1/29/2021
“Everything in private”
If you’re not praying, then forget about it.
I’ll mention a few other names for what I mean by praying—these names are not my own, they’re borrowed from the patrimony of the church—in other words they’re yours. They consist of the distilled wisdom of centuries of saints and of masters of the spiritual life and of regular folks, like you and me, who have tried and failed and tried again to pray.
“Praying” or prayer is referred to as the “life of prayer,” or one’s “prayer life.”
For starters, it’s an action that is constitutively relational. That is, we only “do it,” we only pray in relation with another other than ourselves. It’s not “mindfulness” or the mere silencing of our minds and hearts in order to get in touch with ourselves. If our prayer is primarily about ourselves—we’re not praying. Prayer only exists in relation to God.
The reality of God is essential to prayer. If God is not real then man cannot pray. If man can pray then God is real.
Here we hear, as Jesus began to use his parables, that he also explained all that meant by them to his own “in private.” What is excluded by this preference for privacy? Man’s disordered affection for himself and his own kind. This disordered affection leads man to make a poor rendering to God of what he rightly deserves, replacing it instead with a disgusting mockery. Not good.
Think of it—God wants private time with us. God wants to pray with us.
