OF MANTRAS, MARY, MASS - AND MELBOURNE

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"Ah, Julia, technology foils us again !"

Leo Leitch is nothing if not determined. It seems I overlooked or accidentally binned the following missive received from him God knows how long ago.

"As for “constant prayer” ", Leo continues, "you and I have been writing of petitioning prayer... What strikes me as perhaps a little irrational is (1) the idea that we should need to ask God to do or provide that which “accords with His will”.  

J: Do you mean, Leo, that God should automatically and always implement His will?

In that scenario, where is our human will? Should we not then be reduced to the status of puppets? 

What opportunity would we have for overcoming our innate weakness and doing good, and so coming closer to Christ? His will is that we become holy, and we can't become holy if we expect Him to do all the hard yards. 

God didn't create us to be automatons. He  created us human but with the potential to become divine. He gives us the immense privilege of becoming his children and as a Father he expects and wills our collaboration in establishing his kingdom. God has organized things so that some of the graces we need for our salvation depend on our prayer. 

L: Perhaps you are thinking in the sense that we pray in the Pater Noster that “Thy will be done on Earth”.  If so, His will is not being done on Earth, certainly not manifestly. 

J: It's not really my business that God's will isn't manifestly being done on earth. My business is to do God's will myself.

L: If you shall ask Me anything in My name, that I will do” – not apparent.

J: Unfortunately for 'extremely opinionated' people like myself, the first condition of the granting of prayer made in Jesus' name is humility. We are "unprofitable servants" and the only good we can achieve, for all our striving and self-congratulation, has been achieved already by Jesus crucified. He's beaten us to it.

The second condition for having prayer granted is complete confidence in Jesus' achievement on the Cross, through which we can be granted all good.  

L: And (2) the notion that we need to be petitioning God constantly to get anything done.  

J: Hardly. It's just that the more we pray to God, the more we love him, and the more effective our prayer will be.

L: Is He hard of hearing ? 

J: No.   

L: Or is He just getting old and slow ? 

J: No.   

L: Or is He just being difficult ? 

J: No. It's we who are difficult. 

L: As I’ve written before, any loving human father would quickly respond to a (i.e., one) reasonable request from his child.    If his child asked for a loaf of bread, he would not give her a stone.

J: And as I've written before (see above) God wills our collaboration in our sanctification. Otherwise we couldn't be sanctified. 

The unpalatable truth is that suffering is necessary for our salvation. St Therese of the Child Jesus said, "We are here to suffer". Our model is Christ despised and rejected, Christ crucified, Christ abused in the Eucharist and abandoned in the tabernacle. To enter heaven we must be conformed to Christ. So why should we expect a perpetual picnic?

L: God set Adam and Eve down to enjoy Paradise (the Garden of Eden) forever.    There was no indication at that point that their lives were to be spent constantly praying.

J: God set them down to enjoy Paradise in the Divine Will. At that point they were indeed praying without ceasing, because they were filled with God. But they chucked the Divine Will and opted for their own miserable human will instead. 

To regain the Divine Will we should be 'constantly praying'. Not down-on-our-knees praying, but doing-everything-for-God's-glory praying.

 L: He made us to know Him, to love Him, to serve Him here on Earth, and to be happy with Him forever in Heaven.    Likewise, we have children.    And we don’t expect our children to be constantly praising us nor constantly having to beg us for their needs.

J: I should think not. Because unlike God we are not perfect and so not deserving of praise. And God doesn't want us begging for our needs. He wants us loving him, which means loving others, and so begging for their needs rather than our own.

L: For myself, I interpret God’s plan as not having changed. 

J: Of course not. God doesn't change and neither does his plan.   

L: He wants us to enjoy our lives, while never forgetting that we owe it to Him. 

J: And we enjoy our lives to the extent that we love him. And never forget that we are fixed for all eternity in the degree of love we have for God when we die. That is the degree of God we will enjoy for all eternity. If we have loved God little, our eternal joy will be little. If we have loved Him greatly, our happiness will be accordingly great.

L: Thus we serve Him, by honouring Him at all times (that’s not what most might call praying, certainly it’s not petitioning), and by striving to do and proclaim His will.

J: No, honouring Him at all times is not what most might call praying, but it's what He told us to do: "Pray always".

L: It can be easy sometimes to think that He’s not pulling His weight.

J: Because we're not pulling ours.

L: And, as for praying, I’m not at all inclined to follow Church recommendations as to, say, the Rosary.    By which I mean meditating on sundry “Mysteries” while reciting, almost unconsciously, the words.

J: Horses for courses. 

L: I get a wee bit annoyed at Mass when the Confiteor is recited, and my fellow congregants speak to me without making the least effort to look at me.  

J: I  see the Confiteor as proclaiming my Catholic faith to God and affirming my faith to the people around me.   

L: Well, I know that they are, in fact, not speaking to me at all.     They are simply reciting words while thinking of something else entirely – what they have to buy at the supermarket on the way home, etc.    The words of the Confiteor, “and you, my brothers and sisters”, might as well be “fly me to the moon”.

J: Now, now, Leo. You're not judging, are you? Or are you a mind-reader? 

L: Shakespeare had one of his characters lament “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.   Words without thoughts never to Heaven go.”   On the button.

J: Words recited as a mantra in contemplation certainly do to Heaven go. Shakespeare may have been a genius but he wasn't a contemplative.

L: The celebrated convert, Scott Hahn, was asked how he dealt with the Rosary, relative to its quite unProtestant repetitive litany.     His response was along the lines that no woman ever got tired of being praised.

J: Scott Hahn sounds rather flippant to me. Not to say irreverent. 

L: But how flattering is it to a woman or anyone to have someone saying flattering things about her, to her, while the flatterer’s mind is manifestly on something else ?

J: Flattery is never flattering. The Blessed Virgin Mary is perfect. She has no need of flattery and in the Rosary she doesn't get it anyway.

L: Do you know anyone who recites the Rosary while carefully trying to think of what s/he is saying ?  

J: Yes I do. And I'm not counting the saints. Or myself.

L: Well, you do know me, in this cyberspace way.    But, because of my insistence on this, I change the words of the Hail Mary anyway.

Like the Pater Noster, the Hail Mary starts with praise/flattery so as, it seems, to butter up Our Lady and make her feel well-disposed towards the pray-er, then it follows up with asking her for a favour (and not even a “please”). 

J: To me, the first part of the Hail Mary is a statement of fact.  And a small child has no need of saying 'please' to their mother to get her to hear. 

L: The sort of pitch that an insurance salesman might use.    Surely, Our Lady is not fooled these days !

J: She never was. Being conceived without original sin, the BVM possesses divine intelligence. 

L: So, I’m quite against anything that distracts one from the words of any prayer.  

J: As I noted above, horses for courses. We pray as we can. (I forget who said that first. Certainly not I.) 

L: Perhaps Claudius’s lament explains why we see around us very little evidence that prayers are being answered.

J: I hope I might have done a little better than Claudius.

Enough !    Perhaps you will, unlike our bishops, respond to this missive.

As you see, Leo, I have. At last.

And as it's past eleven p m and I still have to wash my hair (aaaRGH!) and as at 8.30 in the morning we leave for Melbourne and I haven't finished packing the bag, and as 'im indoors is coming out and going with me to Melbourne, this is the last missive I'll respond to, and the last post and gratuitous insults I will make, for 10 days.

The beautiful reason for Melbourne, apart from being with our son, is to be with a dear Kiwi friend making her First Profession in the Order of Our Lady of Mt Carmel, on Sunday.

Please pray for Michele.