The Laptop That Is You
One of the consistent calls in the Bible is for us to pray constantly. Throughout the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Scriptures, we are encouraged to turn to God.
St Paul is quite insistent on our resonating with the Transcendent God. I need to slow down and recall that God lives in me and I live in God NOW. In his very first letter, St Paul tells the Thessalonian Jesus Movement, “Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith!” ( 1Thess 3.10). Later, he tells them to “pray without ceasing” 5.17 and to pray for him specifically v. 25.
However, in his latest book on the Lord’s Prayer, The Greatest Prayer, John Dominic Crossan points out a paradox in St Paul’s encouragement. In today’s reading, St Paul tells us “We do not know how to pray as we ought.” And he includes himself in the “We”. He is making a claim for all the Jesus Movement.
To ease the paradox, Crossan uses an interesting comparison. He speaks of each of us as “laptops”. However, we laptops can operate on the electric charge that we get from the electric outlet into which we plug the charger. Prayer is the charging up with the electricity (God) which is everywhere, but gets channeled through the electric outlet. In essence, prayer is “charging up your laptop”. The charge that we receive is the Spirit of God Who exists in us.
Recall how on Pentecost we spoke of a similar way to describe the Holy Spirit as “Integrating Energy”. “Holy” is etymologically connected to “wholeness, intergration”. “Spirit”, in Greek, is etymologically connected to “energy”. Biblically speaking, we can speak of the Holy Spirit as God’s Integrating Energy. Prayer is utilization of this Divine Energy.
When we were younger, our parents (hopefully) and our churches taught us that there were four types of prayer. PACT, viz., petition, adoration, contrition and thanksgiving. Today, we tell the children who hopefully might be telling their parents, that we call them “Gimme”, “Oh.Wow!!”, “Oops”, and “Thanx” prayers.
However, today, in the Spirit-filled revolution worked by Vatican II, in its reminder of the “Universal Call to Holiness”, we recognize a fifth type of prayer always available for all Catholics. We call it a “Shoosh” prayer. This is a different prayer without words. Different because when we dialogue with God, we usually do all the talking.
A “Shoosh” prayer is when we give God a chance to speak to us. However, God speaks a supersonic language. You cannot hear God’s speaking to us, yet we believe that God does. As Blessed Teresa of Calcutta said often, “God speaks to us in the silence of our minds and hearts. Our role is to slow down and listen to the Silence and then, translate what we hear by the way we live our lives and treat other people.”
Her basis would be today’s second reading from St Paul. Recall, as we said last weekend, “Something is afoot in the universe” when St Paul said, “The universe has been groaning in travail (in labor pains??) together until now”.
In the all important verse today, St Paul writes us, “We do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes for us in sighs too deep for words.” (the Silence, maybe??)
“Something (the Holy Spirit) is afoot in your universe. Something (the Holy Spirit) is afoot in you.” It is through the Spirit-charged cell (that you are) the prayer goes on. In this way, St Paul tells us that we are to pray constantly and, at the same time, we do not know how to pray as we ought. And he includes himself in the “we”.
We hear in a curious psalm the words, “Be still and know that I am God (now).” Take King David’s words as a chance to slow down on a regular basis and chill out in the Integrating Energy that is the Sprit of God in you. In modern terms, charge up your transcendental battery regularly.
We encourage the children and (whoever else who will listen, maybe their families) to sit quietly for a few minutes, close their eyes, try not to think of anything at all. However, when a thought comes into their minds, just to say a monosyllabic word (like “God”, “Now”, “Peace” until the conscious thought fades away.
Recall the famous remark that Blaise Pascal made in the seventeenth century, “The reason why the world does not know peace is that we can’t sit still in silence” (and know that God is God now!) His comment was made 400 years ago.
Last week, our church saluted St Bonaventure, one of the early successors of St Francis. He wrote that “God invites each person to make a journey into God” through quiet and contemplation.” (The title of one book which he wrote was, “The Journey into (sic) God.” Into God??
Stop in the church once in a while and chill out in the Divine Presence. Most of us are too busy to try and when we have a chance, we run off to an ashram and spend big bucks or else, we kickback as we read another dumb “Chicken Soup Book”.
Every major religion in the world speaks of silent, contemplative prayer as the highest type of personal prayer. What do you think that Jesus was doing when He would go apart for a while to pray (charging His Own laptop probably!!)? Human yearnings indicate that Shoosh prayer is the highest form of personal spirituality (resonating with the Transcendent God within and beyond you). Let the Integrating Energy do the praying for you. All you have to do is “Be still and know that God is God now.” 071711AD jfq
