Quiet and consistent prayer can become a habit that protects us against life’s storms.
A reflection by Sr. Redempta Twomey

Karl Rahner, the influential 20th century theologian, once said that in today’s world, a person is either a mystic or an unbeliever. It is no longer enough to be born and brought up a Catholic, or even to belong to a faith community. To be a believer today means to be prepared to live in a certain moral loneliness.

Statistics are regularly published to show that people are walking away from the Catholic Church. The cultural supports, which once helped us in our belief, are being eroded before our eyes. Many people develop a “pick-and-mix” approach to religion, often with a lot of goodwill.

But the call and challenge of the Gospel gets lost when Christ Jesus is seen as just another self-help guru. It is so much easier, even within the Church, to believe in God’s call for justice or the moral teaching of Jesus, or a code of ethics than it is to have a personal faith in the living God.

“It must be great for you to have such a clear vocation,” someone once said to Mother Teresa of Calcutta. “I mean, to know that your job is to help the very poor and sick and the dying.”

“Oh, but that is not my vocation,” Mother Teresa replied. “My vocation is to love God with all my heart and soul; everything else flows from this.”

Like all mystics, Mother Teresa’s secret of nourishing this deep, personal love of God was prayer. Nearly all great spiritual teachers, especially in the Christian tradition, point to this way of private prayer. If we are to deepen our faith and grow in the love of our Lord, we must regularly spend time with God.

Built Upon Rock
We must, as Jesus said, close the door on the noises and distractions of life and pray to our Father “in secret.” Otherwise, even though we may be sincere, we lose touch with our soul; we lose our balance; we become dissipated.

If we don’t pray, someone has said, we become either depressed or inflated or bounce back and forth between these two poles.

This echoes the observation of Blaise Pascal (1623-1663), the French mathematician and religious philosopher who wrote that our unhappiness is the result of not knowing how to remain quietly in a room.

Maybe what blocks our faith and keeps us from prayer are the familiar, seemingly innocent activities that make up our days: our busyness, our need for instant answers; our greed for new possessions and experiences; our insatiable appetite for television, sports or celebrities; or, maybe, just our laziness.

Over the years, the unseen woodworm can burrow and destroy the cupboard—or even the house itself. Something similar can happen to us if we do not wake up to our reality.
It is not easy to develop a habit of private prayer. To many, it can seem like a fruitless exercise.

And yet if we really try and are consistent in giving time to the Lord, even for only a few minutes each day, we will gradually find that our house is indeed being built upon rock and standing firm in the midst of storms.

But more than that, we will come to know the surpassing love of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Do not try to be a mystic; that is God’s gift. But, with faith and deep desire, look for Jesus and, as Mother Teresa said, “everything flows from this.”