Wednesday, August 29, 2007

6. TAKE THIS CUP AWAY IF POSSIBLE: Learning to Pray Beyond our Suffering


Stephen Rosetti writes about the sad fact that most priests “are simply not praying enough.” He recounts a dialogue he had with a priest who came to him for some form of help. To his question: “Do you pray,?” the immediate retort was, “I have no time to pray!” His answer to him was, “Then you don’t have time to be a priest.”

Recent dramatic changes in climactic patterns all over the world, among other things, have reminded us about how the whole web of natural life in the world is intricately and delicately interwoven and interdependent. A recent issue of Time magazine has for its cover the admonition: “Be worried. Be very worried!” On the cover picture we see a solitary and seemingly worried polar bear, marauding gingerly over literally thin and vanishing ice on what less, than a decade ago was solid slab of icy stability and comfort for thousands of them. Miles and miles of solid icy seas were the bears’ natural habitat. What they are and where they live, the conditions that surround them, including the air that they breathe, the ice that they walk on, and the seals that co-inhabit their shrinking and progressively disappearing world, are simply intertwined and interconnected. The simple lesson to learn among others is simply this. Bears thrive on ice and floes, and subzero temperatures that, in turn assure them their steady source of nutrition. Polar bears just aren’t made by the Creator to be sashaying in slush and melted snow. They are meant to walk on solid ice. They thrive on the cold. Take them out of that and they vanish from the face of the earth.

I would like to use this as a backdrop for my topic on this sixth reflection. Prayer is to priesthood and religious life, as ice and floes are to polar bears. One cannot thrive without the other. Remove one and the delicate balance is upset.

Fish is to water, as prayer is to priest. More than this, long-standing tradition traces a link between prayer and the priest’s ability to suffer meaningfully, suffer salvifically, and suffer evangelically, in the way Christ would have us do. In the words of Connor, “the taking up of the cross never has been, nor could it ever be, foreign to the priestly life. In fact, it is one of the essential ingredients.” Connors quotes Van Zeller, who wrote:

The priest may not be departmental in his relationship to Christ and to Christ’s members. He cannot choose to follow Christ in His preaching but not in His suffering, to worship His incarnation but neglect His act of redemption, to preach His transfiguration and not to practice His doctrine of the cross, to follow Him in His charity but not in His Gethsemani. The disciple must be as his master, the servant as his Lord. If Christ is the Divine Mediator, the priest is the divinely appointed human mediator.

The link between prayer and suffering is clear from Van Zeller’s words. The link between prayer and the priest who is called to be like unto Christ, by “patterning [his] life on the mystery of the Lord’s cross,” is equally clear.

I must tell you that at times, it gets a little embarrassing when, during my frequent times-off with lay people who are friends, with people I minister to, the request for prayer always comes up. But are we, really? How many times have we sounded hallow, promising people prayers and then knowing deep inside our hearts that all we could really manage over the past 5 or 6 years or even decades was a few minutes of hurried and mumbled prayers, usually the minimum prescribed for the Liturgy of the Hours? How many times have assurances of prayers come out of our lips but not out of our hearts?

We are simply not praying enough as priests and religious. In our sophisticated and relatively learned faith, we have lost a little of the simplicity of ordinary people who really made of their days holy days through a regular rhythm of prayer that would shame the most educated among us equipped with the most beautifully bound and gilded Book of Christian Prayer. I have my own little confession to make that still embarrasses me. Over the past 24 years as a priest, I have been propagating devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. My first convert was my own mother. Back when I was a first year high school student in Don Bosco in Mandaluyong, I was struck by the Salesians’ passionate plea for us Bosconians to cultivate a filial devotion to Mary Help of Christians. That first encounter with Mary I had never left my heart. I was hooked. But not for long. I passed on the devotion and the prayer leaflets to my mother. From 1968 onwards, till the day she died in 1990, no single day passed by without her praying the prescribed prayers for a devotee of Mary. She prayed to her much more than I ever did, more than I ever cared to.

Very recently, I received a call from a friend and former colleague in the Catholic Scouting Movement. Back in the day when I was the National Chaplain, in 1988, I introduced a Scout Executive to Mary Help of Christians. I have not met him nor talked with him after I left Mandaluyong in 1990. But the call sounded familiar. It all convicted me once again. Here comes one I introduced to Mary 18 years ago and now telling me he had indeed seen what miracles are, as Don Bosco, promised his followers.

The turf that I, as a priest, ought to be moving around in, the ambience that should have dictated my life of ministry – no doubt many and varied – has been occupied by people who mean what they say when they pray: “Lord, teach us to pray.”

It is significant that the request came from his disciples. Prayer is the disciples’ original turf. It is the ambience where priests, not polar bears, ought to be at home in. Rosetti, with a little tinge of humor, writes that there are several reasons why priests do not pray. The first sounds very familiar to us active religious. We are infected with the virus of activism. Performing, producing, delivering results are the usual gauge by which people measure our level of success and achievement. A priest who builds and constructs gets noticed much more than one who prays and spends time with the Lord. A second reason, Rosetti writes, comes from the very people who ask us to pray for them. One morning preparing for Mass, Fr. Rosetti was deep in prayer until one woman nudged him and said: “O Thank God, I saw you when you are not doing anything.” In this world of results and achievements, praying is a useless occupation. One is not doing anything if one is praying.

But what I think is the most disturbing reason not to pray is what many of us might not be willing to admit. We are afraid of what will surface, as Rosetti states. Some priests, according to him, are actually afraid of God.

Some of the most memorable utterances of Pope John Paul II may be important to recall at this point. In his best-seller “Crossing the Threshold of Hope,” he spoke about not being afraid. Harking back to the homily he delivered back in 1978 when he officially took office as Bishop of Rome, he hollered back then in his youthful, stentorian voice that remained etched in my memory: “Be not afraid.” He spoke with authority. He spoke with panache and passion. And one of his strong messages anent this was: “be not afraid of God.”

That struck me then as odd. Why would the Pope talk about something that ought never to happen. Why would anyone be afraid of God? It dawned on me that it is more common than we often imagine. Haven’t we heard anyone tell us how they wouldn’t want to hear homilies and attend Masses, simply because that would make them responsible for what they did? They preferred to stay in the state of ignorance for ignorance would serve always as a convenient excuse for them to go on doing what they do. Sometimes, it is all about being afraid of oneself instead of being afraid of God. Rosetti writes:

Some priests do not pray because they are afraid that the personal hurts and pains buried in their own hearts will surface. They have to face themselves; it is no accident that the spiritual masters have said the spiritual journey begins with self-knowledge. When the mess that lies within each of our hearts surfaces, it is painful to deal with. But facing ourselves is essential for a deep inner healing. The spiritual journey cannot begin in earnest without it.

I have a little theory in addition to what Rosetti says are the reasons why priests do not pray. I think it is some kind of a passive-aggressive revolt against God. I am of the opinion that priests who suffer and who find no meaning behind their suffering may nourish deep but unacknowledged anger and resentment against God. Deep in denial, they do not get in touch with their real feelings. The feelings, instead of being identified and named and accepted are buried. But what is buried does not disappear. They come out in some other form. And for a non-violent culture as we are, it often comes out as quiet passive-aggression. It comes out as the inability for, and the lack of interest and dedication to prayer.

The ecclesiastical landscape is filled with a lot of sore losers, of wounded foot soldiers, and cynical erstwhile platoon leaders. I know. I was once one of them, perhaps, I still am in some way. But there is something salutary about accepting that we have been beaten black and blue instead of pretending there’s nothing wrong, keep a stiff upper lip and grin and bear it. Suffering does come our way. It is part of the whole package of mysteries that came with the gift of life. We all know this in theory. But when suffering knocks too close to our doors, comes too close to where we are, we protest, like Job, like Jeremiah, like Jonah.

I have been a religious and a priest long enough to know that there is politics and political maneuverings in the Church that we love. There are cliques and unholy alliances. There, too, is naked ambition everywhere. There, too, is envy and greed. It is all part of the package of human sinful tendencies, what we used to call concupiscentia, back in the day. And the bad news connected to all this, is that it all causes suffering. When the political machinery of an ambitious cleric begins to churn, it can ride rough-shod on anyone in its path, and pity the one who happens to stand in the way. On not a few occasions, I was right there on the path of such a machine. I stood bravely and proud. But I lost despite my gallantry and misplaced pride. It took a big toll on my sense of trust, on my sense of attachment to mother Church. I became on overnight pariah, believing but not belonging; being present while not being all there; visible but hardly audible. I was in pain. I was in protest. And I was not praying.

At this point, I would find it salutary to be reminded of what Connors writes about us priests who may be deep in pain and other forms of suffering:

Each priest has the consolation of knowing that his share in Christ’s sufferings is not unique to this particular vocation; every soul in the world who has taken the following of Christ seriously has embraced the cross, and with all of them the priest enjoys a great solidarity. If one may speak of the vocation of suffering being accepted in life situations in any order of priority, the priesthood would be high on the list, if not first; it would be extremely difficult for a man to speak to people about faith if he has never struggled with doubt; to speak to them about suffering if he has not experienced his own darkness. In fact, it is entirely possible that a man who has been given great responsibility will bear a cross of similar proportion.

Again, Connors quotes Van Zeller, who speaks of our Christian priesthood as distinct from the OT priesthood in the sense that offerer and sacrifice are found in the one and the same personhood of the priest himself:

The man who celebrates Mass is, mystically and figuratively but nonetheless significantly, on the paten of the Suspice and in the chalice at the Offerimus. It would be a mistake to think of our Mass and our position in it as separated into parts: I, the man, as the subject; the sacred species, the material element, as the object; God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, as the end. But because Christ is at once priest, victim, and end of His own sacrifice, so we can think of ourselves, made one with Christ in His sacrificial act, as directed towards the same Father in the same redemptive act.

This reflection is for all of us who are wounded in some way. I ask you in the name of the late Pope John Paul II, never to be afraid of man, never to be afraid of the Church, and never to be afraid of God. At great moments like our ordination day, our 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th, and 25th anniversaries, when we are in control, when we are in the saddle, when we are put atop pedestals for reasons deserved or undeserved, life seems rosy and most promising. The world seems like an oyster for us. The future always looks bright. But it is when suffering that is, at least to our mind, undeserved comes our way, when through the same mysterium iniquitatis that we were speaking of, someone rides rough shod over our sense of self, our personal dignity, all the values we were holding onto for decades, and we feel we are left holding an empty bag of failed friendships, broken dreams, and broken promises, the late Holy Father’s stentorian voice – the voice of the true and good Shepherd, beckons us never to be afraid, never to be afraid, and to go on learning to pray beyond our sufferings. I end with a famous quote from one who has seen more than just life, but also a whole of undeserved suffering, St. Teresa of Avila:

Nada te turbe
Nada te espante.
Todo se pasa.
Dios no se muda.


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