We begin with a paradox: how can a contemplative nun say that prayer, in short, praying, is the most difficult thing in the world?
Well… yes, you can say that when you only see prayer from a single flat or obtuse perspective, from your own perspective or that of each one without taking into account that praying is not unilateral but a matter of two.
Not everything consists of just praying, but in prayer you learn and, by the way, you get the surprise that when you come, there is already Someone who with his presence is there, before you arrive…
Let me explain.
Prayer, praying, is both a gift and a task.
Gift like life itself that is given to us, gift like the light that enlightens us every minute, like the sun that warms us and like the air that envelops us, it is not seen but it is essential to live.
Prayer as a gift is always there, always, it is part of life, for you and for me, within reach of our hands, despite what you are, what you have done or omitted, how you are or how you feel, discover it!
You do not need a specific place for prayer to be valid, (so to speak), everything that happens in your existence, even what you do not suspect, can become a reason for prayer, and transform your life.
Prayer, to pray, is not to put into practice a repetitive and tiring exercise, boring or outdated formulas, it is not something that is subject to the fashion of the moment, something fickle without importance, no! to pray, is something more serious and compromising, is to enter into communion with God and that we have it at any time within reach of our existence.
All we need to do is to want to.
Dare and take advantage of it!
God is God, he is patiently waiting for us to come to him, giving us the possibility of living in our own flesh the return of that “prodigal son” who returns a thousand times to his Father’s lap, after having been wandering and lost far from the peripheries of his love.
To orient us, to lead us back to him, to make us realize that he has us “tattooed on the palms of his hands” , that “he does not want any of his own to perish” (Mt 18:15), that he looks at us from milestone to milestone without blinking, that he seeks us out and draws us to himself, because he is above all of us, “when I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all to myself” (Jn 12:20).
And this is where the perfect piece fits in that the prayer is a matter of two. To pray is not only to draw near, is to penetrate the Mystery of which we are a part to touch it and feel it, to know who we aresons in the Son” (Jn 14,7)in whom we live, move and exist” (Hc 17,28). To pray is to be enveloped and wrapped in a gaze that is to love. God’s desire for each one of us is translated into a free act of His infinite love, my desire for Him is also a free act of my will that makes me want to love Him in correspondence to that first love that reached me, because He is the one who has the initiative in our mutual love story.
In prayer one treads on sacred ground, but beware! You have to take off your shoes so as not to profane it, you have to strip yourself to enter into the Other, you have to “not be”, to live the kenosis, “it is not I, it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20) in order to let yourself be made, We must remain there in silence and walk on tiptoe, to discern and learn to tune in to the rhythm of God, to not want to leave the astonishment and to enter into Him by living the experience of Moses’ burning bush that is not consumed (Ex 3:2-5).
To pray is to hear him pronounce our own name and no other. ” But now Israel, O people of Jacob, the Lord who created you says to you: Fear not, for I have delivered you; I have called you by name, you are mine” (Is 43:1-4).
In this clamorous silence of prayer, we brush against the sublimity of God, in a halo of love, submerged in an unfathomable abyss, lost as an insignificant point in the midst of a reality that cannot be measured, nor calculated because it exceeds all limits, it overflows us, because it cannot be understood nor explained, but only by remaining there in love, in stillness, deep inside the secret, where only God is and nothing else?where you only know that the deeper you go, the more silence there is, the more you live in love, the more union, the more clarity there is and… you are less and less you, you are almost nothing …
To pray is to seek to find Love and to wait there beside Him, in Him, to savor and “to be nourished by the savory things of his house, for he gives us to drink from the stream of his delights, in him is the living fountain, and his light makes us see the light” (Psalm 35:9). It is by going, by coming again and again, that our palate becomes accustomed to the sensibility of his perennial calls, of his continuous attraction to be totally his.
The continuous coming to this spring truly quenches our being and our thirst.
Only there it has to be and not elsewhere.
To pray is to undress the soul before Him in order to put on Himself.
It is to present oneself face to face to the God who dwells in us, just as we are, without masks or filters that can embellish or disguise what I really have and what I am worth, what I do and what I bring.
He alone knows us, He alone probes us, He alone knows, and nothing else is needed.
God lives in your silence and in your word, in your darkness and in your doubt, in your hesitation and in your fears, in your light, in your clarity, in your security and in your joy, in your firmness and in your decision.
Dare to pray!
To pray is to dialogue from heart to heart, from Him to you.
Only for you…and from you to Him, only in Him.