How often we commit to take on silent prayer only to then struggle with the ‘how to’ aspect of prayer—what should I do in prayer? Fr. John Roothaan, reformer and Superior General of the Jesuits in the early 1800’s, gives us a simple step-by-step approach to meditating on scripture.
“Jesus never taught us how to deal with unanswered prayers because that was never meant to be our normal – it was never his experience, and it is not meant to be our experience, either.” (Jonna Schuster)
As we embark on Lent, we allow Jesus to prepare us for His Passion as He prepared the apostles for it. At the end of this season, we will be sorrowfully accompanying Him in his passion and death, leaving us empty so as to most fully experience the joy of His resurrection.
In the first book of Samuel, scripture tells us David spared Saul’s life. Choosing to do so was counter to all conventional human wisdom, counter to what might seem ‘right action’. Capacity to act with Divine wisdom can only come from God’s purifying love.
Restoration of Love within us, which is God Himself, must then involve restoration of love within our human relationships too.
Our broken nature drives us to use God as a means to our end goal. We convince ourselves that, because a thought came to us in prayer, it is from God. But God isn’t a means to an end. He is the Means and the End.