Alarm ! The TV news presents the state of the drought in France. In this scorching month of June, the situation is worrying; will we have to pray for the Lord to send rain? Put back on the program the rogation processions?
While, on several occasions, in recent days, people have told me of their deep doubts concerning the prayer of request… What is it to pray? Can we beg? But ask what? And to whom? Wouldn’t that be a waiver of our own responsibility?
Pray rightly
This is an important subject of questioning for these Western believers that we are, far from the habits of certain cultures which practice the prayer of request very spontaneously. Haven’t we seen many times top athletes, great footballers, have a time of prayer before an important moment?
However, with us, certainty has now largely settled in: the God who intervenes directly in the course of events, that God, died in Auschwitz: did he do something to stop the horror? The question is strong, especially since Jesus strongly invites us to ask the Father…
Rather than giving up all prayer of this kind, shouldn’t we rather learn to do it in a more just way? Because God does not replace the natural mechanisms of life, health, climate, biology or even the consequences of harmful human impulses. It is not going to remedy global warming, give healing to the sick crowd, prevent evil or stupidity from taking their toll.
However, Jesus, the prophets and the saints revealed that repairing and healing is indeed a divine activity. But that this task is now entrusted to our humanity, which is inhabited by transcendence. Indeed, our experience shows it well, the Lord engages with those who wish to repair and heal. He transmits to them his breath which enlightens, energizes and inspires blessed paths and commitments which lead to healing and fraternity.
Our sacred origin
It must be added that many humans, at certain moments of grace, feel deeply that they are connected in a visceral way to their sacred origin. Sometimes this experience even sets them on the road: the beginnings of a life of faith! Mysteriously, hesitantly, they discover that there is God in them, they in God, God and them: each in his individuality. It can happen to them to have a presentiment, in the dark caverns of the spiritual unconscious, that these two partners are sometimes only one. Words or impulses come to them which they do not know whether they are from themselves or from the great presence.
If, despite winds and tides, despite errors and blockages, they walk in the joyful awareness of the link with the infinite, a personal path takes shape in front of them, opportunities arise, doors open. Their very life has become prayer, everything comes to them. Carl Gustav Jung called this “synchronicity”. For the Lord knows his child and knows much better than him what suits him. The latter then finds himself in a kind of permanent fulfillment and his prayer becomes thanksgiving and blessing. Paul, this great mystic of origins, writes: “Everything works for the good of those who love God” (Romans 8, 28).
But this man is not a desert island. He lets himself be overwhelmed by the pain, sometimes the distress of so many beings encountered or evoked. The prayer of petition then imposes itself on him. He enters into communion with the holy origin in what she most strongly desires: that man grow and reach his divine stature. This praying person is then the bearer of a Christic energy; mixing its action with that of the divine breath, it sends a force to those who need it. Healing and appeasement awaken there.
Benoit Billot is Benedictine, monk in the city at the priory of Saint-Benoît d’Étiolles, in Essonne. Adept of zazen, he founded the House of Tobias. He notably published Lights in the ordinary days and the fruitful energy of the sacraments (Mediaspaul).