4. Difficulty and Prayer

Prayer is not the monopoly of Christians. But can one be a Christian and not pray?

Writing from Senegal where they were engaged in co operation work, friends expressed their surprise at seeing all around them, people who prayed. The shock of another civilisation helped them discover prayer as a reality. Sometimes it takes the unusual in another culture or in another religion, for certain people to question their own tradition.

Prayer is an experience to which all have not access. There are people who pray and others who never pray. For those who do not know how to pray, the prayer of those who do, is a provocation which is at times upsetting for them, in the sense in which they feel excluded. Prayer is off putting in their eyes, for it falls into none of the familiar categories. The one who prays belongs to no distinct classification. He brims over and most often overflows. He is in contact with a stranger who upsets the status quo, with the transcendent who plays havoc with signposts and with what seems secure. He bears witness to the inaccessible which dooms to failure the desire to be in total command. The one who prays has access to the completely Other, to the Immensurable, to the Infinite. He causes a lack of continuity like the window in the wall, the oasis in the desert or the flame in the night. Whether he desires it or not, he inspires fear as do all extreme experiences, like madness. And whether he is simple or pretentious, noisy or discreet, he inevitably does violence to the categories of a closed world.

While following a session in a Cistercian Abbey, a certain agricultural student felt obliged to discontinue. He was unable to support a too close to the bone confrontation. Before him were men experiencing something quite ordinary, but which completely escaped him. Yet it is a fact that from the very beginnings, the one who buries his dead is a religious being. His loftiest activities may be disfigured, but in spite of all the caricatures, it is an established fact that there are men and women who pray, and who can speak out of their experience, linked as they are to the Completely Other, to the Absolute.

This has come about in various different ways, by a sudden event breaking into the psyche or by intuition. A barely escaped accident, the birth of a child, a sudden pain, an unsuspected love, the sun on the hills or the calm on the sea, and behold something snaps, opens, weeps or wells up somewhere: and I find myself praying I don't know why, or who has overwhelmed me, but that "something" is praying within me! God has ceased to be merely pure principle, hypothesis or abstraction. Here is someone to whom I can speak. Meeting Him bowls me over! I shall never be the same again. I am "changed" by this new relationship and "refreshed" by this presence bestowed on me. But there is more than the desire and the satisfaction. I discover new obligations. God is not a feeling of ocean vastness nor is he a mere life force. He is not nostalgia for a Golden Age, nor a pantheistic communion with Nature, similar to the maternal fusion of a few months old embryo. He is not a concept either, but someone, another, a person towards whom I have certain obligations. Meeting with Him is for me a rebirth, engendering a new kind of knowledge My prayer responds to a very deep desire, but it also acts as a signpost within me, that I am treading the right path if I am to be truly human.

This experience is common to all religions: the experience of the cosmic God who reveals himself in creation; of the unique God who spoke to Ismael and to Abraham; of the God of the Covenant who is ever active in history, of the God who. took flesh in Jesus Christ, of the God who communicates to us His Spirit. All forms of prayer converge towards the mystical experience of a personal God who loves us and whom we can love. There is a divergence of expressions according to the manner in which one approaches the sensed presence. All forms of prayer manifest themselves progressively in history, and co exist in the diversity of cultures and in the variety of personal spiritual journeyings. All the covenants subsist together today: the rainbow is as resplendent as it was in the days of Noah; Abraham's call is forever true; the commandments of Moses are not out of date; certain people rejoice at the Paschal Feast of Jesus Christ. It is not necessary to travel in order to experience this truth. Even in our churches, some tend to live a relationship mainly to God the Creator; for others, it is to God the Giver of the Law; for others again. it is a unique relationship with the God who forgives in Jesus Christ.

Whatever the result of my discoveries, and the stage at which I am at present, the main difficulties in my prayer come from whatever is disturbing my relationship with the God whom I know. They stem from my blindness, from my want of attention to the mysteries of the universe, to the fragile beauty of living things, the regularity of the seasons, the mystery of human love.

Even if I recognise that God is love and that I am constantly in His presence, that my response is simply my life, lived out in this world and in time by my various activities, it is no less true that prayer is a privileged moment of face to face encounter. Even when lovers are separated by a great distance, they claim that they are never apart. Nevertheless, they always feel the need to meet in reality and more often than not manage to do so to see each other even for a short while, so as to intensify that ever existing communion in which they have put their trust, but which they need to verify, nourish and celebrate.

What kills prayer is the very thing that kills love, namely, doubt, suspicion, selfishness and betrayal. What kills prayer, snuffs it out, and prevents its upward soaring, is that very thing which wounds relationship: distractions, asphyxia, death which cherishes no hope of resurrection. Everything which claims that "there is no time for it"!, that shuts out availability attention, perception. Time exists only for the self. Every activity becomes an alibi, a pretext, an auto justification.

Indeed, prayer is always beyond our capabilities, but it is enough to make a decision, for we are never alone. God is our witness, He forgives us, supports us, welcomes us and causes us to make progress. `When you pray, go to your private room, shut yourself in, and so pray to your Father who is in that secret place, and your Father who sees all that is done in secret, will reward you."!