Praying with St. Francis
“The second way of placing
yourself in this Sacred Presence is to call to mind that God is not only
present in the place where you are, but that He is very specially present in
your heart and mind, which He kindles and inspires with His Holy Presence,
abiding there as Heart of your heart, Spirit of your spirit. Just as the soul
animates the whole body, and every member thereof, but abides especially in the
heart, so God, while present everywhere, yet makes His special abode with our spirit.
Therefore David calls Him “the Strength of my heart;” and St. Paul said that in
Him “we live and move and have our being.” Dwell upon this thought until you
have kindled a great reverence within your heart for God Who is so closely
present to you.”
In this second way in which we
can prepare for prayer, St. Francis moves us from considering that God is
everywhere all the time, to realizing that, for the follower of Jesus Christ,
that God lives deep within us. Francis points us to Scripture, first to David
and then to Paul.
In Psalm 73:26 David says, “My
flesh [body] and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my
portion forever.” In Acts 17:28 Paul says, when speaking to the Athenians, “for
in Him [God] we live and move and have our being…”[i]
In John 14:17 Jesus tells us that
the Holy Spirit will live in us, and then in John 14:23 Jesus says that He and
the Father will come and live within us. In John Chapter 17 we see that through
Jesus Christ we come into fellowship, union, with the Trinity. Again and again
throughout the New Testament we see that God in Christ lives within us as
individuals and as His People – this is an essential element of the Gospel – we
are called to live in this awareness, in this union with God in Christ. This
is, indeed, a great mystery, one that we cannot understand – anymore than we
can understand the nature of the Trinity or the Incarnation (indeed, this
speaks to us of a continuing Incarnation – Christ in His People, His Body, His
Bride, His Church); but it is most certainly a mystery that we should
experience as a way of life in Christ. As God lives and breathes His
Presence in us, we learn to live and breath God’s Presence as a way of life in Christ.
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:17
that “the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him [the Lord]”.
As St. Francis writes, God is abiding in us “as Heart of your heart, Spirit
of your spirit.”
We can prepare for prayer then,
by pondering and directing our thoughts and dispositions to God’s Presence
within us, deep in our heart of hearts, deep within our innermost beings –
perhaps we can picture the Tabernacle of Moses or the Temple of Solomon with its
Outer Court, Holy Place, and Most Holy Place (or Holy of Holies). God is in the
Outer Court, He is in the Holy Place, but in the Holy of Holies He lives in a special
way.
God’s Word works within us
(Hebrews 4:12) to cleanse His Temple and draw us deep into Himself. The deeper
God draws us to Himself, the deeper He lives within us, and out of us to our
brothers and sisters and the world around us. While we may receive glimpses of
the deep workings of God within us, we cannot understand them fully, for this
is the work and life of the Trinity – the mystery of being “partakers of the
Divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4) is beyond our full comprehension, but we know He
has given us His Word, His “precious and magnificent promises” so that we can
live in constant loving and gracious koinonia with Him.
What better place to meet our
Father and Lord Jesus in prayer? To speak the words, “Abba Father” (Romans 8:15,
Galatians 4:6)? To recognize that we and Jesus Christ have one Father and that
we are His brothers and sisters – that Jesus Christ is “not ashamed to call us brethren”
(Hebrews 2:9 – 13; Romans 8:29; John 20:17).
O dear Christian, can you not visualize
that your Father desires His sons and daughters to be at His Table? Can you not
“see” that if you are missing at the Table of daily communion and koinonia with
Him that there is a gaping space at that Table?
The Prodigal Son sought entrance
back into his father’s house as a servant – but the father would have none of that
– his father ran to him and brought him back as his son…and your Father runs to
you! You are not a servant but a son, or a daughter, of the Living God. He
lives within you in Christ and you live within Him in Christ.
Is this acknowledgment and
realization not a good place to begin prayer?
[i] St. Francis fails to
consider the context of Acts 17:28 and the point that Paul was making. Paul was
speaking to people who were not in a relationship with Christ, in fact, Paul was quoting a Greek philosopher in order to get his audience to consider
that God is the Creator and Sustainer of life so that they might come into a
relationship with God through Jesus Christ. In other words, Acts 17:28 is not
about God living within us in relationship and communion – St. Francis misses
Paul’s point. However, I’ve missed the context of a verse or passage
more than once, and you probably have too. Let us be thankful that Francis continues
to point us to the Bible.
No comments:
Post a Comment