Prayer Reflection: Fidelity is Fecundity

Today in Rome, we are celebrating the beatification of Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916). A solitary man who sought God, replied to the voice of God calling him to be in the wilderness. His life was transformed by His grace. My Jesus, allow me your grace to transform my life also. Let me hear your voice more clearly amidst the noises I hear, day in and day out. Just a while ago, before I went here in the chapel of St. Emerentienne, as I was leaving my room, I noticed that the lights in the toilet were turned on. I felt that pull in me that, to conserve energy I should turn them off, but this bad habit of rationalizing to excuse myself started again. I started thinking that probably someone was inside. But your voice told me to better check it because if there's no one, it's a huge waste of electricity. Plus, it definitely won't cost me much time to check. And so I did. I checked and found that none was there. Lord Jesus, even in small things I see clearly how you always make an effort to guide me. If such be your designs in small things, there is nothing by which I could even think that in big responsibilities, you do not guide my life. The problem really is that I fail to turn an attentive ear to your voice. And even if sometimes I hear your voice, this habitual mechanism of rationalizing to excuse myself commences. And so, another opportunity to conform my will to yours passes unproductively. Allow me not only the grace to hear your voice, but likewise, transform my heart so that it will only seek that which you wish. Allow my pleasure to be your pleasure. Transform me inwardly, from within, by your presence within me.

Today's gospel reading (Mt 25, 14-30) is about the time of reckoning, that at the close of the day, we present ourselves before our friend Jesus and offer to him the fruits of our labors. And he desires that at the end of the day, we have become productive. Not simply for the sake of being productive, but that whatever God had given us, we have made good use of them, and everything put to good use multiplies abundantly. God calls us to be faithful to him, be vigilant for his coming, but it is not a passive vigilance, or a barren fidelity. To be attached to Jesus is to be attached to a trunk of profound productivity; that as a branch to this tree, we cannot but bear fruit, for this trunk is teeming with the natality of grace that exceeds passivity and inaction. Fidelity is fecundity. We cannot remain barren in Jesus who is life. Blessed Charles de Foucauld stove to remain faithful to God, and behold, we are reaping the bountiful fruit of his fidelity--by the hundred fold.

Universal Need for Solitude

I've just started with this blog to start sharing reflections on contemporary people's increasing need for solitude. It is not so much a form of simply being alone from the sometimes imposing and constricting presence of other people, be they be friends or foe, but something much deeper than a simple sense of wanting to be a alone. The solitude of which Bethel speaks is not an escape, but a response to a singular call to be with someone--God. The solitude that Christian tradition speaks of is precisely this, that God lovingly calls us to be with him, to be alone with him.

The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all they had done and taught. And he said to them, "Come away to some lonely place all by yourselves and rest for a while" (Mk. 6: 30-31a).

The practice of spending moments of prayer and silence has been part of the tradition in the Church since her very beginning. From the time when Jesus welcomed back his disciples after sending them on a mission; to the time when St. Anthony of Egypt (c. 251- 356 AD) received the divine call to go to the desert, initiating the hermitic tradition in Christianity; to the formation of monasteries and secluded convents (c. 6th century); up to the present generation, solitude has been the backbone of the spiritual legacy of the Church. The Old Testament narrates of countless instances of “going to the desert” to pray and encounter Yahweh. But the singular model for us remains the solitary figure of Jesus who goes “to the mountain to pray, spending the night in communion with God” (Lk. 6: 12).

To enter into solitude is not a thing that we make when we are already tired and we wish only to rest and be left alone. To enter into solitude is to respond to a call of God who loves us and wants to be with us: “I will lead her into the wilderness: and I will speak to her heart” (Hosea 2: 14).