Meeting the Lord in Prayer
A reflection on the Sunday readings
In today’s readings we are given a profound lesson in prayer. If you are dry or struggling in your prayer life, or if you are looking to hear the Lord’s voice, these readings are for you. And, if you put the lessons from these readings into practice, I promise you will find proper prayer leads to deeper conversion and deeper conversion leads to a life of joy in the presence of the Lord.
So, what is proper prayer? It isn’t just recitation of a formula. First and foremost, the Lord is showing us we have to make sure our heart is in the right place.
Let’s dig in.
Release your Anxiety
Reading 1: Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:21-23
The first reading from the book of Ecclesiastes highlights the difference between a man who labors with wisdom, knowledge and skill and a man who labors without wisdom. The man without wisdom toils through the day full of 'anxiety of heart' - the key phrase in this reading. His days are full of sorrow and at night his mind is not at rest. The scripture describes all these things as vanities. That is to say, they are all pride, propped up by our own sense of self. Each one of us still holds strong to the fallen belief that we are the masters, that we can solve our problems, that we can turn soil into wheat into bread into wealth into stability. This is of course vanity.
It makes me think of the great quote from St. Padre Pio, "Pray, hope and don't worry." Without prayer first and relinquishing our vanity to the great power of God - we are full of worry.
But this is easier said than done. Where does this anxiety we carry reside, and how do we route it out?
Harden not your Hearts
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14 and 17
The responsorial psalm repeats the phrase, "If today you hear His voice, harden not your hearts" clearly calling us to reflect on the phrase in the first reading 'anxiety of heart.' It is our anxiety and worry that hardens our hearts. With hardened hearts, we can't possible receive the word (which is Christ himself) into the soil of our soul.
The responsorial psalm then goes on to teach us how to do this. First we must reflect on the power of God. The psalm shows us that God is outside of time and to Him our days are like the coming and going of blades of grass. He raises us up in the morning and we wither in the evening. This is a fact we must accept. God is all powerful and all good. He is the author of life and in His time all good things grow. But it follows that if God is all powerful and the master of time and life - we are not. This part is just as important as the first. We are the blades of grass. We have a beginning and an end. And, we are in His hands.
The psalm then gives us a change of phrase. We must move from 'anxiety of heart' to 'wisdom of heart.' When we release our anxiety and let his majesty rest in us, wisdom grows. The psalm tells us to seek God at daybreak that he may fill us with kindness. It promises us that if we do this, we will shout for joy all our days and He will prosper the work of our hands. That is to say that the work of our hands will become His work - not our own. We become a tool, lovingly wielded by His divine will and the fruit of that conversion is joy.
Purify your Heart
Reading 2: Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11
In the epistle, St. Paul exhorts us to face death before death comes. This too is a work of the heart. He tells us to rise with Christ and keep our focus on the heavenly things. To do this, we must necessarily put to death the parts of our hearts that hold us back. All the things that cause anxiety or dread - immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry. He tells us to stop lying and to live in the truth. He then tells us something quite amazing, when we put on the 'new self' in Christ, that self 'is being renewed' always. It is our undying self - a pure out breath of the will of God. And since it is being renewed daily, though the grass of our lives may wither in the days sun, it won't die but constantly regenerates. Through dying to the world, we find our undying self in Christ.
Soren Kierkegaard, the great Danish philosopher, wrote a book called 'Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing.' He understood this lesson and knew that all great spiritual work takes place in the human heart. In the book, Kierkegaard instructs us to face the false selves we have created through the decisions of our lives. He says that each decision that deviates from the will of God creates a fragmented self and the spiritual work we all must do is put those selves to the sword in order to recover the will of God within us. In our pride he says we have come to love these selves, and the act of putting them to death causes suffering. This spiritual work is necessarily painful, but from the pain - from these little crosses we do interiorly - we find love and the source of all life.
But I would suggest that while the framework Kierkegaard gives is profound, it is still fettered by pride. We do not need to kill our past over and over. This can lead to a scrupulosity that creates its own kind of anxiety - an emotion Kierkegaard writes about often. However, if we wish to do this work without anxiety, then we need to follow the words of St. Paul. If we simply will the death of self in submission to the will of God and look above, God himself will do the work. When we put on the new self, and focus on Christ, he renews us in grace and the old selves we have created within us fade away.
Speak with God, Face to Face
Gospel: Luke 12:13-21
When we do this work, we begin to see God face to face. "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they will see God."
Here, in the Gospel we get to the crux of the lesson, we meet someone who stands face to face with Jesus but totally misses him. In the Gospel reading we are presented with a man who approaches Jesus saying, "Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me." This poor man, has not learned the lessons above.
If we look at this request with worldly eyes, it makes sense. A great wrong has been done to him. His brothers have not shared with him what is due. He comes to Jesus to make a claim for what is rightly his. And Jesus gives him a loving rebuke, inviting him deeper while calling him friend. The man is missing the point.
Jesus asks him, “Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?” In this question, Jesus is asking him to start on the work that begins in the heart - he's calling him to see the truth and ask the Truth to judge him. In every miracle Jesus works, the penitent soul who comes to him, first proclaims him Lord. The woman with hemorrhages acknowledges him as Messiah by touching the tassels on his cloak. The Centurion with the sick servant, calls him Lord and trusts in his power. Even the paralytic is lowered by friends who proclaim Jesus as Messiah.
So, Jesus is inviting this man to reorder his request. The proper response to "who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?" is of course, "You Lord are the author of all things, and the world's right judge. I appoint you judge over my life and my heart. I seek your will." If this man would have said that, Jesus wouldn't have just called him "friend" he would have called him "brother" replacing his fallen human brothers with a place in the family of God. He would have lifted him to the heavenly realm and given him a portion of his true inheritance - the gifts of God himself, shared by his true brother Jesus Christ.
Do you see how this meeting is really a lesson in prayer? Just like this man, how often do we approach the Lord with petitions or injustices? How often do we ask him first to solve a problem that is of the world, or outside of ourselves? The first step in prayer is to let God work on our hearts - to turn them from stone to flesh. If this man's heart was supple and receptive, not hardened by the anxieties of the world, he would have instead called Jesus the Lord and received his Heavenly inheritance.
Putting this into Practice
Today I invite you to pray with me a prayer that will change your life. But in order to do so, you have to give Jesus your heart and relinquish all other requests into His divine judgement.
"Lord Jesus, you are Messiah. You are the right judge of my life. I place into your hands my past, my sins, my joys and my hardships. I give you my humbled heart, my broken and tired body. I seek your instruction in the heart. Help me die to the world that I might live only in you. Make of me an instrument of your most Holy will. Nothing more. Nothing less. That your glory might be shown in me."
May God reduce your anxiety and increase your joy this Sunday and every day. He is Lord of the heavens and the earth and more importantly, He is Lord over each and every one of your beautiful hearts - give them to Him.
God bless you!