By Most Rev. Dr. Yvon Ambroise, Bishop of Tuticorin –
Time seems to be very much sought after in today‘s life, due to the way people organize their lives with a busy schedule of programmes in the world, in their business for office work, for the family, for children, etc. We give our time generously to those whom we cherish in life as beloved.
Today many aged parents complain that their children, brought up by them through their hard work and sacrifice, do not give much time to meet them and spend with them. It is also the complaint of children over working fathers and mothers.
Love finds joy in spending time with those whom we cherish in our life. And time spent with them often seems to pass very fast. The complaint of many persons, who loved their own, seems to be also the complaint of God. There are persons who dedicate their lives to God but give often very little time or do not give enough time to God who called them for this specific commitment.
Those who give time to God have every chance to advance in their love and dedication to God. Moments of prayer are moments given to God and are signs that a person cherishes God, as the beloved in one‘s heart.
I would like to make a certain caution on some of the techniques of concentration that may lead to prayer. We have in our tradition yoga, transcendental meditation, etc. and in Japanese culture, Zen meditation. All these Asian techniques are real techniques which depend only on the very person and one‘s capacities. They lead a person into a certain absorption of the person in God who could be impersonal or a liberation from all desires and thereby from human sufferings.
But prayer in Christianism is different. It is the person, being transformed by the grace of God into His own image. When a person encounters God in a deep interior way it becomes an interior exchange of love of the person with God who gives it as a gift in His infinite goodness. In this reciprocity the person grows and becomes transformed by God‘s grace, freely given to each person.
Let me quote from what prayer means: (Henri J.M. Nouwen, Here and Now-living in the Spirit, St.Paul‘s Press, Bandra, 2017 7th print, pp.91f), ” One simple answer is to move from the mind to the heart by slowly saying a prayer with as much attentiveness as possible. This may sound like offering a crutch to someone who asks you to heal his broken leg. The truth, however, is that a prayer, prayed from the heart heals.
“You will be constantly distracted by your worries, but if you keep going back to the words of the prayer you will gradually discover that your worries become less obsessive and that you really start to enjoy praying. And as the prayer descends from your mind into the centre of your being you will discover its healing power”.
It is one of the reasons for us to give time to God in prayer.