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20

  Prayer is surrender to God. It is letting God be God. It is accepting my 'creaturehood'.  It is humble exploration of the mystery. Prayer breaks through the barrier of familiarity. We are used to the word ‘God’. We say the word and think we know the reality it stands for. But we cannot know God as we might know some object or creature. God is not just one other creature of the universe. God is not another, nor even the other, he is simply Other. God is the origin, ground and source of all being. This concept is difficult for us. It is so difficult that we try to cope by making God small and manageable. This has always been a temptation for us, to make God in our own image and likeness. Why did God forbid the making of idols? Did he fear competition? No. Maybe it was because if we make images, we can begin to imagine that we know what God is like. This might not seem to be such a great danger in these more sophisticated times. We are not likely to make images of wood or stone. But there is a more subtle danger, that of making conceptual idols, of trying to tie God down to a definition, to a dogma. Jesus came to reveal the true God. He came to set us free from idolatry and fear. But also we can say he came to set God free. He came to set God free from our narrow human definitions. The hardest word Jesus spoke to the Pharisees was to accuse them of not knowing God. They were the official religious teachers, but Jesus said to them, ‘My glory is conferred by the Father, by the one of whom you say, "He is our God", although you do not know him.’ (John 8:54-55).

  When we speak of our faith as growing in a personal relationship with God, we are not thinking of growing in understanding him more clearly. It would be childish to expect this. We should rather expect the opposite, that we will become more and more aware of how little we know. The sense of wonder and mystery should grow. We should find ourselves agreeing with the saints who said, ‘What we know about God is more untrue than true.’ We will begin to understand how St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the most brilliant theologians, at the end of his days could dismiss all his brilliant writings as ‘mere straw’.

  In the Old Testament the great sign of God’s presence was the Cloud. When the Cloud descended and filled the Tent of the Tabernacle, all prostrated in worship, knowing God was present. In later times the mystics used the Cloud as an image of our inability to understand God. It suggested darkness and absence of understanding. This is paradox. The Cloud is simultaneously the image for the presence and the absence. Again the mystics say, ‘He who says, does not know; he who knows, does not say.’ We have to go beyond words, concepts and definitions. The author of The Cloud of Unknowing speaks of a different kind of ‘knowing’, namely by loving. ‘By love he may be touched and embraced, by thought never.’ St. John says ‘Anyone who fails to love can never have known God’ (1 John 4:8).

  Is all this talk of God’s otherness not frightening and discouraging for someone who wants to pray? If we reflect, I think we shall see the opposite is closer to the truth. It is a liberating experience to accept this otherness of God. It opens us to reality, to transcendence, to surprise and to the mystery, not only of God, but of our own being. Time and again Scripture reminds us of this truth. The Psalmist, reflecting on the wonder of God’s love, shielding and protecting him no matter where he goes, exclaims:

'Such knowledge is beyond my understanding,
a height to which my mind cannot attain.'
Psalm 139:6

   In the book of Ecclesiasticus we read:

'Exalt the Lord in your praises
as high as you may – still he surpasses you.
Exert all your strength when you exalt him,
do not grow tired – you will never come to the end.
Who has ever seen him to give a description?
Who can glorify him as he deserves?
Many mysteries remain even greater than these,
for we have seen only a few of his works.'
Ecclesiasticus 43:30:36

  Paul, writing to the Ephesians, prays they have strength to grasp the breath and the length, the height and the depth of the love of Christ, and ends with the paradox, praying that they may know ‘the love of Christ which is beyond all knowledge’ (Ephesians 3:19)

  To the Romans he writes: ‘How rich are the depths of God – how deep his wisdom and knowledge – and how impossible to penetrate his motives or understand his methods! Who could ever know the mind of the Lord? All that exists comes from him; all is by him and for him.’ (Romans 11:33-36)

  More and more, if I persevere in prayer, I will discover my own smallness and nothingness. But again paradox. In this context of prayer, such discovery will not lead to depression or self-hatred but to a kind of liberation. I will be set free from having to try and impress God and secure his favours. God is all. All is gift. This awareness must be close to that poverty of spirit which Jesus put first on the list of the beatitudes and which opens the door to God’s power. Jesus lived in that spirit as Mary his mother did. They lived and moved in this mystery. God is all; we are nothing, but he looks upon us in our lowliness and will do great things through us. Someone has said, ‘Poverty of spirit is that place where heaven and earth meet.’

  Let us think of other human experiences when we are overwhelmed by something much greater than ourselves, when we become painfully aware of our smallness and weakness. I am thinking of the great eruptions of the powers of nature, like a mighty storm where great electric spears of lightning strike the earth not far away and you know they could next strike where you stand. What are your feelings then? Or imagine you are at sea in a small boat and a hurricane blows up across your path. Or think of yourself at the epicentre of an earthquake, or in Hiroshima on the day the bomb fell. At such times we are totally powerless; we are reduced to nothing. In the very worst sense we are annihilated even before we physically vanish, we are reduced to nothing as persons.

  But in the awareness of the infinite, transcendent God, who is beyond our comprehension and who is the source of all power, this experience of a sense of annihilation does not happen. The opposite happens. In this encounter we do not lose ourselves but, wonderful to relate, we find ourselves. Because this God reveals himself as love, as accepting love, we find ourselves embraced and held close. He is the God who knows me through and through. (Psalm 139); the One who has always known me (Jeremiah 1:5) and chosen me in love (Ephesians 1:4). We can still feel the sense of total helplessness but, simultaneously, we feel totally safe. True love does not diminish us or destroy us. It builds us up and recreates us. To be in prayer is to be in the presence of this love. We cannot comprehend the mystery or grasp it or define it. We can only surrender to it and abide in that love. We allow the mystery to possess us and we lose ourselves in it. When we let go in surrender, we may rediscover the truth of the Lord’s word, ‘Anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it’ (Matthew 16:25).

  And this finding is meant to be a present experience. God does not ask us to wait till after death to find our life, to discover our true selves. If we lose ourselves in prayer, we will be touched even now by the mystery of God and what we mean to him. In that prayer we will be led by the Spirit to discover not only the beauty and wonder of our own selves but also the beauty and wonder of every other person and indeed the beauty and goodness of all creation. We will become aware that we and all other people and the whole of creation share a common origin in the mystery of God who is love and beauty. We will begin to understand that we are not strangers to each other. We are family. We will be led by the Spirit to pray with the Psalmist, ‘For all these mysteries I thank you; for the wonder of myself, for the wonder of your works’ (Psalm 139:14). The Spirit will help us to be more ready to notice the goodness in each other and to rejoice in it. Often after a funeral service I have heard people say, ‘It’s a pity we wait until people are dead to notice and give thanks for their beauty and goodness.’ How true!

  We finish with a parable. In a certain city, at a busy street crossing, there stood a beggar. Day after day he stood there with his begging bowl held our for alms. He lived on the small offerings dropped daily into his bowl. He lived in poverty and died destitute. When the bits and pieces he left behind were being gathered up for disposal, a city official noticed that the begging bowl had unusual features. He brought it to a friend interested in curios and antiques. The bowl was examined and discovered to be a precious antique of immense value! Are we not like beggars seeking daily scraps of praise and recognition from passers-by, while all the time we are the owners of a precious treasure given to us by that God who has shared with us the mystery of his own being?

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