21 May 2013
Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time
What is the beginning of the Christian prayer life? Aristotle says that in any endeavor a small error at the beginning results in substantial errors at the conclusion. Guigo says that Christian prayer begins with Sacred Scripture. The font of Christian prayer is the Word which has been handed down to us. Of course, we all know that the ultimate Word is Jesus himself. But the Holy Spirit has provided a testimony to Jesus by inspiring authors to write about God’s action through history. That testimony our entrance into an intimate knowledge of Christ.
As we said yesterday, reading, which is the first stage of the ladder of the spiritual life, seeks the blessed life. But what exactly is the blessed life? What are we seeking? A generic state of ‘peace’? The answer to a riddle? Could we page through the Bible, find the answer, and pass the page number along so as to save other seekers the trouble? Of course not. Perhaps we should not ask “what do we seek” as much as “whom we seek.” When we turn to the Scripture and read, we are seeking after the person of Jesus Christ by taking into ourselves the testimony which has been left to the Church. We read the individual sections of Scripture in the hope that they will begin to form a pattern within us that increasingly takes the form of Jesus. So Christian prayer gains its distinctive character in its concrete focus upon a particular person, Jesus Christ, and what his life tells us about the ultimate meaning of our world and our lives.
So our own life of prayer begins by opening the Bible and reading. But as soon as we do so, questions start to arise. Thus we are led onward to the next stage of prayer.