Fr. Simon’s Letter - October 23, 2022

The Gospel of this weekend and last are all about prayer. Last week we were  encouraged to persist in prayer, and this week we are offered guidance on how to pray. In Luke's Gospel, Jesus prays a lot. More so than any of the other Gospels, Luke’s is the Gospel of prayer. In his Gospel, there are more descriptions of Jesus in prayer than in all the other Gospels combined. Luke gives us glimpses of Jesus praying in virtually every kind of situation. He prays when joyful and when he is in agony. He prays with others around him, and when he is alone at night, withdrawn from all human contact. He prays high on a mountain, in a sacred place, and he prays on the level plane, where ordinary life takes place.

And the lesson isn't lost on his disciples. They sense that Jesus draws his real depth and power from his prayer. They know that what makes him so unique, unlike any other religious figure, is that he is linked to a power outside of this world at some deep place. They want this for themselves, so they approach Jesus and ask him: "Lord, teach us to pray!"

In our more reflective moments, we sense the importance of prayer, yet, we struggle to pray. Sustained, deep prayer doesn't come easily for us. Why? First of all, we struggle to make time for prayer. Too often, we think that prayer doesn't accomplish anything practical for us, it's a waste of time in tending to the pressures and tasks of daily life, so we hesitate to go there. Coupled with this, we find it hard to trust that prayer actually works and brings about something tangible in our lives. Beyond that, we struggle to concentrate when we try to pray. Once we do settle in to pray, we soon feel overwhelmed by daydreams, unfinished conversations, half- forgotten melodies, heartaches, agendas, and the impending tasks that face us as soon as we get up from our place of prayer. Finally, we struggle to pray because we don't know how to pray. We might be familiar with various forms of prayer, from devotional prayers to different kinds of meditation. Still, we generally lack the confidence to believe that our particular way of praying, with all its distractions and missteps, is prayer in the deep sense.

In her autobiography, The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day tells of a challenging time in her life. After a long period of atheism, she had just converted to Christianity and then given birth to her daughter. During her season of atheism, she had fallen in love with a man who had fathered her child; and she and this man, atheists disillusioned with mainstream society, had made a pact never to marry, as a statement against the conventions of society.

But her conversion to Christianity had turned that world upside down. The father of her child had given her an ultimatum; if she had their child baptized, he would end their relationship. Dorothy chose to baptize the child but paid a heavy price. She deeply loved this man and suffered greatly at their breakup. Moreover, given that her conversion took her out of all her former circles, it left her with more than a missing soul mate. It left her without a job, without support for her child, and without her former purpose in life. She felt painfully alone and lost.

And this drove her to her knees, literally. One day she took a train to Washington, D.C., from New York and spent the day praying at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

And, as she shares in her autobiography, her prayer that day was shamelessly direct, humble, and straightforward. Essentially she told God, again and again, that she was lost, that she needed a clear direction for her life, and that she needed that direction now, not in some distant future. And, like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, she prayed that prayer over and over again.

She took a train home that evening, and as she walked up to her apartment, a man, Peter Maurin, was sitting on the steps. He invited her to start the Catholic Worker Movement; the rest is history.
 

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On a personal note, I want to thank all of you who have taken the time to be part of my review process. Soon I will meet with the concerned persons to go through the results and discuss plans to grow and improve. THANK YOU! I ask for your continued prayers for me and all other priests going through this process.

Blessings!!