Saturday, September 12, 2020
Tuesday, September 1, 2020
Praying for Prayer
In the sum of the dimensions that we are as human beings, there is one, the most important: that which elevates us above everyday life, which frees us from tangible, perishable and postmodern consumerist materiality, which makes us fly, which allows us to create ideals and goals, dream of utopias and no longer resign ourselves to the narrowness, precariousness, and limitations of our existence; this is the transcendent dimension of the life of every human being.
This human dimension brings man to divinity, yearning for fulfillment, perfection, infinity, and eternity, and it also explains why all human beings establish relationships with the Transcendent in our daily lives or during the special occasions of our existence.
We do this by attempting communication with the one which each of us believes and confesses as our God, our Transcendent being, our Creator. ... And, in general, this communication attempt is called—in most of humanity's religious systems—prayer.
To pray and try to enter into a dialogue with the divine, human beings use rites, devotions, recite hymns, chants, etc. In general, we use traditional formulas, socially and culturally learned, which—in Spanish and Catholic theology—we call REZAR (PRAYING), that is to say: reciting… And we dedicate the time and space of our existence to prayer.
But, PRAYING (reciting formulas, conversing with the Transcendent through rites, devotions, etc.) is an instrument that we have to open us up and push us to PRAYER, that is, to live life in harmony, in accordance and in coherence with our confessions of faith or religion, with what we believe and profess.
Thus, it is possible to pray a lot and live lives totally divorced from what we believe in and from the most fundamental human values (such as love, peace, justice, truth, freedom, life) in the same way that it is possible to have little time and space to pray and, nevertheless, be protagonists and builders of better human relationships and societies that are more fraternal.
Prayers, therefore, are an instrument and accompaniment for a life of PRAYER. And while praying is a conscientious and momentary matter in daily life, prayer involves the religious believer's whole life.
Praying opens us to a life of prayer, to the deep will of God in man: to love and to serve. Praying is not, then, an instrument of myth and magic, a fetish, an act of magic to force the will of the divine so that everything happens according to our convenience, as we want it and according to our whims and interests, almost always petty.
Praying is at the service of prayer. In other words, ritual practices and religious devotions must be at the service of lives lived deeply and honestly in a human and humanizing way.
When we do not see prayers as instruments and manifestations of a whole life lived in prayer and prayer is not understood as a life that needs and manifests in moments of praying, individually or collectively, a scandalous divorce occurs between faith and life, between religious practices and our daily practices, between what we believe and what we live, between what we profess and what we practice.
The painful and challenging situation of the time in which humanity lives today undoubtedly urges us all to establish more and better relationships with the Transcendent, to seek more and better moments of prayer and worship. And, because of these same religious practices, may we feel more called upon to live a life of prayer, doing the will of God who—in all religions—asks us to love and serve one another to a greater extent.
The construction of a better world is delegated by God to the intelligence and freedom of man. It is false, a religious experience in which the human being, through rites and devotions, is not responsible for building a better world. A religious experience in which man asks God to do what is purely the responsibility of the human race is false and cynical.
May our religious life push us to build a better world as God's will in man. May we pray to live in prayer, to love one another and, living in prayer, loving and serving each other, we pray for each other, for all our best intentions and most profound needs and those of all humanity.
