God
is great;
God
is good.
Let
us thank him for our food.
Amen
I can’t tell you how
surprised I was several years ago when I heard my wife Jessica teaching that
simple meal time prayer to our daughters.
Somewhat piqued by the strange look on my face, Jessica explained that
that was the prayer her family prayed every night at dinner time when she was
growing up. The reason I was so surprised
was because that’s the same prayer that my family prayed at meal time when I
was growing up. I couldn't believe that
two people from different religious backgrounds, living some 2,000 miles apart
would have grown up saying the same prayer.
Our families, our faiths and our histories were joined together in that
moment by one simple prayer. Prayer
unites us with God and with each other, and that’s what today’s Gospel is talking
about.
I have to admit that I
struggled to find a common thread in today’s readings. But after much fretful consideration, and a few
prayers to Saint Jude, I realized that the common thread wasn't so much in the words
but in the actions. All three readings involve
prayer. In our first reading, we find Saint Stephen
engaged in an intense, mystical communion with God, praying for Jesus to forgive
his murderers. In our second reading, Saint
John hears the voice of the Lord in prayer inviting all who thirst to come and
receive the gift of life-giving water.
And in our Gospel reading, Jesus is praying . . . for us. He’s praying that we may all know that he and
God are one, and praying that we may be united in God, or to use his words, that
we may be “brought to perfection as one.”
As Christians we’re
called to “pray without ceasing.[1]
Not a day goes by when we’re not asked
to pray for someone or something. But in
order to pray, we first have to understand that “the center of our being is a
spiritual reality that is related to, yet distinct from the physical,
psychological and social dimensions of who we are.”[2] Humans are both corporeal and spiritual
beings, but our spiritual existence
sits at our core. As the Jesuit
philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin put it, “We are not human beings having
a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”[3]
Prayer is going on in our
spiritual core and all around us all the time because “God is present in us at
all times. Omniscient, omnipotent,
personal – and loving us without conditions.”[4] And the Spirit of God that dwells within us
“is always crying out ‘Abba, Father.’
The Spirit of God is always returning to the Father.”[5] That cry, that return is prayer, whether we realize
it or not. But just as we take our
breathing, our beating hearts, or our own self-awareness for granted, this
ceaseless prayer within us is often overlooked, suppressed or even denied.[6] Prayer is like the electric current that runs
through our homes; if we don’t plug into it, we won’t get anything out of
it. But if we take the time, if we make
the effort to plug ourselves into that ceaseless prayer within us, we’ll find
ourselves connected to a power that’s greater than anything we can imagine
because prayer unites us with God.
Now, if God is present
in each one of us at all times, and prayer unites us with God, then prayer
unites us with each other. I’ll give you
a moment to catch up with that syllogism.
In prayer, we’re able to “move beyond the physically imposed boundaries
of our skin and enter into the spiritual center of another.”[7] Prayer connects us with each other through our
eternal link with God. So, look around;
you’re spiritually connected to the person next to you, to the person in front
of you, to the person who’s wearing too much perfume and to the person who’s not wearing enough. And just like we often overlook God’s
presence within us, we sometimes overlook, suppress or even deny the fact that we
are all spiritually connected with every single person in this world. That may feel a little creepy; there are people
out there that we don’t like very much, and billions more that we don’t even
know. It’s kind of hard to feel a
connection with them. But Jesus prays that
we’ll be perfected as one, united with God and
with each other. Prayer develops and perfects
our spiritual connections with God and all of humanity. We’re united in prayer.
Today we celebrate one
of our greatest spiritual connections – the spiritual connection with our Mothers. Mothers have a special and unique bond with
their children. In the earliest months
of pregnancy, or in the desire and anticipation of a child that will be adopted
or cared for, when a mother can’t see or touch her child, she communicates and
bonds with her child in the only way and in the most important way she can –
spiritually. That’s prayer. And the spiritual bond born of prayer unites a
mother with her child eternally; it’s the intuition that tells her what her child
needs and let’s her know when something’s wrong. It also gives her the eyes in the back of her
head, if you ever wondered where they came from. It apparently gave my mother eight eyes in the
back of her head, and extra-long arms. The
spiritual connection that Jessica and our daughters share is palpable, and I've leaned on my spiritual connection with my mother every day of my life.
Whether your mother is living
or she’s gone to her heavenly reward, whether you have a great relationship
with your mother or a not-so-great relationship, whether your mother lives a thousand
miles away or she’s sitting in the fourth pew wondering why your homily’s
so long, we can develop and perfect our relationship with our mothers and be united
with them eternally through prayer, if we chose to.
My mother taught me to pray
when I was just a toddler. If she had
known that it would lead to this, she might have taught me something else. I’m grateful, though, because the gift of
prayer sustains me in tough times and helps me appreciate the many blessings I've received in this wonderful life. Thank
you, Mom, for teaching me to pray. You
should be proud to know that I remember my first prayer to this day. And every time I think of that prayer, I
think of you. We’re united in prayer. And so for Mother’s Day, I’d like to recite
that prayer just like I did with my mother many years ago:
I
thank you God for giving me
A
home as nice as it can be.
I
thank you for my family too,
I
love them God, and I love you.
[1] 1
Thessalonians 5:17.
[2]
John Shea, The Relentless Widow: The
Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels for Christian Preachers and Teachers, Luke,
Year C (Collegeville, Liturgical Press, 2006) at 151.
[3]
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The
Phenomenon of Man (1955).
[4]
Eben Alexander, MD, Proof of Heaven: A
Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife (New York, Simon & Schuster,
2012) at 161.
[5]
Father Francis Martin.
[6]
Harvey D. Egan, S.J., Introduction to Karl Rahner, The Need and the Blessing of Prayer (Collegeville, Liturgical
Press, 1997) at xi.
[7]
Shea at 152.
No comments:
Post a Comment
God is listening . . . comment accordingly.