Advent And The Mystery Of Prayer

Michiel Peeters - Dear friends, Advent is a time of waiting and expecting. We wait for something that will happen, but it is necessary that we let ourselves be educated to an attention, an expectation, a desire, without which we wouldn’t recognize Christ passing by. “Be vigilant at all times and pray”, Christ tells us today.

What is prayer?

Prayer, for sure, is not escaping from reality, in any sense. It is going to the bottom of our experience of reality. It is looking to reality so well, that we are amazed by its existence (in the first place) and recognize that reality (and I within it) is given, therefore is made, made in this moment by a Mystery that imposes Its presence on me by generating reality that surrounds me and of which I am a part. Praying is becoming so conscious of reality that I am brought to recognize Mystery that makes it, so conscious of reality, and of myself in it, that I cannot do otherwise than to say “You” to Mystery. My experience of reality leading me to say “You” to Mystery that is present: that is prayer.

Praying is asking. For when I become conscious of reality, and of myself within it, I discover myself as a big need. A need for what? Fulfilment, forgiveness, mercy, love, realization, happiness, infinity, fruitfulness, becoming what I need to become.

“You who make me, do realize me, fulfil me”—this is prayer. Jesus says: “Pray always.” It’s the most reasonable thing to do: any action I would commence, without begging Mystery who makes reality and me, would be irrational, contains a seed of despair. “Pray always.” We could translate that by: “Pray as much as you can.”

And then we understand that anything, really anything may serve as an occasion for prayer, to ask Mystery, to beg Mystery to fulfil us. Any circumstance, any event, amazing or shocking us, any contingent problem, has for sure this meaning, this purpose: to make us realize that we are needy, and to make us ask to the one who can give; to make us, in this way, enter once more in relationship with the One from whom we depend, relationship that – alone – is capable of humanizing, of realizing our life, already here and now, when I start praying: to make me breathe.

We can ask anything. Of course, our prayer should always include, at least implicitly, the clausal: “if this—what I ask—is according to Your plan, if this is better for my happiness and the happiness of the world—otherwise, may it happen not according to my idea, but according to Your idea.” If our prayer would not include this clausal, it wouldn’t be prayer, asking, begging—but pretention. Finally, what is the simplest form of prayer?

It’s the Sacraments. Often, we think that the Sacraments are the most difficult thing, the highest grade of relationship with Mystery. No: The Sacraments, especially Confession and Communion, are the simplest and the most beautiful way of praying, of entering in relationship with Mystery, Mystery that has become man, that has become so physically close to us so that we can touch It.
The author has not reviewed the text and its translation.

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