Prayer,

To be souls filled with God

by Father Mathurin of the Mother of God My brothers and sisters, we want to give you, as the watchword for this year, PRAYER. May each one of us devote this year in a very special way to personal, private prayer, and also to public prayer, such as attendance at Holy Mass and other gatherings of prayer. When you go about here and there, you see that a great number of current events are leaving people worried and perplexed. The horizon looks very gloomy. People are alarmed and troubled; you even meet some who despair. In many instances, when we encounter such suffering, we have no answer, we don’t know what to say to these people. What is the right word, the good word that will be able to restore their hope, that will be able to give them the desire to go on and not despair? The answer to all these questions, the only recourse in all these sufferings is God, turning to God. All these sufferings are falling upon humanity because it has turned away from God. 1 In spite of all His love, God is also turning away from human beings, in the sense that He is leaving them to themselves, their own strength, their way of thinking, their wisdom and intelligence — which they think they have. To obtain the help and the light of God, we must pray. Pray always, and do not lose heart, says Our Lord in the Gospel. 2 Without Me, you can do nothing. 3 We Christians, whether religious or lay people, observe, each one with sorrow, that we are not equal to the task, that we are not capable of giving God to the world as we should, because we are not sufficiently united to God. It seems to us that we are not filled with God as we ought to be, and in certain cases, it is after many years in the service of God. Why? Our gift to God and our prayer have not always had enough intensity. Uncommon trials loom on the horizon: How will we make it through these trials? How can we help our neighbor to make it? With our words? Perhaps. With prayer? Certainly. With our prayer, our union to God, with diligent, sustained, frequent contact with the only One who can assist us, we will find help, comfort, strength and hope, we will have the right word to help our neighbor.

Trust in God, absolute Master of all

God can save us from the most dangerous situations. In the Holy Gospel we read that one day when the Apostles were in a boat with Jesus, they had a great fright: As they were sailing, a squall swept down upon the lake and there arose a great storm. The waves were beating into the boat and it was filling up. They were in great danger. But Jesus, lying in the stern of the boat with His head on a cushion, was asleep. The Apostles woke Him and said, “Master, we are perishing! Does it not concern You? Save us!” And Jesus said, “What are you afraid of? Where is your faith?” Then He arose and rebuked the wind and the sea, saying, “Peace, be still!” And at once the wind fell, and there came a great calm. Then He said to His Apostles, “Why are you fearful? Are you still without faith?” 4 You see, at Jesus’ word, the very moment He commanded it, there came a great calm. Well, that is what prayer does. We pray God to intervene when He sees fit. Sometimes, after hours and years of combat on our part, He intervenes. It is up to us to pray and implore. In her autobiography, Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus tells the story of her excellent “Christmas grace,” a grace of conversion that was a turning point in her life. She says on this subject, “In one instant, the work I had been unable to do in ten years was done by Jesus, contenting Himself with my good will, which was never lacking.” 5 That good will was made manifest in her by diligent prayer, among other things. For ten years she had prayed and implored, and God transformed her in an instant. It could have happened in a month, in ten days, or at the last moment of her life; it took ten years. My brothers and sisters, that is why we must never grow weary and get discouraged in our journey towards God, we must never allow ourselves to lose heart. We don’t know when God wants to grant us the victory, we don’t know when He will come to answer our supplication and crown our efforts. Certain souls have some very difficult battles to fight; they grapple with all sorts of combats that humble them, confound them and almost drive them to despair, for they can see no way out. We must pray, and never grow weary of praying. In all things and at all times, our great Model is Jesus, the Word of God made Man who came to give us great examples of all the virtues. We see that when He lived on this earth, Jesus prayed on all occasions. Thirty years of hidden life! What did He do during those thirty years of life in Bethlehem and Nazareth? He practiced all the virtues: humility, charity, poverty, simplicity, etc., in the accomplishment of ordinary little daily actions; and what an intensity of prayer accompanied Him! He lived constantly beneath the gaze of His heavenly Father, lived as One with Him. He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, because I always do the things that are pleasing to Him. 6 During His public life, Jesus often went aside to pray: at night on the mountain, in solitude, He lent Himself to prayer. When He went about with His Apostles, we see Him often going aside a little in order to pray. The Gospel depicts Him, before the great events of His life, absorbed in an exceptional prayer, notably when He was about to choose His Apostles. And before the greatest act of all — if we can call one act of Jesus greater in regard to another, since everything is great in Jesus, even the smallest little acts — before the completion of His work of Redemption, before the Passion and crucifixion, what does He do? How does He prepare Himself? By His heartrending prayer in the Garden of Gethsemani: a sorrowful prayer, a prayer in which He almost seems to doubt His Father, so abandoned is He at that moment, so to speak, to the weakness of His humanity. Jesus, God made flesh, so desires to take on human weakness to redeem us that He now bears the immensity of human misery. His prayer becomes a prayer of agony. My brothers and sisters, prayer is fundamental in our life, and there are times in life when it becomes even more important. We see this in the life of Jesus, and it is the same thing in our life and at certain moments in History. In difficult times, let us not make so many conjectures: “What is going to happen? How? Why this and that?” Let us become souls of prayer instead, let us fill ourselves with God, let us turn to Him, and He will inundate us with His wisdom and His thought, which is the contrary of that of men. If we do turn to Him, He will direct our behavior, our undertakings, our thoughts; He will inspire our words; He will show us what we must do in such and such a circumstance. But if we are totally occupied and preoccupied with all the things of the earth, if they absorb us, disturb and upset us, if they distract us from Him, we will not attain our goal. When God sends sufferings, is it for the pleasure of making us suffer? Is it to torture His children? God is no torturer! When He sends suffering, it is so that humans will turn to Him. Saint Paul said, I can do all things in Him who strengthens me. 7 And there you have the secret of all the Saints: they relied on God. They were united to God, they were souls of prayer. God therefore filled them with Himself, with His strength and His love, and they became capable of all things. What is the cause of our weaknesses, our laxities, our shortcomings, for which we so easily excuse ourselves and which we present in such a favorable light? We rely too much on ourselves and not enough on God. We are not sufficiently united to God through prayer, so we are left to ourselves, to our thoughts, our strength. And all too often we see the sad results! Perhaps certain people will say, “Why must we pray and ask God for things He already wants to grant us?” We must pray because it is the will of God, He wants us to ask. Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you, 8 says Jesus in the Gospel. God’s gifts are free, in the sense that they are so great that we can never deserve them, but in His love, God wants to grant them to us; and all He requires is that we ask Him for them. When you need help, for example, you ask for it, and someone has the charity to give it to you. It was free, but you had to ask for it. In the same manner, God, who is rich in divine treasures, wants to give them to souls; all He requires is that we ask for them. There is a very striking example in the Gospel that illustrates this duty of prayer. Jesus, who more than anyone wants the salvation of souls, says, Pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers into His harvest, 9 that is, ask, beg God to raise up apostles who will work with Him for the salvation of souls. Jesus came in person on this earth solely to save all souls, and He asks us to pray that God will send laborers who will continue His work of Redemption. Is He not the one most interested in the salvation of souls, far more than we could ever be? And could He not act alone? Yes, but God, who has created us free, wants our free participation. If He asks us to pray, it is because it must be so. All the gifts of God — even those we might say are practically acquired in advance because He wants so much to give them to us — must be asked for all the same. Even the great gift, the supreme gift of Himself, of the Holy Spirit, of His Thought, of the Good Spirit. Jesus says in the Gospel, If a child asks his father for a loaf, who among you will hand him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, who will hand him a serpent? Or if he asks for an egg, who will hand him a scorpion? Therefore, if you, evil as you are, 10 know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things, and especially the Good Spirit, to those who ask Him! 11 My brothers and sisters, let us ask God, our heavenly Father, for the Good Spirit. Let us ask Him to fill us with His thought, with His sentiments, to see all things as He sees them. The Saints are unanimous in recommending prayer. Among others, there is this masterful statement of Saint Alphonsus Liguori: “He who prays is saved, he who does not pray is damned.” 12 That is rather strong and direct. You pray and you are saved. You do not pray and you are damned, you are lost for eternity because you abandoned prayer, which is a fundamental, indispensable duty, one that cannot be ignored. You can be a soul of prayer in varying degrees; there are many levels between a great saint and a damned soul. Nevertheless, we must always aim higher, for Our Lord said to us, Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. How can we arrive at this? First of all through prayer, for the person who does not pray not only does not lift himself up, he descends, degrades himself and falls more and more into a deplorable state. In the physical order, for example, if you neglect to eat, what will happen? Things might go well for a day; some people are vigorous enough to fast for a day without any problem. Two days, three days without eating — and then, at a given moment, the fine gentleman or lady begins to fail. Little by little, body and mind are weakened, everything deteriorates; there is no more vitality, nothing left to maintain your energy, and the ultimate phase is death. This is infallible: if you stop eating, eventually you will die, and it will not take very long. It is the same thing for the soul: without prayer it perishes, to the point that it is lost. That is why Jesus says to us, Pray always, and do not lose heart. We must always have recourse to God. In a way, God forsakes the soul that does not pray, or rather it is the soul that has forsaken God and has therefore deprived itself of His support, His strength, His Spirit. In prayer, God communicates Himself to the soul, but this does not happen all at once, from one day to the next. God manifests Himself, reveals Himself, gives Himself to the soul drop by drop, so to speak. That is why we must pray always. Suppose I decided to fill a glass drop by drop: I do it for a day and then stop for several days. What will happen? A few days later everything will have evaporated; there will be nothing left, the glass will be empty. It is a little like this with a soul that prays only intermittently, without constancy. There are those who say, “Oh, I’ve had enough, I’m not getting anywhere, I always have the same faults, the same problems!” Instead of saying that, start to really pray. Understand how much we need to have unceasing recourse to God, how much we need Him. Always remain in contact with God. Prayer is an elevation of the heart and soul to God, to adore Him, to thank Him, to ask His forgiveness, and to ask Him for spiritual and temporal graces. When we pray always, with perseverance, God manifests Himself drop by drop, as it were. It is worth making a little effort to pray, a little shift of interests, of our mental attention. Instead of letting ourselves be drawn to earthly things, instead of worrying about a thousand things, let us turn to God. “O Lord, I abandon myself into Your hands; intervene. Have mercy on me, fill me with Yourself, with Your Spirit!” The purpose of our life on this earth is to fill ourselves with God. What do events matter? Why are we so troubled? It is because we focus too intently on earthly things, and our attention is not turned sufficiently towards God, towards the true purpose of our life. We must keep God company in prayer, without ever losing heart. That is the “drop by drop,” don’t forget it, my brothers and sisters. Since it is the custom to draw a parallel between the watchword and a wish, here is my wish for this year: May you be souls filled with God. May there truly be so much contact between you and God, in a diligent manner, that you will become full of the Spirit of God. That is my wish for each one of you. It will come through prayer: this was the secret of all the Saints. God communicated Himself to them because they drew near to Him and thus became channels of grace for their neighbor and for the entire Church. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you, said Saint James. I think you will agree that there is nothing more desirable on earth than to be filled with the Spirit of God, to be identical copies of Jesus, as the Saints were. By their life full of God, they manifested Jesus on all sides. How beautiful this is, how desirable! And that is my wish for all of you this year, my brothers and sisters: may you be men and women who see all things in their true perspective, because you will have had recourse in a diligent, untiring manner to prayer. Personal prayer on every occasion, public prayer to which you apply yourselves well. Public prayer attracts graces in a very powerful manner upon the entire Holy Church and upon humanity. My brothers and sisters, if we apply ourselves to real prayer throughout the course of this year, God will transform us. Without our being aware of it? Probably, I hope so; but He will transform us.