Learning to Pray: A Guide for Everyone by James Martin

Author:James Martin [Martin, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: religion, Catholicism
ISBN: 9780062643230
Google: 1SrhDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0062643231
Publisher: HarperOne
Published: 2021-02-02T05:00:00+00:00

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Not long ago, I moved into a new Jesuit community. The new community was a renovated former convent filled with recently purchased furniture. Our efficient Jesuit superior had arranged it so that, on the day we moved in, almost everything was in place. Despite those blessings, I found myself focused on a few small problems, which were simply part of getting used to a new place. But I couldn’t get them out of my mind. For some reason, I was focused on the negative, unable to appreciate the new house.

The next day I prayed for the first time in our house chapel, a narrow, stark, elegant space with wide wooden benches lining both sides, high windows that let in the light from the street outside, and a polished concrete floor. The reading from the Daily Gospel was the one mentioned earlier: Jesus feeding the multitudes with the loaves and fishes. I was drawn to meditate on the reading, but also felt that I should bring to prayer my frustrations over the one or two small problems.

Then a strange image came to my mind. In my imagination I saw a cloth spread out on the ground covered with an assortment of foods, a kind of muslin cloth with plates and dishes full of food, a veritable feast set out in front of me. It came to me that I was being given in this new house a smorgasbord of wonderful things: a new clean space, a friendly community, a comfortable room, a good location, and, more to the point, something that many people in the world don’t have: a house. It seemed a reminder not to focus simply on the parts of the smorgasbord that I didn’t like, but rather to see the banquet that God was offering me.

Images can come to us in prayer unbidden. Like memories, they are ways that God consoles us. The image of a mentor, teacher, friend, child or grandchild, nephew or niece can delight us. A remembered glimpse of a physical place—the ocean last summer, a field we like, a favorite running path—brings us peace. The face of Jesus, a saint, or a holy person we knew may pop into our mind, or images that surprise us with their freshness.

A friend suffering from terminal cancer recently visited the French shrine of Lourdes. There Catholics believe that the Virgin Mary appeared to a young girl named Bernadette Soubirous in a series of apparitions beginning in 1858. You may be skeptical about “private revelations,” but the church has approved pilgrimages there and has also authenticated dozens of miracles that have occurred there—using the careful records of physicians. In any event, even if you don’t believe in the apparitions (I do, and have visited Lourdes many times), you can still appreciate it as a holy place where the faithful come to pray.

Carlos, who has since died, was there for an eight-day pilgrimage, sponsored by a Catholic charitable organization called the Order of Malta, which brings sick and suffering men, women, and children there to pray for healing, physical and otherwise.

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