Something to think and pray about this week
We
have to overcome the idea that the body is irrelevant to prayer. In
fact our souls express themselves through our bodies. We are spirit
enfleshed. Monks know this: their desire is for God, and they pray with
their bodies when they stand and sit and sing the psalms each day.
They also believe that bodily work, with the
intention of serving God, is prayer. Ignatius of Loyola would
enthusiastically agree. Augustine remarks that those who sing, pray
twice. We bow our bodies as a sign of adoration. We join our hands and
bless our bodies with the sign of the Cross. We receive the host at
communion and eat it. We go on pilgrimage, which is a bodily prayer,
with its abandonment of creature comforts: we focus toward the goal of
the pilgrimage with our bodies, as well as our hearts. Truly the body
prays, because it is as human persons, body and soul, and not as angels,
that we meet our God. You won’t hear God saying: ‘Now, when you pray,
please leave your body behind you. I’m interested only in your soul!’
My mother had a stroke in her mid-seventies
and died four years later. I was there that morning, with a friend, when
her breathing began to grow more drawn out. She would breathe out, and
after an impossibly long pause she breathed in again. Finally she
breathed out, and we waited, transfixed, for her to breathe in again.
Not daring to breathe ourselves, we waited five, ten, twenty, thirty
seconds, a minute … But no breath came. She was gone.
For those who love God, their final breath,
whether conscious or not, matches the prayer of Jesus when he says:
‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit’ (Luke 23:46). His Father
had been the desire of his whole being, body and soul, throughout his
life, even when he was busy or sleeping. The Father is our desire too.
Concentration of mind may lapse during my time of prayer, but my body is
still in the place of prayer. If someone asked me what I was doing, I’d
say, ‘I just want God, and this is the best I can do to show it.’
http://www.sacredspace.ie/
