PRAYER; ONE OF OUR STRONGEST NEEDS

 

 

It is 2023. One of our strongest needs is to teach people how to pray. We need to lift them out of an immature posture toward God and into an adult Christian life.

 

Everyone will tell you that they believe in God. But always ask them if they believe in the God of Christianity or are they hanging on to the way they picture  God?  How they interpret God may be very comfortable and self-serving but not the real God?

 

In our roots (Biblical roots) God does not command that there be any holy places, but rather time is made holy. In making the Covenant with the Hebrew slaves God commands that the people take off every seventh day for prayer/worship and rest. Recognize how radical this actually was. These were people who knew about starvation and food shortages. They knew that they had to work very hard just to survive and have enough food to eat. And God commands them to stop work every seventh day! This was a big  command of trust that God would provide for their survival.

 

A very immature approach to prayer is to pray when we are in trouble. There we are in the hospital emergency room and our teen-age son is between life and death. In desperation we will pray to God for help and deliverance. But if that is the only time we ever pray we have to say, ‘is this fire insurance or is this real prayer?’

 

Adult prayer is the living and breathing in the presence of God in every part of the day. Everything is blessing. We get up in the morning and recognize how wonderful the day already is. We thank God for the blessing. We are able to work and care for our  family. We squeeze in time to take grandma grocery shopping. And all the while we are appreciative that we can live well and serve others. Our prayer at this point may not have too words but it has a lot of feelings of gratitude.

 

God’s presence fills every part of the earth. Not only is God everywhere but God’s Spirit Is active and working within us. Prayer is living and sharing in the life of God within us and in cooperating with the movements of God’s Spirit within our world.

 

Now, people need help to live with the dynamic and restless God. There are times when we are walking through some very dark paths of life. There we need to be rained to listen for the movements of God. Life with God is not always on easy street.

 

Adult prayer is listening and seeking the will of God in the daily blessings and joy of life and in seeking God in the storms and hardships of our life.

 

Prayer is a daily occupation. It is not an add-on to belief in God. Prayer is how we are living and moving with the Spirit of God.

 

Teaching everyone to pray as an adult is our basic and greatest need in the spiritual life.

 

 

 

 

FALLING IN LOVE WITH THE EARTH

 

In life, you will never work hard or try to save anything if you do not love it.

No one can be commanded to save anything or nourish any person towards personal growth if they do not have love for them.

 

When we care deeply about anything or anyone, it is surprising how much effort and determination we will put forth.

 

We know that the earth and the climate are in trouble. The atmosphere is heating up, the ice cap in the North is melting and we can see a direct connection between the incredible forest fires we have experienced this spring.  The scientists have not made the direct connection between the two, but our common sense has drawn the correct conclusion.

 

The challenge before all human beings is to fall in love with creation. Western man (of European decent) has been so cut off from the natural world that we need to rediscover the place of humanity with the entire web of creation.

 

The soil, the waters and the plants must never be seen as something to use, exploit and then thrown away. We have more than two centuries of exploitation and it is evident that this is leading us into deep trouble. Humanity can no longer exploit the riches of the soil and then walk away as it turns into desert. We are in danger of losing clean water (an absolute essential for all life- -especially human life).

 

The social teachings of our Church (Laudto si) challenges us to reconnect ourselves with all living things. We are to live as if every leaf, grasshopper and beef cow are kin to us. We are connected with all living things and they to us humans. Our future lies not in exploitation but in lived connectedness and harmony with everything.

 

But this connectedness will only happen if we turn in love towards all living things. They must become family to us and we to them. 

 

Take a few moments to do this spiritual exercise. Sit calmly. Study one particular leaf on a nearby tree. Imagine what energy and design there is in this one leaf coming into existence. Stay with the leaf. Feel the warm sunshine it is absorbing and how it is creating energy and growth in itself and sending its energy into the branch of the tree. 

 

Watch the robins bouncing around the lawn, listening for bugs and worms and bobbing down to pick them up. Then they will fly off with this load of food to feed their chicks in the nest. Be in touch with these tremendous forces of nature at work in this little bird.

 

This is all the creative hand of God. Each living creature is being moved by the hand of God. Creation was not something that happened a long time ago. You are sitting in it. It is happening was you watch.

 

Now, pay attention to your heart. How much love and joy has been elicited by this tiny exercise?

 

Only if you begin from your heart will you ever move to care for the earth. Only if your heart is active will you hear the call of the earth for sustainability. 

 

You will only fight for what you love. Sustaining the earth must come from your heart.

 

 

CARE FOR THE EARTH IS PART OF OUR FAITH

 

For the past sixty years scientists and people who are in close connection with the earth have been warning us about the collapse of the world’s ecosystem. We are heating the atmosphere by our excessive burning of carbons, the soil and rivers are being poisoned by chemicals dumped into them and we  are losing the biodiversity of the animal and plant species of the world.  

 

Christians have been seriously challenged that their very religion allows humanity to exploit and cast off  the benefits of creation. In other words: use, abuse and throw away!

 

These serious challenges put serious Christian people to go back and examine the roots of their faith. The first thing they concluded was that all creation is a gift. Humanity is only one part of the gift. Humankind is meant to steward the gift of the earth but never abuse it like a piece of property that they throw away after it has served the purpose humans had for it. Stewardship is very different from ownership.

 

This reawakening of the original relationship that humanity was to have with the earth came to a head in the publication by Pope Francis of the encyclical, ‘Laudato si,’ (2015). This was not the official church teacher jumping on the bandwagon of ‘save the planet’ but the maturing of a much more authentic Christian understanding of the place of humanity and our relationship with all living things. 

 

This process has happened many times before in the history of Christianity. There were very serious problems in the past and we went back to the roots. What are our essential Christiaan values? What does the teachings of our faith have to offer us as preserve our planet?

 

First of all, it is our common home. Human beings are placed in relationship with everything else that lives and moves. Just as we see each human being as the very gift of God; so too, we must see every living creature (no matter how small) as the gift of God. We are sisters and brothers of all living things and they sisters and brothers to us. The earth looks very different when you see it as one glorious, inter-connected family.

 

Humanity has been given the task of working and tilling the earth. We are only stewards who are meant to bring the potential of the earth for the use of human beings and to develop and protect the potential of the earth for all living creatures. 

 

On this issue, humanity has failed so many times. We used the soil and the waters up, leaving huge patches of the earth to become deserts. We exploited the soils and the waters and left huge areas  empty for our grandchildren.

 

Our faith and the work of scientists challenges us to use the power and the riches of the earth to be fruitful and productive for all future generations. We must stand beside our productive farm -and in the Canadian prairies (and American prairies) and say: Now, we can nourish this land/soil so that it will produce food for the next thousand years. 

 

Care for the earth (in our prayer and our worship) is not just some fancy add-on. This responsibility is rooted deep in the holy Scriptures and our spirituality. We are only in the process of re-discovering what was always there. The crisis of a warming climate has only provoked us to re-discover what was always there in the first place.

 

 

CHURCH MUST HAVE A VERY HUMAN FACE

At noon time, I invited the grade one’s and two’s for a picnic. Everything was simple. The children were well behaved and orderly. When the hot dogs and ice cream were finished,  the children ran to play on the green grass.

 

For the majority of these children this is one of the very limited encounters they will have with church. But this encounter in a picnic highlights that the church must have a very human face. It is so much more than going through the prayer rituals and then walk out of the church  building.

 

The Church is first of all lived and expressed in the lives and faces of the people. The rituals and the arrangement of the church building are an expression of the fundamental reality, Christ present and living in the people.

 

In relations between human beings, we know that if one person does not like another person, they will  not accept the other’s truth. It may the most obvious truth, but we withhold acceptance of the truth from the people we do not like. 

 

A stranger may approach us respectfully and hand us a small package we had dropped a few meters back. We are not offended but we graciously accept the kindness. We accept his truth.

 

The face of the Church is found in its people. It is the people who make up the Church. It is the people who witness to the reality of Christ in their lives,

 

We want to welcome all people who will come to join us for Sunday worship. In some of the more advanced parishes they begin by turning around and welcoming the people who are located close by. People mention that it does make a difference when you pray for others and they are the new stranger with the wonderful smile is who is standing beside you.   

 

We want to listen to the stories of people who are having a hard time getting by in our own city and country. We want to listen to the stories of the people who are on the margins of the society. We never want to be the ‘we have well-paying jobs and we are among the winners’ club. The spirit of Jesus (i.e. his attitude) is one of compassion and understanding for the poor and excluded of his time. We want to allow his spirit to blossom in our lives as we include the excluded in our listening. The Sunday Readings are not only a time to listen to the Word of God but also a time to listen to the word of our fellow human being who is struggling. 

 

When you were joined to Jesus Christ in the waters of baptism you were signed on the ears with the sign that you are to become a listener to the Word of God. And, included in that sign, you will listen to the heart of the poor just as Jesus listens to the heart of the poor.

 

We can become the very face of Jesus in so many ways. Most of all in the e everyday events of respect and kindness towards others. 

 

Today, give a moment of reflection to the times when you recognized in another the very face of Jesus. And when did they recognize the face of Jesus in your face?