Life is relational.
Human beings are made for communion because we are made in the image and likeness of God who is perfect communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Prayer is concerned with entering into this union in order to fulfill our human nature and prepare ourselves for our final resting place in the heart of God (divine communion).
I have found that embracing my need for union in prayer to be especially helpful over the last few weeks as the summer months begin.
All those who are committed to daily prayer practices know that there are ebbs and flows to prayer. Sometimes it is easy to pray for 20 or 30 minutes and sometimes it is challenging to find the time to pray or difficult to sit in silence. On the days when I may be tempted to sleep in rather than to rise early and pray, or on the days when prayer seems difficult, I have found it helpful to focus on how entrance into prayer is a call for communion and intimacy with Christ.
Too easily we might convince ourselves that if we don’t pray, God does not love us as much or is not happy with us. We can become caught in our own heads, questioning ourselves about how we pray or what our prayer time looks like.
I found myself doing so recently when I hit a few weeks’ span of dryness in prayer. I felt nothing, and it was more of a challenge to sit with the Gospel of the day or enter into silence. I quickly began to question if I was praying the “right way” or if I needed to change up my prayer routine.
Attending a retreat in the midst of this prayer drought gifted me with an insight that set me on a more proper prayer understanding.
A few individuals on this retreat had deep experiences during Eucharistic Adoration. I continued not to feel much. In discussing their prayer encounters with them something became very clear to me. Although I was not experiencing anything through my emotions in prayer, others were having encounters with the radical love of God. One of the retreat leaders noted that hearing from the prayer encounters of others is not meant to make us compare our prayer to theirs but simply to give praise to God that He continues to work in people’s lives.
On this retreat, Jesus Christ worked in their lives in powerful ways that they could experience. While most of us did not have that experience on retreat we could easily see that the God of communion was still at work among us. The distinction was made clear for me and it served as a reminder: prayer is not about feeling nice or sensing God perfectly all the time – prayer is about faithfulness, praise and commitment to the presence of God that is always offered to us, even when we can’t feel it.
Once I stopped questioning what my prayer looked like based on the effects it was bringing about in me, my time became more focused on giving worship to God for what He has done for me and others. It was Other-centered, not self-centered. Then the intimacy was given life.
I began to look at the crucifix and see the gaze of Christ that was directed at me, personally. Instead of looking for powerful moments to happen to me in prayer, I simply was praising God for who He is. It was then that He sowed communion into my prayer time and ordinary life that was simple but profound. All of this was because I was forced to sit with the relational nature of God, human nature, and prayer.
As we enter into the summer months, and schedules might be more erratic or chaotic, let us be committed to praying with God as our focus and reject the temptation to try and control our prayer effects. Doing so will undoubtedly foster unforeseen encounters with the God of the universe who seeks to meet us in deep and abiding intimacy. For He will not stop until communion is our resting place.
_______________________________________
Image: Unsplash
