The Essence...

A vision, art by Yongsung Kim

From her book, Essence of Prayer Sister Ruth Burrows wrote a reflection on prayer, asking, "What do we mean by prayer?" 

Prayer: "It is not primarily something we are doing to God, something we are giving to God but what God is doing for us. And what God is doing for us is giving us the divine Self in love."

She goes on, "Any talk about prayer, if we are to stand in the clear, pure atmosphere of truth, must begin by reflecting in firm belief on what Jesus shows us of God. Let us push straight to the heart of the matter.

What is the core, the central message of the revelation of Jesus? Surely it is of the unconditional love of God for us, for each one of us: God, the unutterable, incomprehensible Mystery, the Reality of all reality, the Life of all life. And this means the divine Love desires to communicate Its Holy Self to us. Nothing less!
This is God’s irrevocable will and purpose; it is the reason why everything that is, and why each of us exists. We are here to receive this ineffable, all-transforming, all beatifying Love.

Please read her reflection HERE.

I was struck by how beautifully she drew out that prayer is not found in some formula, but rather by making one's self available to the mystery of Love. 

The essence of being - the essence of prayer is to be open to God, is to place ourselves at His disposal and enter into an encounter where we allow God to draw us out of ourselves and to know, to acknowledge, and to trust Him. We thus allow Him to enrich, deepen and most importantly, we allow Him to love us as He unites us with His Being. 

It is in this obedience, this encounter, this listening to and with God, we literally become speech (we become prayer) and we communicate much more than mere words. 

In this form of speech, this letting go and being filled with His Love, we are allowing God to 'translate' us - where the etymology of the word 'translate' means 'to carried across'. So when we silence our noise - our world to become open and listen, God 'speaks' us - God 'translates' us into existence - into the Kingdom. In this essence of prayer we are allowing ourselves to be imprinted by Love Itself and thus prayer becomes being and being is transformed into prayer... and... and trusting that from "this" place deep within, I am loved.

As Sister Ruth Burrows puts it:

Well-instructed Christians know this notionally but, alas, few know it really. And here I must add an important reminder that knowing it ‘really’ does imply ‘feelingly’. To know really – or really to know – means living that knowledge, living out of it. It means that our way of looking at things, our attitudes, our actions arise from this knowledge. Of this real knowledge we use the word faith.  

The gift of people like Sr Burrows who reflect and share their thoughts on the spiritual journey is a blessing and should help us along our way in the journey of faith.

Lent - Surrender by becoming God's violin - by being God's instrument

Fr Wilfrid Stinissen, O.C.D.

Lent is about transformation - a stripping away all the debris that keeps us from being fully alive in Christ. In this my final installment from Father Wilfrid Stinissen, O.C.D. he lists 3 stages of Surrender and Abandonment. In the first two stages we “do” for God; in the final stage God “does” through us.) Here, in the third stage, God does His will through me. This stage "presupposes that we have practiced accepting and obeying God's will for a long time...There ought to come a time in the life of every Christian, when he is merely God's instrument and nothing more... In the third stage, surrender is much more radical and total than in the second. There, I refrained from choosing for myself what I would do. I tried to discover God's will and then carry it out, but it was I who did God's will...Now I offer to God not only my will but also all of my potential, all of the powers of my soul, so that He Himself may carry out His will through me... Before, it was I who played the violin. It was God, of course, who gave me the score, and I obediently played what He gave me to play. Now I give the violin to God and let Him play. One hears that it is the same violin... It has the same characteristics and defects. But there is no similarity between the music I produced myself and what resonates now. God not only makes use of all of the violin's possibilities, but He reveals something of Himself in His playing...It is not that I have become more skilled. No, now an artist of the very highest grade is playing... Being God's violin is something completely different from playing the violin for God. Now He does not content Himself with deciding what I should play, but He Himself touches the strings of my faculties. He can do that only when He has the violin in His hands, when my surrender applies, not just to one part of myself, but to my whole self. 'I abandon myself into Your hands. I offer it to You with all the love of my heart...and so need to give myself, to surrender myself into Your hands without reserve...

Into Your Hands, Father: Abandoning Ourselves to the God Who Loves Us  by Fr Wilfrid Stinissen

Fr Stinissen leads us in a reflection on this experience of freedom through surrender - surrender by becoming prayer through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Preparing for Lent - Surrender by becoming prayer 2

Fr Wilfrid Stinissen, O.C.D.

“... we must daily be striving to listen to God. We must pray, and not just say prayers. "Many turn to God only when they must make an important or definitive choice in life. They approach God as a computer, so to speak, who gives answers to certain questions. Often we do not get a clear answer when we ask God questions in prayer... We can stand there just as perplexed after prayer as before. The secret of evangelical freedom from care is not that we surrender our life to God only at certain times. The secret is rather that we never leave God!...If our sense of obedience has not developed by a continual assent to God's clear and certain Will, we cannot count on being able to perceive His Will when we find ourselves before a difficult and unclear choice." P 55

Into Your Hands, Father: Abandoning Ourselves to the God Who Loves Us by Fr Wilfrid Stinissen

Fr Stinissen leads us in a reflection on this experience of freedom through surrender - surrender by becoming prayer through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Preparing for Lent - Surrender by becoming prayer

Fr Wilfrid Stinissen, O.C.D.

"There can be so much escapism in our striving for a 'spiritual life.' We often flee from the concrete, apparently banal reality that is filled with God's presence to an artificial existence that corresponds with our own ideas of piety and holiness but where God is not present... As long as we want to decide for ourselves where we will find God, we need not fear that we shall meet Him! We will meet only ourselves, a touched up version of ourselves... Genuine spirituality begins when we are prepared to die. Could there be a quicker way to die than to let God form our lives from moment to moment and continually consent to his action?" Pg 23-4

Into Your Hands, Father: Abandoning Ourselves to the God Who Loves Us by Fr Wilfrid Stinissen

Fr Stinissen will lead us over the next few posts reflecting on this experience of freedom through surrender - surrender by becoming prayer through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Surrender by becoming prayer

Fr Wilfrid Stinissen, O.C.D.

"The Gospels and spiritual literature point out various practices of importance on the journey to God. We are told to deny ourselves, forgive one another, carry our cross, fast and give alms... We must also love our neighbor, pray with others in private, bring our troubles to the Lord, and be peacemakers. All of these things have their place, and nothing may be overlooked, but they may cause us to feel confused and divided... and we might even ask ourselves where we will find the strength to do all that is required. In spiritual reading we are instructed about balanced asceticism, the Mass readings of the day tell of prayer, and the retreat master speaks about love. We are pulled in different directions and, instead of finding peace, we become restless. What we need most is a central idea, something so basic and comprehensive that it encompasses everything else... In my opinion that central idea is surrender... Pg 9-11

Into Your Hands, Father: Abandoning Ourselves to the God Who Loves Us by Fr Wilfrid Stinissen

Fr Stinissen will lead us over the next few posts reflecting on this experience of freedom through surrender - surrender by becoming prayer through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.