Have you ever read something or heard something that sounds familiar, but you just cannot place where or when it was that you heard this before? Have you seen a movie or visited a place that strikes a familiar yet inexplicable chord within you? This intuition or resonance of truth that you are experiencing is something that you may not be able to identify but you just ‘know’ that it is true. It may feel as if you are receiving something spoken to you in this experience and intuitively understanding even though you may not be able to express what it is that you are receiving. There is this sense of being touched, of being spoken to, of receiving something given of which you have no control over. There is nothing that you could have done or even could do to solicit this experience, and yet you trust. There seems to be nothing to say about it. It is deep resonance and trust given in this moment!

In today’s Gospel (Mt 6:7-15), Jesus enjoins his disciples not to ‘babble’ when praying from an assumption that the mere multiplication of words will ensure being heard. Indeed, Jesus tells them that “Your Father knows what you need before you ask.” Then, we hear the beautiful transmission of the Lord’s Prayer by Jesus to the disciples.

“This is how you are to pray:

Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name,
thy Kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.”

There is an overarching sense in the words of the Lord’s Prayer that our stance is not one simply of petition, but more of reception. In other words, Jesus is telling us that the basis for prayer or dialogue with God is already at once trusting that God knows what it is that we need.

This extraordinary prayer of receptivity is the humble yet powerful expression of trust in a Divine Parent who creates, loves, gives, forgives and leads us from our first moment to the hour of our death and beyond. Jesus is intimately sharing with his disciples and with us this deep relationship of love that he experiences with the Father. And it is in this context alone that all our needs are fulfilled.

This is not a replacement for specific prayers of petition, but instead it provides the loving context for them. Our prayers are powerful expressions of our yearnings in life, but they are perhaps first and foremost the resounding in our own lives of God’s infinite yearning love for us. In other words, in authentic prayer, we ourselves are echoing God’s loving address to us personally and communally in creation!   In trust, we are expressing our sometimes small hopes by releasing them into the infinitely wide will of a God whose deepest yearning is to be in communion with us!   And how many infinite ways can this communion (kingdom) come? Jesus the Christ… and then on and on and on! Thy kingdom come!

Thus says the LORD:
Just as from the heavens
the rain and snow come down
And do not return there
till they have watered the earth,
making it fertile and fruitful,
Giving seed to the one who sows
and bread to the one who eats,
So shall my word be
that goes forth from my mouth;
It shall not return to me void,
but shall do my will,
achieving the end for which I sent it.

Isaiah (Is 55:10-11), in the above passage, beautifully describes the divine intention of this deep yearning of our God as the Word that shall not come back or return until it has echoed into our everyday lives, reverberating and expanding in fullness, providing us with our daily bread in sometimes obvious, but many time hidden ways – sometimes pleasant and sometimes painful ways. Again, it is a question of trusting and receiving the ‘return.’

The difficulty that we face is perhaps the reluctance to trust and accept the ‘return’ we receive from God because it is not in line with what we had hoped for in the first place. This is where the painful seeds of transformation in our relationship with God can begin to slowly break ground. The losses that we inevitably experience in our lives – many times senseless or as the result of what seems to have been inflicted upon us by others – can be devastatingly difficult to reconcile in our lives. To say or hear that this or that life-changing or death event is the will of God just cannot adequately address the abyssmal depth of the experience.

In fact, we can struggle with resentment and confusion for long periods of time before we can begin to see how God’s ‘will’ is not about prevention and preservation, but more about sustenance and compassion. The ‘watering of the earth’ can feel like a drowning flood many times, but the transformed eyes of a forgiving heart can eventually see the new yet unexpected life that is truly the will of God! And, more often than not, it is the hand of another that allows us to forgive the return or outcome of our prayer, to forgive God, to forgive others, to forgive ourselves. . It is hard to realize that God’s will is already here, we just have to discover it in the wider kingdom, which moves us away from self-centeredness and towards the Divine center.

There are no boundaries in God’s will, because it is the infinite divine longing for us to be in communion with God, i.e., to recognize that God is with us IN everything and IN everyone, regardless of what our preferences may be. This relationship of awareness comes with a price tag of engagement – the responsibility to allow ourselves to be broken open in order to create the space for something or someone else – an Other’s will.

When we can begin to let go of our small wills, we can fall into the infinitely wide embrace that holds us together in the Divine ‘home’ reverberating through our lives always.   We can begin to attune our lives to the Divine Will, which is nothing other than the resonance of God’s Love echoing always in the everyday moments of our lives. Then truth becomes not about the expected ‘return’ or measurable outcomes in our lives, but about receiving and resounding in trust the only relationship that can sustain and transform us in and through all things!

Peace,
Thomas

                        (Originally published February 20, 2018)