Jesus' life is a balance of his human life and his divine life, as he says our lives need to be. Because even though we are physically human beings, as Jesus is, we carry from the moment of our conceptions our spiritual God dwelling within us. We are, mysteriously, Temples of the Holy Spirit! Jesus wants us to recognize that, like him, our way of becoming more humanly aware of God's Presence within us, becoming more united with God, is first through prayer. So - we can learn from watching how Jesus prays.
Jesus, in the Scriptures, prays many different ways, beginning with the time of his childhood. His parents take him to sabbath services at their synagogue. And also each year, he goes with his parents to Jerusalem, for the feast of Passover. So we know he was raised as a faithful Jewish boy, raised in the traditions of Israel, and fulfilling all that the Law requires, as so many of us were raised in our faith traditions and continue that tradition with our children.
Yet, when he is twelve and goes to Jerusalem for Passover, he stays in Jerusalem without his parents' knowledge, and after three days of searching, they find him in the Temple, astounding the teachers by the depth of his listening and the depth of his questions and his answers to their questions. When his parents ask him why he has stayed behind, he answers "Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" This phrase can also be translated "I must be about my Father's work."(Luke 2: 41-52).
How could Jesus be so wise and knowledgeable about God at such a young age? Simply because he is Divine? Simply because of his regular synagogue and Temple worship? Yes, both of these, but also something more. From this early age, we can see in Jesus a deep commitment to the life of social prayer - prayer with others, with his religious group, - but also what must be his deep inner prayer life, a personal communicating with God and listening to God to discover his inner unique identity and his unique call from God - to be about his Father's work.
Jesus not only fulfills the religious obligations of Judaism, he goes beyond them. He talks with God outside of the times of social worship, to discover Who God is, and also to discover himself, - who he is in God's sight.
In the midst of Jesus' hectic, turbulent public ministry, we see how often he prays alone, preferring quiet prayer. Often, long before dawn, he leaves the house where he is staying with his followers, and goes off to a lonely place to pray. He prays privately before almost all major events. He spends forty days alone in the desert, missing family-based sabbath observances and public Temple services.
He says to his followers " You should go to your private room, shut the door, and pray to your Father Who is in that secret place." (Matthew 6:6.) Now most homes of Jesus' people do not have private rooms. Jesus is inviting us to become aware of God Who lives within us and with us, deep in our hearts and souls. He even suggests that we don't need to be so dependent on our verbal petitions to God because "your Father knows what you need before you ask Him." (Matthew 6:9.)
The greatest example of Jesus' intimate personal prayer to God is his struggle in the Garden of Gethsemane. Here, in the loneliness of night, his physical body shrinks in terror from the ordeal ahead, his mind struggles to find rational reasons for why his Passion should happen, and his heart and spirit struggle to trust the One he loves above and beyond all else. Isn't this the very human way we pray most intimately, aware of all the conflicting desires of our bodies and minds, and our hearts and souls struggling to surrender in trust to the One Who has made us for Himself?
Our western culture is a very extroverted, can-do culture, where people often pray to attempt to "change God." If we rely only on social group prayer and worship, and simple verbal prayer, it is too easy to be caught up in group identity and group-think, and not discover for ourselves that prayer exists to change the one who prays. Each one of us is called continuously by God to come away with Him into the silence. There we can discover our own personal relationship with God our Father - and, as the young Jesus does, discover that we too, must be about our Father's work.
In the prayer of silence, "we stand calmly before this uncanny and utterly safe Presence, allowing the Divine Gaze to invade and heal our unconscious, the place where 95% of our motivations and reactions come from. All we can really do is return the gaze."
-Fr. Richard Rohr, "The Naked Now." The Crossroad Publishing Company.
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