ALONE TO PRAY

“And Jesus went off to be alone to pray”

He went off to be alone to pray. Alone? How can he be alone? He has assumed all humanity to himself by his Incarnation so that wherever he goes he takes us along. He went into solitude, yes, but not alone.  He went away “to pray.”  “to pray”. What a small, inadequate word to express a mighty mystery!

The divine Son of God is eternally turned toward the Father, and the Father toward the Son, in an enduring act of perfect complementarity, which we popularly call the Holy Spirit. And now that God as incarnate has assumed all humanity and material creation as his added nature, we can rightly conclude that all men and women, together with the whole of material creation are swept up into the Son’s eternal orientation to the Father. No one is left out, unless he chooses to be. Rational beings as we are, we ought not to shy away from the grasp and embrace of Jesus; we should not resist being included in the movement of the Son to the Father, so that, like him, we can be turned towards the Father and say with him “Abba Father.”

In today’s Gospel we observe that the leper did not resist the action of Christ. He rather welcomed it, and surrendered himself to the prayer of Jesus. He was connected and was healed and made whole, restored to complete personhood, whereas as a leper he was a non-person. Now he could say about himself “I am”, whereas earlier he was not. Remember the man born blind. After his cure he told the Pharisees, “I don’t know what you are talking about. All I know is that whereas I was blind, now I see.” The leper formerly could not stand together with the other people and say, “We are”. Now he could stand shoulder to shoulder with the others to say proudly, “We are.”  “I am” and “We are” are perfectly complementary.

Our charitable projects are not just giving, but ensuring that giver and receiver are engaged in a common human partnership of mutual dignity, part of a continuing process of creation, a striving towards “completeness”, which brings the individual from nothingness by way of the “I” to the “We”, in a truly flourishing community, within the Kingdom of God.

That, my dear friends, is what I think to be the prayer of Jesus. How I wish I knew more about it.

PRAYER: Lord Jesus, we know that you love us and that you want to teach us to pray. May we, in our prayer, always include all those who are suffering, the children sold into slavery, the women who are denied their human rights, the victims of the economy of greed and financial deceit, the villagers without water, and the ill who cannot afford medical treatment. So may our prayer be integral and centred on you. Amen.