an attempt to evade the real issues and find comfort in a spiritualistic escapism.

The real issue is always prayer. Life is prayer. I'm talking about the vital relationship with the One who has created me, who sustains me, who calls me to enter into His own Mystery.

The Mystery wants me to know Him. He became flesh so that He could share my life and draw me into the fulfillment of His eternal life. The Mystery who gives meaning to my life became human; He became a man, this man named Jesus.

That makes prayer very practical.

Jesus is real. We can't ever forget that. He is the center of history, really. He is not an abstraction or a theory inside a system. He is a Person whom we encounter. Prayer is seeking Him, remembering Him, hanging onto Him, learning to recognize Him and love Him.

Seriously. If Jesus is not a real flesh-and-blood man who is here-and-now supremely engaged in my life, then "Christianity" is a waste of time. 

But He is real. And the desire to see reality in Him, to see my life and all its circumstances as constituted by this relationship with Him and His Spirit and His Father, is the heart and the substance of prayer.

So it's okay to be confronted by an open reminder that this relationship of prayer, of belonging to Him, is the only "real life" we have. Desperate circumstances can wake us up to the recognition that we are not the masters of life, and that no level of technological power will confer this mastery upon us.

Mark Rupnik, mosaic detail.

It is good to remember that we are not the source of reality nor the power that determines it. We are given a role to play, a task in history, and we must do our best to work at that task and bring it to fruition. But at the heart of this task is the surrender of everything to the One who shapes and fulfills all things in His wisdom.

There are so many things that we don't understand and cannot control.

Do we trust in the One who makes us and holds us and calls us? There is darkness on the path, and this brings pain, anguish, feelings of confusion. We are scared.

Should we begin running in all directions? What do we hope to find in this darkness?

Let us turn to that supremely practical endeavor. Let us pray. Let us bring the desire and the searching, the anguish and fear, the questions and the judgments that need to be made, to Him.

He is real. And we have seen His face. It is the face of Love. We have been loved. Let us never be discouraged.

I Share in the Evil Which Seems to Prevail in the World

The Monastery of Notre Dame of the Atlas [mountains] in Tibhirine, Algeria (left) and Father Christian, right.

This Last Testament has already been cited in full on several blogs today. It had already been my intention to make it an object of meditation, and I have selected only a few portions for emphasis here.

Though this text is nearly 20 years old, words like these—words of forgiveness and hope—have been expressed repeatedly by many of the loved ones of those who have suffered so greatly from the violence of this past year.

So much violence in 2015, ... and yet there has been forgiveness offered in the face of unimaginable affliction and pain. This is a miracle, and yet it is one that shows us the true face of reality.

I cannot imagine myself looking at my own life and death, my fears, my loved ones, my enemies in such a manner, and yet with the grace of Christ it is possible. My heart tells me that this is the true position in front of life, and the only fully adequate response to violence:

"If it should happen one day—and it could be today—

that I become a victim of the terrorism...

I would like my community, my Church, my family,

to remember that my life was given to God and to this country.

I ask them to accept that the One Master of all life

was not a stranger to this brutal departure.

I ask them to pray for me,

for how could I be found worthy of such an offering?

I ask them to be able to associate such a death

with the many other deaths that were just as violent,

but forgotten through indifference and anonymity.

"My life has no more value than any other.

Nor any less value.

In any case, it has not the innocence of childhood.

I have lived long enough to know

that I share in the evil which seems, alas, to prevail in the world,

even in that which would strike me blindly.

I should like, when the time comes, to have a clear space

which would allow me to beg forgiveness of God

and of all my fellow human beings,

and at the same time to forgive with all my heart

the one who would strike me down....

"For this life given up...I thank God

who seems to have wished it entirely

for the sake of that joy in everything and in spite of everything.

In this 'thank you,'

which is said for everything in my life from now on,

I certainly include you, friends of yesterday and today,

and you my friends of this place,

along with my mother and father,

my brothers and sisters and their families:

the hundredfold granted as was promised!

"And you also,

the friend of my final moment,

who would not be aware of what you were doing.

Yes, for you also I wish this 'thank you'—and this adieu—

to commend you to the God

whose face I see in yours.

"And may we find each other,

happy 'good thieves,'

in Paradise,

if it pleases God,

the Father of us both.

Amen."

~Father Christian de Chergé,

Abbot of the Cistercian Monastery of Tibhirine, Algeria. Kidnapped by the Groupe Islamique Arme along with six confreres on March 27, 1996 (this group later reported that the monks were executed on May 21, 1996).

The movie Of Gods and Men (2010) was based on the lives and the sacrifice of these monks.