306. Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (C)

Meditations no. 590 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

The life of a child of God is to be a life of prayer.

There is a close relationship between the condition of children of God and prayer. So close that the life of a Christian is in some way identified with his life of prayer. Adoptive divine sonship is not a mere external title. The divine sonship of the Christian is participation in the same Sonship, which is the Only-begotten Son. And in the bosom of the Most Holy Trinity, the Son is the Word, the eternally begotten Word who addresses the Father as “Abba,” Father. The life of God is an eternal dialogue of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit: a loving dialogue that never ceases.

From the moment we have been adopted as sons, by receiving the Holy Spirit into our hearts, we are able to take part in this filial dialogue. Since you are sons, St Paul writes, God sent into our hearts the Spirit of his Son, who cries out: “Abba, Father!” That is why prayer, dialogue with God, is the attitude proper to a child of God.

An affirmation of today’s second reading gives us new light to consider him. Christ is in you, the Apostle teaches the Colossians. To be a Christian is not reduced to professing a doctrine and to behaving in accordance with it. It is a much deeper reality. It is to be no longer alter Christus, but ipse Christus, Christ himself!, as our Father often repeated, because Jesus Christ is present in the Christian, through grace. Not as he is in Heaven and in the Eucharist, with a substantial presence, but with a true presence of his action and his life, so true that the Apostle could say: I live, but it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. This truth is the foundation of the life of prayer. A Christian, aware of this presence of Christ, must see to it that his life is manifested in him. Your life is hidden with Christ in God, we also read in the Letter to the Colossians. And the primordial manifestation of that Life of Christ is the loving conversation with God the Father, through the action of the Holy Spirit.

“The life of prayer,” the Catechism of the Church teaches, “is to be habitually in the presence of God, thrice holy, and in communion with Him. This communion of life is always possible because, through Baptism, we have become one with Christ.” St. Josemaría expresses the close link between prayer and love very clearly when he writes: My God, teach me to love! “My God, teach me to pray!”

Whenever we feel in our hearts a desire to improve, to respond more generously to the Lord, and we seek a guide, a clear direction for our Christian existence, the Holy Spirit brings to mind the words of the Gospel: it is good to pray perseveringly and not to lose heart (Lk 18:1).

I would like us today, in our meditation, our Father would tell us, to be definitively convinced of the need to prepare ourselves to be contemplative souls, in the middle of the street, of work, with a continuous conversation with our God, which must not decline throughout the day. If we intend to follow loyally in the footsteps of the Master, that is the only way.

Jesus teaches us that prayer must be continuous; works can be turned into prayer.

JESUS declares that it is necessary to pray always and not to lose heart. St. Paul transmits this truth when he exhorts the Thessalonians to pray without ceasing.

Prayer can and must be done at all times. Not only in the moments that are dedicated exclusively to prayer, but in any activity. A document of the Magisterium of the Church recalls that prayer “is not necessarily interrupted when we dedicate ourselves to work and to caring for our neighbor, fulfilling the Will of God.” All noble tasks can become prayer, if they are carried out as God wants and for his love.

Our Father has insisted much on this doctrine, which is fundamental for sanctification in ordinary life. Let us meditate on his words. Do not think that prayer is an act that is fulfilled and then abandoned. The righteous find their pleasure in the law of Yahweh and tend to conform to that law, during the day and during the night (Ps 1:2). In the morning I think of you (cf. Ps 62:7); and in the evening my prayer is directed to you like incense (cf. Ps 140:2). The whole day can be a time of prayer: from night to morning and from morning to night.

This teaching of our Founder has a solid doctrinal foundation. The prayer of a child of God is not expressed only through external or interior words, but also through works. One prays with the mouth; one prays with the mind; one prays with one’s works. Because, just as God created all things through the Word - everything was made by Him, St. John writes - and created them out of Love, it can be said that his works are his word. “Creation is the place where the love story between God and his creature takes place.” Similarly, the works of a child of God, with which he participates in some way in the creative power, constitute words of his dialogue with God, they are true prayer, if he performs them with the greatest possible perfection and for love of God, in order to fulfill his Will.

“The Gospel clearly affirms the need to pray always and not to lose heart (Lk 18:1); and Saint Paul, echoing this teaching, adds: sine intermissione orate (1 Thess 5:17), pray without interruption. The recommendation has the force of a commandment. But it would not be possible to put it into practice if we were to misinterpret it in the sense that it is necessary to be constantly praying, vocally or mentally; an action impossible in our present earthly condition. The accomplishment of the tasks that concern us - family, professional, social, sports, etc. - often requires complete attention to our memory and our intelligence, a firm commitment of our will; and this without taking into account the need to dedicate the necessary hours to sleep.”

Our Founder insisted: our prayer is not only the recollection of a few minutes, of a few hours. … It is of all hours! It is our whole life that must become prayer! Being contemplative is our thing. And he emphasized: children of my soul, con-tem-pla-ti-vos! If you are, you will be happy. I have told you many times that the highest prayer God has given me in the street, in the tram, in the subway … and at Mass. Children of my soul: contemplatives! If you are, even sleep will be prayer (…).

In our life, my children, everything must be prayer, contemplation, union with God. Whoever struggles to live like this will move forward, he will be holy. I measure the effectiveness of works by the degree of holiness reached by those who work there; and I do not want any work if the men who work in that place do not become better. I am not interested! Tocio that is passer-by, and we go after the permanent.

Prayer, my children, constant prayer; this allows divine conversions to take place in our lives, which, by divinizing us, also make us more human.

God calls us to be contemplatives in the midst of the world.

The Gospel of today’s Mass takes us to the home of a family that surrounded the Lord with attention, in the village of Betania. It was the environment that St. Josemaría wanted for our tabernacles and that is why he liked to call them, sometimes, by that name: Bethany.

Mary, seated at the Lord’s feet, listened to his word. But Martha was busy with many tasks, St. Luke relates. Since ancient times, this description has been used to distinguish the “contemplative life”, symbolized in Mary of Bethany, from the “active life”, personified in Martha, sometimes presenting them as opposites. Some of the great teachers of Christian life, such as St. Augustine, did not understand it that way. For him, “in Martha and Mary the present and the future life are figured, and not simply two forms of life in this world”. There is no principled opposition between contemplation and earthly tasks. All of us, on this earth, by carrying out like Martha the tasks proper to our condition, can enjoy like Mary a foretaste of the contemplation of God, which will be full in glory. Martha learned very well what Jesus told her; and so, when the Lord came to Bethany after the death of Lazarus, He immediately went out to meet him to speak with Him.

St. Josemaría’s teaching is of crucial importance on this point. Again and again he insists that we can be contemplatives in the midst of the world, that we can live in Heaven and on earth, always. Not between Heaven and earth, because we are of the world. In the world and in Paradise at the same time! He impels us to carry out daily, in intimate union, the part of Martha and that of Mary, because one is as necessary as the other, Martha’s being a condition and means for Mary’s. Without the faithful fulfillment of our duties, the terrain of the contemplative life would be lacking for us; but without contemplative life, human endeavor would remain barren, sterile for holiness and apostolate, even if it bore human fruit.

Contemplation is a prayer that has no need of words. However, it is true prayer, and even its highest form, because among people who love one another, dialogue is sometimes nothing more than looking at one another. It is a gift of God to which we can all aspire. But it is necessary to prepare, with the help of grace, to receive it. When a Christian seeks to respond generously to the action of the Holy Spirit, sincerely seeking to please God in everything, the Paraclete fills his soul with an intense love. A harmony is then established, a certain co-naturality with God, which makes it possible to maintain communication with Him even in the midst of the most absorbing activities.

“Just as the body needs air to breathe and the circulation of the blood to keep it alive, so the soul needs to remain in contact with God throughout the twenty-four hours of the day. For this reason, authentic piety impels us to refer everything to the Lord: work and rest, joys and sorrows, successes and failures, sleep and wakefulness. As Don Álvaro wrote in 1984,”between temporal occupations and the spiritual life, between work and prayer there cannot be only an armistice, more or less achieved; there must be a full union, a fusion that leaves no residue. Work nourishes prayer and prayer imbues work with itself.”

It is not always possible to pray with words, but one can always contemplate God. Thanks to this deep disposition of the heart it is possible to make the ideal of continuous prayer a reality, at all times. It is the ideal that we see fulfilled in Mary Most Holy, who nourished her continuous dialogue with God by pondering all the events, all the things of her life, even the smallest ones, which she kept in her heart.