Prayer opens up many doors to our inner perception. When we seek to grow in love of God and do not just pray to get something from God, the good fruit can at times have a bitter taste to it. Yet we must experience the bitter along with the sweet on our inner journey towards ‘home’, that place where we are at peace because we have found our hearts deepest longing.
We are often told about how good we should be, or perfect, and how anger and lust and fear should be fought and or even ignored. When this is taken in and we try to live this way we can manufacture a number of problems with this strategy.
Prayer is not about repression or pretending to be what we are not. If we experience anger then it needs to be felt and expressed in our prayer before God. Lust, sloth, gluttony as well as our doubts, these need to be held before the Infinite light of God’s love. It is already seen, prayer just allows us to be aware of our need for healing and yes at times forgiveness for sin. To admit that we are sinners is important for it allows us to come to the understanding that we are called to choose more consciously that which is life giving and to let go of all that is within us that leads to deeper suffering and inner disintegration. We are not called to demonize our inner lives, but to allow the healing fire of the Holy Spirit to heal us at increasingly deeper levels. The Spirit of the living God wounds us over and over again in order to bring us deeper into his healing love. There is no easy way to do this, because we need to be open to the road that the Lord wishes us to walk.
In the world around us, as well as within our own souls, we experience the deepening pain that comes when we seek only to do our own will. To live out of our own desires, often at the expense of others, for in order to take, someone has to lose. The cross that we create for ourselves, without the love and grace of God, is often heavier and more painful than the what we need to carry when we do God’s will, which is only there to heal and to bring us ‘home’.
Our deepest longing is for ‘The Relationship”, this desire cannot be fulfilled by other relationships but they can be pointers for all of us. No human relationship, no matter how deep the love is between two human beings can quench the desire for a love and union that is complete; we are too small to be able to do that for each other. God is intimately involved in all of our lives, many do not know this, or experience it because they limit themselves by seeking only that which in the end leads to deeper frustration and feelings of alienation from self and others. The absurdity of life is experienced when we forget that our deepest longing can be fulfilled, yet only in the Infinite.
Many feel this more acutely than others. Repression can be so complete that only those around the represser can see what is going on, yet the lack of self knowledge can prevent this from happening. Our addictions are a form of self medication, a temporary relief from the pain of simple existence, of feeling our aloneness from others. Addictions deal with immediate pain, which keeps us from growing and choosing. It is something that is there for us to escape into. As we age and mature, these addictions are taken from us when we are ready to let go.
Br. Mark Dohle, OCSO
Holy Spirit Monastery
