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by P. Giuseppe Oddone*
2024
was conceived, desired and proclaimed by Pope Francis, Sunday 21 January 2024,
as the year of prayer, so that believers can prepare themselves with a fervent
interior attitude for the event of grace of the Jubilee of 2025.
To
achieve this result, to delve deeper into the various dimensions of the act of
praying, the Dicastery for Evangelization is preparing a series of agile aids
edited by internationally renowned authors. These texts aim to make us enter
the atmosphere of prayer, which is the breath of our soul, a lifeline for those
who are about to be shipwrecked, an immense treasure of riches for those who
are poor, a medicine for those who are sick, a necessary way for our
sanctification.
There
are eight: 1. Pray today. A challenge to overcome; 2. Pray with the Psalms; 3.
The prayer of Jesus; 4. Journey into God. Praying with saints and sinners; 5.
The parables of prayer; 6. The Church in prayer; 7. The prayer of Mary and the
saints; 8. The prayer that Jesus taught us: “Our Father”.
At
the moment only the first subsidy has been released, signed by Cardinal Angelo
Comastri.
The
others will be available in the following months.
Pray
today. A challenge to win
The
preface of Pope Francis Praying today begins with a splendid and profound
preface by Pope Francis himself, dated Vatican City 20 September 2023: “Prayer
is the breath of faith, it is its most specific expression. Like a cry that
comes from the heart of those who believe and entrust themselves to God. It is
not easy to find words to express this mystery. How many definitions of prayer
can we collect from saints and spiritual masters, as well as from the
reflections of theologians! However, prayer "can always and only be
described in the simplicity of those who live it", almost as if to say
that each of us has our own form of prayer, unique and unrepeatable, just as
every person is before God. Every day – warns Pope Francis – we must ask Jesus
who prays to the Father: “Lord, teach us to pray! (Lk 11,1) and “we are invited
to become more humble and to leave room for the prayer that flows from the Holy
Spirit. It is He who knows how to put the right words in our hearts and on our
lips to be heard by the Father. Prayer in the Holy Spirit is what unites us
with Jesus and allows us to adhere to the will of the Father. The Spirit is the
internal Master who indicates the path to follow...". In the Spirit our
prayer also becomes a prayer of intercession for the great suffering of the
contemporary world marked by atrocious wars, by ecological, economic and social
crises, by the culture of indifference and waste. At the same time we ask that
"the Kingdom of God extends on earth and the Gospel reaches every person
who asks for love and forgiveness".
Introduction…
worth reading
Cardinal
Comastri believes it is essential that the introduction be read to understand
the value and nature of prayer. He refers to the story of a singular experience
by the Russian writer Alekxandr Solženycin , who in 1962, in the climate of
de-Stalinization, published his first novel: A Day of Ivan Denisovič . A day
spent in the concentration camp by Ivan is narrated, a "beautiful, almost
happy day", because thanks to a fellow prisoner, the young Aljoska , who
was sentenced to 25 years in the concentration camp for testifying to his
Christian faith, he discovers the value of prayer. Ivan has his bed right above
Alyoska 's and listens to him while before sleeping in the dim light of the
cold shack he reads the New Testament and prays. One evening Ivan, in whom we
can recognize the author of the novel himself, hears Alyoska ask him :
"Your soul also wants to address a prayer to God. Why don't you do
it?". Ivan then explains why he is unable to pray: according to him the
prayer does not reach its destination or is rejected, it does not move
mountains, it does not obtain an extra bowl of slop, it does not reduce the
sentence at all. But Aljoska , who, thanks to his faith, lives even his
imprisonment with serenity, does not give in to his friend's negative considerations,
he almost feels horror at them, and forcefully proclaims a phrase that enters
his friend's mind: "We must pray for the spirit, so that the Lord may
remove the foam of wickedness from our hearts." Malice, hatred, pride are
the foam, the leprosy, the true evil of our soul; we want to get rid of it, but
we cannot with our own strength without God's help.
We
need to turn to Jesus so that he can touch us with his hand and heal us:
"Lord, remove the foam of wickedness from our hearts!". The following
chapters The four chapters that follow underline with rich exemplification the
need for prayer, the "lever that lifts the world" (St. Therese of
Lisieux), a true revolution that introduces "a new spirit into the usual
forms" (David Maria Turoldo ), inexhaustible and necessary source of
charity and love for the poor (St. Teresa of Calcutta), magnet that attracts to
God and converts (Domenico Giuliotti). We are therefore exhorted to pray by
immersing ourselves in the Word of God, looking to Abraham, to Moses, but above
all to Jesus. The Psalms are a great help and a model for prayer: they present
man as small and fragile, but capable of dialogue with God, to know him and
love him. Without prayer we cannot answer the unavoidable questions of our
lives: who are we?
Where
do we come from? Where do we go?
This
is demonstrated by some testimonies and statements by the philosopher Friedrich
Nietzche , by Indro Montanelli, by Pierpaolo Pasolini, who experienced and
described the emptiness of the modern world which has distanced itself from
God. Humble Christian prayer, on the other hand, gives us light to know God and
ourselves, good and evil and saves us (Blaise Pascal), immerses us in the
merciful love of the Father (Parable of the Prodigal Son). Finally, two saints
are presented, imbued with prayer, who have left a profound mark on the Church
and society: Saint Francis of Assisi and Holy Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Reflections on Pope Francis' introduction Pope Francis states that prayer is
studied and theorized by saints, spiritual masters and theologians. In fact, many
forms and many degrees of prayer are described by them. In a schematic and
summary way we start from the vocal prayer which, under the stimulus of divine
grace, flourishes on our lips both personally and in liturgical assemblies; we
reach meditation, reflection on the mysteries of faith, to deepen them, love
them and practice them. Then there is an affective prayer that arises
spontaneously, in which the reasons of the heart prevail over the reflection of
the mind; still a contemplative prayer immersed in adoration, immersed in the
mysteries of God, typical of all holy souls. It is a gift of the Spirit. It
then develops in interior meditation, in which the Spirit lights up a more
vivid perception of the presence of God and shines and expands the spaces of
the soul; a prayer of quiet follows, of contemplative rest accompanied by the
intimate feeling of divine love in our intellect, in the will, in the memory.
Guided by the Spirit, one can also reach higher degrees of prayer in the
transforming union with the Beloved, in which one burns incessantly like a
living flame of the same divine love until reaching, according to the mystics,
forms of falling in love and spiritual marriage , to a constant and mutual
donation of love between the soul and the crucified and risen Christ. The
saints, but also many simple souls, have made this journey.
However,
it must be said that every level of prayer, including vocal prayer, can be
permeated by all the others, even the highest ones. Pope Francis adds that
prayer cannot be described except by the simplicity of those who live it. Every
Christian, guided by divine grace, shapes his own form of prayer according to
life. There are those who prefer the recitation of the rosary and the
meditation of its mysteries, those who sink into adoration, those who express
their feelings of faith, hope and charity, those who express their gratitude or
their offering, those who present their joy or their own suffering, those who
intercede for their brothers, those who think of their sins and feel repentance
and pain, those who live immersed in the Trinitarian mystery.
Be guided by the Spirit
The
important thing is to let yourself be guided by the Spirit, without
extinguishing its living flame. A brief literary confirmation. He who prays is
saved, he who doesn't pray is damned, says a popular proverb. In Dante's
Inferno, which forever stares at the distance from God, prayer is absent and
impossible. There is, however, a case of painful regret, of intense pain at no
longer being able to pray: "If the king of the universe were a friend, we
would pray to him for your peace..." (Inf. V, 92-93) says Francesca da
Rimini to Dante who feels pity for her. Purgatory, on the other hand, is like
an immense basilica where the souls in the process of purification all pray,
none excluded: here God is truly invoked through the spirit, to erase the
consequences of our human wickedness. Prayer fills Heaven. It takes the form of
singing, of joyful dancing, of bright sparkle, of full happiness. Angels and
saints sing and dance. It is continuous praise for the mystery of the triune
God, for the incarnation of the Word, for the glory of the Virgin Mary. It is
only the prayer addressed to Mary by Saint Bernard and her intercession that
allow Dante to reach the goal of all his desires, to conclude his journey in
the vision of God in his Unity, to find himself here bound with love in a
volume the meaning of his life torn by so much suffering, to contemplate the
Trinity of Persons, the Incarnation of the Word, which inserts our human nature
into the eternal divine reality. Reflecting on Dante's experience and taking up
a reflection of Pope Francis we can conclude that Christian prayer is a
Trinitarian prayer: it flows from the Holy Spirit of Love, it immerses us in
the arms of the Father, in the heart and with the heart of Christ.
* Fr. Giuseppe Oddone, AIMC National Ecclesiastical
Assistant
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