Restless for God
“Please bless Mom and Dad and everybody in the whole wide world.”
On those nights I remembered to pray as a kid, these words invariably came out of my mouth. Besides the Our Father and Hail Mary, and a few other recited prayers, I understood prayer simply as asking God to do good things in my life or in the lives of loved ones. If I had kept this attitude towards prayer into my adult life, I’m certain my life would look entirely different, and I would not be writing to you today. What I failed to grasp as a child is that prayer goes beyond simply asking God for good things.
During my years in college, I encountered Jesus in prayer. The demands I experienced as a college student often led towards a sense of restlessness. Often at the heart of all this restlessness was loneliness. Like many people, I could relate to Job in the first reading “I am filled with restlessness until dawn” (7:4b). What transformed my loneliness was an invitation to just be with God in prayer. I remember gathering with others every morning to pray and meditate in silence. And in that silence, I began to grow in relationship with God. My journey to understand prayer is rather young, but I never regret the choice I made as a young adult to step deeper into the waters of a life of prayer.
What is a life of prayer? Prayer is multi-faceted, but what rests at the heart of prayer is a relationship with God. What is the closest relationship you have in your life today? What characterizes that relationship? This is the kind of relationship God wants to have with you. When we enter a life of prayer, we are letting Jesus come and heal our restless hearts just as he came to those in need of healing in today’s Gospel.
Pope Francis has called 2024 a Year of Prayer “dedicated to rediscovering the great value and absolute need for prayer in personal life, in the life of the Church, and in the world” (Angelus Message, Sunday Jan. 21, 2024). There are many ways that we can pray in the tradition of the Church. Eucharistic Adoration, the rosary, daily meditations all help nourish the life of prayer. But also there are small community groups that can encourage and sustain the Christian prayer life. Each day is an opportunity to re-dedicate ourselves to a life of prayer because each day we recognize our need for God.
How are you going to enter and grow in your life of prayer?