Upcoming Program for Women

Women's Day of Reflection:  "In the Company of Faithful Women"

Please join me at a women's day of reflection sponsored by the West Shore Deanery on Sat., Sep. 12th at St. John Vianney Church in West Haven, CT.  I will give a talk on the life and spirituality of Servant of God Catherine Doherty and will be sharing some of her beautiful ideas on prayer.  Regina Cram of the Catholic Transcript will also speak.  The day will also include Mass, breakfast, time for prayer, opportunity for Reconciliation, recitation of the rosary, and lunch.  Please click here for a flyer with event details and registration information.

A Definition of Prayer

I like to begin classes on Prayer by asking participants:  “What is prayer?”  I don’t do this to trick them into saying the wrong thing or because I’m fishing for a particular answer.  I do it because I want to hear – and I want them to hear – the variety and the depth of one another's answers.  I have never heard a wrong answer to this question, but I have heard some quite beautiful ones.  They are all based on the genuine experience and the spiritual personalities of the "pray-ers" giving the answers.

One of my favorite “definitions” of prayer was written by Servant of God Catherine Doherty in her typical down-to-earth and straight-to-the-heart style.  It captures both the stillness and the movement of prayer, the way prayer can be both vibrant conversation and quiet being.  As Catherine knew very well, sometimes prayer is just being in a meaningful moment with the One you love.  It is a meeting of two loves.

“How can you define prayer, except by saying that it is love? It is love expressed in speech, and love expressed in silence. To put it another way, prayer is the meeting of two loves: the love of God and our love. That’s all there is to prayer.”

— Catherine Doherty, "Soul of my Soul: Reflections from a Life of Prayer"

This is a photo of Catherine in her nursing uniform.  Catherine served as an army nurse on the front lines during the first World War.

The First Follower

Today I watched a TED talk entitled “How to Start a Movement.”  It was thought-provoking and funny.  The speaker’s main point was that it takes guts to be a leader, but it might take even more guts to be the leader’s first follower.  Movements, he said, are started when some brave person decides to follow a “lone nut.”  The first follower is the one who makes a solitary evaluation and takes a massive personal risk.  But this follower is the one that makes it safer and easier for another person to follow, and then another and another.  The first follower is the hinge of the movement.

The video shown by the speaker to illustrate this point is hilarious and has nothing to do with “the Christian movement.”  And I certainly wouldn’t refer to Jesus Christ as a “lone nut” (though he’s been called worse).  But I was struck by the importance of the “first follower.”  It made me think of you.

We might identify Jesus’ “first follower” as Mary or one of the disciples.  But somewhere and at some time, you will need to be this “first follower.”  Whether in your home, or in a friendship, or in your workplace or in some other public arena, you will be the one who stands by Christ when he looks like a “lone nut.”  You will be the one who has to go over and look nutty with him!  You will make an evaluation and take a risk.  You might look like a fool.  But you will be the hinge that starts a movement. 

"Have the courage to follow and show others how to follow."

Is Petitionary Prayer Childish?

A very dear friend of mine – and one much older and wiser than myself – once told me that she had been praying to God to help her find a used car.  She had something very particular in mind, and she had found exactly the right thing, except that it cost about $500 too much.  “But that’s my fault,” she said.  “I forgot to tell God my budget.  In prayer, you have to be very specific.”  At the time, I thought she was being silly and simplistic.  But in truth, Maria was light years ahead of me in prayer.  Maria is what you might call a friend of God.  I should be sitting at her feet, saying as the disciples did to Jesus, “Teach me to pray.”

Many of us feel that it is naïve and unsophisticated to ask God for specific things.  He already knows what we want, so why waste the time and mental energy?  Isn’t our time better spent in adoration or contemplation?  And if we’re really being honest, aren’t we afraid that we will doubt or resent God if we ask for “specifics” and then don’t get them?  Petitionary prayer, it seems, can lead us into an intellectual quagmire of questions, objections and spiritual pitfalls.

That’s why Maria and those like her have so much to teach me.  As much as I may have wondered at Maria’s “brand” of faith, I deeply admired her.  The simplicity of her prayer was not born of simplicity of mind.  Maria was clever, uncommonly clever.  Rather, the simplicity of Maria’s prayer came from the simplicity of her heart, a heart that was focused like a laser on one thing:  God’s magnificent providence.  The way Maria saw things, God was both utterly transcendent and entirely involved in her life.  He was the One Seated on the Throne and the one who was right beside her.  He was the One in whom we live and move and have our being, and he was the one who would help her purchase just the right used car. 

Maria did not waste her time with intellectual questions about petitionary prayer.  Instead, she followed the command of Christ and asked God for every little thing (Mt. 7:7-11).  And how did God respond to Maria?  Not by answering each prayer with a miracle (though he did do amazing things for her!).  But he responded by being her lifelong companion, her constant friend.  He responded by giving her a peace that was the natural reward for her trust. 

When I looked into Maria’s eyes, I saw an ocean of calm and a confidence that took me aback.  It was prayer that did this.  Childlike?  Perhaps.  And to such as these belongs the Kingdom of God.

I Believe in Dinosaurs

Indulge me for a moment in a strange memory.  I was standing in the Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., in the dinosaur exhibit, in front of one of those huge reconstructed dinosaur skeletons (a brontosaurus, I think).  I looked at it for awhile, not really thinking much about it one way or another.  Then I looked down and saw a replica of a baby dinosaur, curled up at the big dinosaur’s feet.  It was very small and sleeping, and it was very close to where I was standing.  Something about the replica held my gaze and for several long moments – I was totally transfixed, totally focused on the baby brontosaurus. 

Suddenly I had a strange and profound realization:  Dinosaurs actually existed! 

But I knew that already! 

Didn’t I?

I don’t know what amazed me more – my newfound belief in dinosaurs or the discovery that I had apparently not really believed in dinosaurs for my whole life!  Like everyone else, I had learned about dinosaurs since childhood.  I never got especially excited about them, but I certainly had no reason to doubt their existence.  And yet in that moment at the museum, I realized that I had never really allowed myself to believe – to imagine, to grasp, to fall into – a reality where these fantastic creatures actually lived and breathed and mated and ate each other, long before human beings existed – in my world – in Texas for goodness’ sakes!  Looking at that baby dino, I suddenly “got it” – the truth broke in, and I imagined and believed in a world of dinosaurs, a time before humans, something incredible but true.

This experience in the museum happened to me as an adult.  And when I realized that I hadn’t actually believed in dinosaurs even though I thought I did, I wondered about all the other things I think I believe.  I wondered about God and Jesus, forgiveness and Eucharist.  I wondered about heaven and hell, death and forever.  I wondered about the little doubts that nag at me sometimes and the big things I take for granted.  I realized there are things I never really let myself imagine and things I want to imagine but can’t. 

It seems that part of being human is not fully knowing our own minds.  I thought I believed in dinosaurs, but in reality, I was only coming to believe in them.  And so it is with the truths of our faith.  Do we believe in them?  Yes we do.  And we don’t.  And we might.  And we will. 

For now, we can add to our daily prayer the honest words of the father of a convulsing boy, who pleaded with Jesus:  “I believe!  Help my unbelief!” (Mk. 9:24)