Reflection on Prayer

Introductory Reflection

   “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.”

(Mk 6:31)

To Rest and to Pray

We’ve come here to rest and to pray.  Two things all of us yearn for so much.  We spend a good part of our time speaking, conversing, and in wagging our tongues.  In silence we become able to hear the voice of God, ever calling us to go deeper, follow God more closely, stretching us, calling us always to be better, always to do more.

We live in a noisy world.  It is hard to find a quiet spot these days.  Yet it is the noise WITHIN which is even a greater threat to our spiritual life.  Our desires, our worries often consume us, as the Gospel of the Sower and the Seed remind us.   We will try to put some of that aside these days.  To calm our often agitated lives and to make space for God’s Word to penetrate our hearts.

Retreat time takes us out of our daily routine and everyday spiritual practices.  It affords us a time for sitting back and looking back, in order to take stock of our lives.  It is an important time for us, so that we can chart a course for the present and the future.   We look, first of all, at what we set out to be in the first place.  We then look what we are now doing to get there.

Joan Chittister in her latest book, The Monastery of the Heart, writes that retreat is a time:

“To deepen our understanding of the great treasure we seek,

To remind us of who we are and what we are meant to be,

To bring to new life in us again the sight of the road

On which we have put our feet.” (p. 60)

Retreat time gives us the space to set aside our doing, so that we can really be about being.

Rest in order to Bless and to Be Thankful

I am sure that just as the disciples of Jesus, when they returned from their first mission, we have much to talk about and to be thankful for (Lk 9:10-11; 10:17-24). We’ve alleviated the suffering of the sick, we’ve been agents of reconciliation, we’ve served our sisters and brothers in a myriad of ways, both seen and unnoticed.  We’ve had to bind the wounds of people along the roadside: those who have lost their jobs or their fortunes, those who have serious problems at home with spouse or children, those who have lost direction in their lives, consoled those who mourn a loved one.  We’ve enjoyed moments of great satisfaction and we have also known disappointments, failures, misunderstanding, even among our sisters and brothers from whom we have a right to expect welcoming and understanding.

How wonderful it is then to encounter the Lord always welcoming and understanding who invites us to pray and to rest!

“Come away by yourselves

to a deserted place and rest a while.

People were coming and going in great numbers,

and they had no opportunity even to eat.

So they went off in a boat by themselves

to a deserted place.”  (Mk. 6:30-32)

Finding God Where We Are!         

Ignatian spirituality has as one of its basic principles that we are to find God’s presence in all things.  God meets us WHERE WE ARE!  Like Peter who met Jesus while mending his fishing nets; or Matthew (Levi) who was sitting at his tax collector’s table;   WHERE YOU ARE is a place to meet God.  For me, one important encounter with God was when I was in bed in Rio Negro in Southern Chile with hepatitis…I discovered God calling me to a different way of doing mission. 

How often does God come to us in a word spoken or in another person or in a gesture, as we were so full of ourselves, that we never heard God or saw God’s presence in our lives?!

Retreat time is about creating that sacred space where it is possible to more readily hear God’s voice.

It’s about calming ourselves so as to find that rose that God has placed at our door, just waiting to be discovered.

In the house at Bethany

Jesus needed his own get-away places.  He often went to the Garden at night to pray.  And he had his friends in Bethany, where he could go and kick off his sandals and enjoy the friendship of Lazarus, Martha and Mary, in order to spend a few days with them.  Like Mary, let’s sit at Jesus feet and just enjoy his company, listening to his Words, and sharing our lives together.  God wishes to share with us and to break open the Word in our busy and cluttered lives. Let’s make a special effort to listen to God’s voice whispering gently in our hearts.  God has a special WORD for each one of us!

Tonight, let’s calm our souls, slow down, let go of so much that clutters our mind and hearts, to make room for the Lord who “stands at the door and knocks.  If we hear his voice and open the door, then He will enter our house and dine with us and we with Him” (Revelations 3:20)

We pray:

Lord, teach us to live life at a human pace – not a snail’s pace and not a frantic pace, but a pace that gives us space and allows us to attend to what is really going on.

Lord, give us the gift of quiet at those times when our hearts are at their most restless and our lives at their most disjointed and our work at its most chaotic.  May pressure never tempt us to postpone your quiet coming.

Lord, bless us with the peace of heart that is able to resist the grip of tasks and goals and projects and help to be available to our sisters and brothers and responsive to the needs and pain of others.

Lord, help us to listen well to your call within and about us.

God of the listening heart,

God of quiet, ever attentive to the cries of your people,

ever compassionate in our pain,

bless us with the peace of your divine heart.

We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

(Joyce Rupp)

*************