30th Sunday of Ordinary Time (27.10.13)
Prayer As Relationship
At its core, prayer is about relationship. Relationship is defined as the way two or more persons interact. True altruism is an attribute of God. All human relationship has some measure of self-interest. People speak about giving unconditional love but it really is the prerogative of God. In humans the ‘self’ factor has always been present since our original disobedience.
Some Christians grew up treating prayer as a sort of ‘Command Performance’. The setting, the participants’ formal attire, their ranked place and word articulation were determining factors in what was termed proper prayer. It truly was a performance – a display of exaggerated behaviour involving a deal of unnecessary, sometimes distracting, time and effort and not necessarily at one with the participant’s true, inner disposition. This ‘performance’ prayer had its own etiquette – polite behaviour among members of a particular assembly. Little wonder then that, for more than a few, prayer became detached from real life.
Because true prayer is about relationship it is centred on the internal disposition of the participants. God is ever attentive. His disposition towards us is one of unconditional love. He is totally attentive to us irrespective of our location, attire and imperfect disposition.
In true prayer, heart speaks to heart despite the barrage of ever-present disruptive factors. It is difficult for us to grasp how God gives each unique person his total attention but without it, we wouldn’t exist. A quite limited, poor example is when, conversing with a person, in a crowded setting you feel that there and then, for them, you are the only person in that room, that you have their total, undivided attention. It’s a skill diplomats, particularly, are trained to cultivate. God loves us despite our divided and wandering attention and he’s is being unconditionally loving not ‘diplomatic’!
The giving of our total attention, imperfect as it is, cannot be switched on as, for example, we switch on a light bulb. We’ve probably experienced the after-effects of an aggressively moving fairground ride. The ride over, we’re standing quite still on firm ground but the sensation of the ‘ride’ continues for a while! Likewise, after travelling continuously by train for say a couple of days, we still imagine the train movement for some time after disembarking.
People step out of a car or off the bus, walk into church and expect to pray! It’s impossible! Our senses cannot make that adjustment in so short a space of time. In church, we may be physically still but mentally and emotionally we are anything but! We bring our gyrating, varied preoccupations with us into church. This is the more pronounced if we’ve had ear plugs pumping in the latest music, or there’s been a strong disagreement between people sharing a car, for example.
In the developed world our waking day is crammed with multiple preoccupations carrying varying levels of stress. Such mental and emotional overload can pose a threat to health. Keeping the body under such a constant state of “alert” can be damaging to the heart, lungs, brain and immune system. Chronic stress overload can cause serious health issues that are only compounded by the use of alcohol or drugs in an attempt to bring calm.
With these thoughts in mind we could look again at the characters in Jesus’ parable. (Luke 18:9-14) Because they both share Jewishness they will share a background of structured knowledge of their religion, the central role of God and the Temple in Jerusalem. They both have professions, quite distinct but providing employment.
The Pharisee is a feared religious professional enjoying privilege, power and status in the Jewish community. The tax collector, by contrast, is regarded as a ‘fifth columnist’ by his fellow Jews, despised and isolated as a collaborator because he works for the Roman Army of Occupation. Jesus chose examples from the extremes of the Jewish community.
The Pharisee ‘prays’ as he lives with an up-front self-justification that brooks no contradiction. His busy, successful life within the Jewish community is one of outward observance of the 613 Laws of the Jewish religion, which he believes should be observed by all. His ‘prayer’ is a form of public examination of conscience in which he gives a good account of himself. His prominent place at the front is his right! Jesus observes that this Pharisee made his prayer ‘to himself’, not to God. It was a form of self-adulation in the place where people assembled to give praise, some of which was offered to God! Some expressions of Roman Catholic worship, prior to Vatican Council ll, could be similarly classified.
Jesus’ portrayal of the tax collector is in sharp contrast! He stands at the back in the shadows, as it were, with bowed head and downcast eyes. His prayer is addressed to God. It is at once simple and profound, “O God, be merciful to me the sinner.” (Some translations of the New Testament substitute the indefinite article, ‘a’, for, ‘the’, in the words of the tax collector. Biblical opinion supports the idea that the tax collector’s demeanour would indicate that he referred to himself as ‘the’ sinner, thereby acknowledging his profound culpability.)
Most Baptised people will experience the oscillation possible in the hinterland between these two extremes. Generally, like the Pharisee, we are more apt in recalling what boosts our standing with God than what offends him – hence the infamous phrase: “I don’t do anyone any harm!” We are more likely to want to share blame for failure while claiming sole responsibility for what passes for righteousness!
Our fraught world predominated by self-survival is infected with moral distortion, shallowness of conscience and an industrial level of all-absorbing continuous distraction. It is possible to attend Mass, including the reception of Holy Communion, without a conscious in-depth reception of what God is offering. We can leave church with little alteration to the all-absorbing preoccupations with which we entered the building something less than an hour previously. It really makes you wonder whom we are allowing to pull our strings!
You may know that Jews are required to walk to the synagogue on the Sabbath. Where a car or a bus has to be used, the Jew must alight a specific distance from the synagogue. It’s an act of both reverence for God and humility. Paradoxically, it also allows a quiet reflective time both before and after the service. The time beforehand to begin the ‘stilling’ of the mind and emotions so that the level of distraction is lessened in preparation to hearing God’s word. The time after enables a savouring of that word and the teaching which accompanied it.
This Jewish prescription about the use of transport also fits with the general observance of silence and stillness in the home on the Sabbath – from dusk on Friday to dusk on Saturday. It’s not a perfect remedy, as Jesus’ parable demonstrates, but the scrapping of Sunday trading laws has obscured the true nature of Sunday being the Lord’s Day, as made explicit in the Third Commandment – ‘Remember to keep holy the Sabbath Day’. Except, for example, in Germany where Sunday as a non-trading day is prepared for by shops closing on Saturday afternoon until Monday, is still largely observed. Family life appears to be the clear beneficiary.
Here are some wise sayings about prayer that may help in our appreciation of this Gospel:
‘No one who is proud can pray.’
‘No one who despises another can pray.’
‘In prayer we do not lift ourselves above another.’
‘True prayer comes from setting ourselves beside God not our fellow humans.’
‘The gate of heaven is so low that no one can enter it except on their knees.’
“Those who are conscious of their own sins have no eyes for the sins of their neighbour.”
(Abbot John Moses ‘The Desert: An Anthology for Lent’)