Saying about the whole of life

Among the many dimensions of the Christian life the prayer becomes, no doubt, a prominent place. We might even say that it gives us a point of view enables that us to broaden our vision of the whole Christian life. Or, more importantly, over the entire life of man, "Who learns to pray, learn to live," wrote Thomas Moore. In these lines I will try to recall some peculiarities related to Christian prayer, saying immediately that I will talk about understanding it not so much as a series of things you say or do, but as a way of being in life. Prayer, in fact, is possible only on condition that the person will accept as necessary and endorsing some guidelines that should cross widely throughout our existence.

Gratuitousness

The first of these guidelines, we can say quite frankly, is a quality out of fashion. Speaking of gratuity is to declare firmly than is necessary to overcome an obstacle rather widespread: the barrier of efficiency/efficientism. What does this mean? It means they can resist with courage to the false "dogma" that attaches importance only to that which produces something. Efficientist- is the one that accords value only to those actions capable of getting a result more or less visible. Efficientist, therefore, is one who is unable to see value also in those aspects of human life that are not designed to obtain a result in terms of profit. We understand that if we dominate in this attitude, the prayer would be declared impossible from the outset. Praying, in fact, means performing an “ineffective" action; question of being able to recognize the importance of also because, by itself, immediately produces nothing. Just thinking of how many things would be squeezed out of our lives if we should reason always in terms of production, realization: friendship, whose greatest joy lies in establishing bonds of communion with others independent from a profit to be obtained; it would be of little interest every artistic expression, which attracts the human being by opening up unexplored horizons of beauty and charm; no longer sought would be free time for leisure , in which the person can get in touch with himself experiencing to be worth not for the things he does. The prayer requests that you know precisely recover the profound and irreplaceable significance of certain "waste of time"; indeed, it is itself one of these "waste of time", healthy and indispensable; it is sabbatical time par excellence.

Waiting

A second approach is essential to pray is the ability to remain patiently in the relaxation time, waiting and not rushing. In this capacity easily the functionalism opposes. It is a barrier similar to the previous one, and yet it is useful because it explicitly allows you to expose another aspect that is likely to hinder prayer. If with the efficientism he emphasized the bad tendency to value only what it produces, now it highlights the dangerous inclination to consider only important to the urgency of the fruit: that is what works right, here and now. It is clear that prayer is fundamentally alien to the mentality granting relief only to the immediacy of profit. On the contrary, to pray means knowing how to do something that bears fruit only in time, gradually. In this respect it is necessary to cultivate the patience typical of the farmer, who sows the seed with plenty even if the collection will be needed for many months; risking with confidence without being hold by the possibility of disasters; giving value even at the time at night, when everything seems to be quiet because the growth takes place in silence and darkness. The ability to wait in prayer corresponds well to the courage to be patient: the patience is of whom is in difficulty, uncertainty, in the darkness of doubt, not only expects that the night walk but you have to let through to this night, to come out more enlightened. Waiting, therefore; be patient, to learn a good fruit remaining constant in the proof.

Good will

You might just as well say: to pray means do something even when you do not have "desire" and your "feel" push to do something else in the opposite direction. The obstacle to fight against is that of spontaneism; that is opposing to the tendency to value only in what he does "feel good ". We know this: one of the attitudes on which more easily stumbles along the path of prayer is this: do not pray when the "do not feel" of it, forgetting that prayer is not something you should do only when "makes you feel good "or" it feels good." In this respect, prayer is a form of "art": it needs to be pursued with determination; it has its own rules to put into practice consistently; it demands a faithful exercise that can not be left at the mercy of moods, always passing and fluctuating. Many are the Desert Fathers that speak us about it as a real fight, a fight to the last breath.

Some of the "contours" of Christian prayer

The aspects that have been brought to evidence up to this point can be considered as attitudes to be pursued in order to enter and remain in prayer. I would now like to touch on some more intrinsic quality of Christian prayer, peculiar notes that featured heavily in the relational sense.

1. The primacy of the "receiving" on the "giving". The Christian who prays in the first place, is not one who turns to God to offer him something. Rather, it is one that you have to get, to receive as a gift. The prayer itself is a gift of God, and standing in front of Him is a response to His call, generous and anticipatory. In this sense, one could say that the prayer of the Christian has a look passive, receiving. And this applies not only to the fact that prayer is, first and foremost, the possibility afforded by the Spirit of God, but also for another reason. The pace of praying Christians, in fact, should be marked by the primacy of ' "hearing" on the "talking". It is necessary that the prayer born from listening to a word, the Word of God that reaches me from "outside" and this word, ultimately, is the design of God accomplished in Christ. We pray in a Christian not on the basis of a vague sense of the sacred, without boundaries, we discover within ourselves; but based on what has happened and it has been revealed in Christ. Listening to what God tells me about Him, about Jesus, about man, let our prayer take shape, take the right words to talk with the Lord.

2. Reception of an ever new communion. In Christian prayer is slowly discovers to live in a community that already is offered without repentance, by God. From this point of view the prayer, even if it requires its own structure , its own form which places it at shelter from the precariousness of spontaneity, not only technique to dominate/master, or a mechanism to learn and implement. What is at stake is rather a relationship, characterized by mutual understanding always new and surprising. Christian prayer knows that preserve the sense of a gradual process of revelation, both by discoveries and uncertainties; it knows how to feed the sense of an interpersonal bond between friends, in which the other, God, is not a "thing" that you may have, but a Person with whom a relationship deepens.

3. Staying human beings in communion with God. While in deep communion with God, in prayer we remain human beings, that is to say with the precise meaning of his distance from God himself. Never be lost persuasion of their dissimilarity from Him, we dialogue with the Lord by bringing our misery, our being sinners.

What sense is there to pray ...

I conclude by trying to answer an objection that is sometimes encountered in dialogue with people of faith or not; with Christians who neglect prayer as well as with those who devoted care and attention. It happens to hear that ask: "What is the point to pray, so if God already knows what we need? Should we not do the will of God? And then: what matters to pray, since, in the end, we must do what he wants?”. It is not my intention to respond in a definitive and complete way. I suggest, however, is the idea that the Lord Himself wants that we are praying, because our relationship with Him is the ratio of two freedoms at stake. Before the Lord we are not as an inert heck, devoid of desires and dreams. Before God we are as free people, who guard the heart of projects, ideas, desires, too many often unspoken needs. And God does not ask us to cancel all this, but to enter into dialogue with him as people wishing and dreaming, in our willingness to allow "re-appea " every panting of the heart by the strokes of that love that we have been fully revealed in the Son Jesus.

Antonio Ramina
Lecturer of Faculty of Theology -Triveneto
Convento Sant’Antonio Dottore
Via San Massimo 25 - 35129Padova
antonio.ramina@ppfmc.it

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