Genesis 18:20-32 Colossians 2:12-14 Luke 11:1-13
First as a deacon and now as a priest, I have always found the various secret prayers prescribed by the rubrics very consoling – the obligatory ones, which should be said during the liturgy, as well as some of those no longer strictly required. For example, as you prepare the chalice on the altar at the Offertory, you are meant to say: “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity”. A drop of water goes in, and our common humanity dissolves in what will soon become the Blood of Christ, the very life of the second Person of the Trinity. Then after the Eucharist, when purifying the vessels, you should say: “What has passed our lips as food, O Lord, may we possess in purity of heart, that what has been given to us in time may be our healing for eternity”, remedium sempiternum, an everlasting remedy. What a beautiful phrase! It suggests that immortality is the norm, that eternity is home.
These prayers are consoling precisely because they are prayers. They force you to address God in a certain way, ask Him for certain favours. “A share in the divinity of Christ”, that's too much, you may be tempted to think. I just want to scrape through to heaven, just as I am now, thank you very much. I quite like myself the way I am. No. A share of divinity, that's what you are getting in the Eucharist. But then maybe, just like me, you are pulled the other way most of the time. I can't do this, I say to myself, I never arrive at the right dispositions, my thoughts are evil, I am not pure, I've got no devotion, there is no prayer in me, I'm a fraud as a priest and as a monk. Who am I to give voice to Christ's own words? Who am I to invoke the Holy Spirit, repeat the words of consecration and expect (presume!) that something happens? That's not real humility either, of course. In fact both attitudes are two sides of the same coin. But the Church in her wisdom simply tells me to pray for certain things and that very fact brings clarity and consolation. On one hand, it means that I am expected to posses them but, on the other, not of my own accord, not as acquired by my own effort.
For weeks after my priestly ordination I used to say the old vesting prayers in the sacristy before Mass. I no longer do that, but the symbolism of each action and each garment stuck with me, and now it's just there when I prepare myself. As I wash my hands on the way to church, I pray “give virtue to my hands”. In the sacristy, I put my hood up and I know that this is “the helmet of salvation”. The symbolism behind the alb is quite obvious, “dealba me, Domine, et munda cor meum”, whitewash me, and cleanse my heart in the blood of the Lamb. Then I tie “the cincture of purity” around your waist and place “the stole of immortality” around my neck. Finally, on top of everything goes the chasuble, which is the sweet yoke and light burden of charity, of Christ's love for his Church. All that's left of me is my head sticking out. But St Paul says “the head of every man is Christ” (1 Cor 11:3), so nothing really. And then during the liturgy I'm lending my voice to the Church, to the Holy Spirit, and to Jesus himself. When the bell goes and Mass finally begins, I know that I can just about survive it, because Christ's power is in my hands, I'm carrying his salvation on my back, I am covered with his innocence, made chaste with his purity, immortal by his divinity, loving towards all those in attendance with his own love. In other words, when I come out all vested, it's not me at all that's coming out. I can preside at Mass and say things like “this is my body which will be given up for you”, things which would otherwise seem so presumptuous that I'd expect an immediate lightening strike. I can do that, because I'm all covered, as they say.
What does it have to do with today's Gospel though? All this is a long way of saying that I am in full sympathy with the disciples' plea: “Lord, teach us how to pray” (Luke 11:1). There is nothing better in this life than good prayer, nothing clarifies things better than knowing how to pray, there is no higher philosophy, no higher theology. We often focus on the sentiments evoked by prayers, on their content, on their beauty perhaps. But there is something far more fundamental at stake: every set of words addressed to God puts us in a certain relationship with Him, it implies a place in the cosmic order of things from which it is uttered. When you make certain words your own and address them to God, this is what happens, you position yourself in vis-à-vis God accordingly, either as a contrite sinner or a self-satisfied Pharisee, either as “a worm and not a man” or as if you were God's equal. It's very important to get it right.
And Jesus said to his disciples, and he is saying to us today, “When you pray, say: Father” (Luke 11:2)! This is astounding, this is a revolution. Our Father is something infinitely greater than just a prayer. By telling us to call God “father” Jesus lets us stand where he alone has a right to stand, and he lets us speak to God from there, from the position of the Only-begotten Son of God. When I say “father” to God and really mean it, I pretend to be His child, as it were, and I expect God to see me as one. Yet the Creator God cannot be called my father, except maybe by way of a very remote analogy. God created me and everything else out of nothing. He is the fullness of being and I am nothing. By nature I am more closely related to a monkey than I am to God. The proper relationship here is that between an author, an artist or a craftsman and his or her work, not that between a parent and a child. As St Paul says in Romans: “But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is moulded say to its moulder, why have you made me like this” (Romans 9:20)? We are God's adopted children purely because His Only-begotten Son became man and then gave up his rightful place, abdicated it in our favour.
That also explains another striking feature of today's Gospel, which comes in the final verse: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good things to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him”. Jesus has just told us to ask for the daily bread, for the forgiveness of sins, for anything, even for a fish or for an egg perhaps – how did the Holy Spirit come into it, all of a sudden? What does the Holy Spirit have to do with our petty requests made in prayer? Nothing. But by letting us speak from where he alone has the right to stand, Jesus made our petty requests his own, he placed them between the Father and himself, and that's the domain of the Holy Spirit, as it were, that's where the Holy Spirit rules. When we pray through, with and in Jesus Christ, we partake of the life of the Holy Trinity, and God's own life flows through us. This is no small matter!
DSP