Bonding With Christ Through Prayer

 

Deacon Dave · Bonding With Christ Through Prayer

Homily for the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 25, 2023. Reading: Gospel of St. Matthew 10:26-33. Theme: Bonding With Christ Through Prayer 

In today's Gospel we heard some sayings of Jesus that are pretty easy to understand at face value. Well, maybe the first one about shouting from the housetops needs a little bit of explaining. Back in those days news was spread by literally shouting it from housetop to housetop throughout the village for all to hear. So, Jesus is saying that He has come for everyone and not just an exclusive few. His Message is not to be kept secret because it is good news for everyone. And so He’s telling the disciples to go out and make some noise about the Gospel! 

But it was the last saying, the one about acknowledging Jesus in public, that really got my attention. Because when persecution or opposition or ridicule for being Christian comes our way, not if but when, then only a truly deep personal bond with Jesus will give us what it takes to stand up for Him. So, it seems to me that if we discern that our relationship with Jesus isn't at that level of deep bonding, then we need to get it there. 

And we can do this by looking at how we build any significant relationship in our lives. How do we become friends with anyone? How do we fall in love with someone? How do they become so much a part of us that life without them sounds and seems unbearable? Well, I think the answer is obvious. We get to know them. We intentionally spend quality time with them, opening ourselves up honestly from the heart. We speak and we listen. We share and we ponder what has been learned. When this happens in our human relationships, psychology calls it “bonding”. When it happens in our relationship with God, Christianity calls it “prayer”. 

However, for most of us the word “prayer” doesn’t conjure up images of friends spending time together. Instead it usually makes us think of speaking, talking, telling, and asking. Too often when we pray we engage in what can be called “One-Way Prayer” which means going on and on with God about this or that in my life. It’s me doing all the talking. But the kind of prayer that begins to form a deep bond with Christ can be called “Two-Way Prayer”. This implies that along with speaking we also listen and allow time for God to have His say. In other words, prayer becomes a person-to-person conversation. 

Now, most of us have no problem engaging in a conversation with someone, but I think we tend to flounder a bit when that Someone is Christ. And I think a big part of the reason for this is that He is Someone who, though risen and very much alive, is at the same time invisible. However, faith assures us that He is indeed present to us and desires to speak with us. And so we can approach prayer in the same way that we would arrange a get-together with any friend. First, we need to make the time for it, perhaps even schedule it into our day. We need to arrange a meeting place, which can be anywhere that will allow us to engage in our conversation with God uninterrupted. And finally, we have to do our best to leave distractions behind so as to focus on Who we are with. 

So it’s important that our prayer takes place in an atmosphere of silence because the voice of Christ is most clearly heard in the quiet of our hearts and in the stillness of our minds. We begin our prayer time by relaxing and calming down inside. Silence helps us to do this. We recall that God is present within us because Jesus said, “He who loves me obeys my word and My Father and I will love him and come to dwell within him.” Then we take up the Bible or some other solid spiritual book and choose a passage. We go over it slowly, thoughtfully. The point here is not to study or gather information. Rather, the point is to ponder what the Word of God might mean for me, right here and right now in my life as it is today. We speak to the Lord and share our thoughts about it. And while we are pondering these things in silence we keep the ears of our hearts and minds open so as to receive what God might want to say to us, what direction He might wish to give us. 

And that raises an important question: how does God speak to us? It’s kind of difficult to explain but experience shows that He typically communicates by means of thoughts, words or images that come to mind during prayer and impress themselves upon us. The more a person grows in the experience of prayer the more they will learn to recognize these things. And this discernment is very important because the messages we receive can indeed be from God, but they can also come from ourselves or from an evil spirit, all three are possible sources. But we can learn to tell the difference because a message from God never contradicts His Word revealed to us in Scripture. It brings with it a deep sense of inner peace and spiritual joy, even when the message challenges us to do something demanding or difficult. Also, God’s voice would never lead us to do anything that would get in the way of fulfilling our legitimate obligations in life. 

The saints are unanimous in saying that we need to have a deep spiritual experience of Christ in order to form a tight bond with Him. Without a personal conviction that Jesus is risen and alive and very much interested in my life, religion will be practiced only at the level of rules and rituals. But to those who cultivate the seeds of prayer, these rules and rituals will become encounters with God through HIs Church, through both Word and Sacrament. These experiences will deepen our bond with Jesus and strengthen us to acknowledge Him publicly before others. 

One of the Church’s greatest mystics, St. Teresa of Avila, taught Two-Way prayer to many people as part of her special mission in the Church. She would remind them that it takes time, patience and perseverance but that attaining union with God through prayer is the pearl of great price and the treasure buried in a field that Jesus says is worth finding. She left behind this piece of advice, “Do not stop along the road of learning how to pray. Be strong and fight for it…because you were put here on this earth for no greater reason than to know and love God. And you will do this most effectively by persevering in conversation with Him.”