February 2020

The disciples asked the Lord to teach them to pray. In fact, it is the Lord who leads the way every time we pray, and He teaches us how to pray. Without Him prayer is not possible and without Him we would be simply talking to ourselves or talking to nothing.

“I went to pray but nothing happened. I just sat there. After a little while, I started to feel uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure what to say. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if anyone was listening anyway. I tried to talk to God, but I just heard the echo of my own thoughts.

Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, personifies true reform in the image of “the wonderer.” He notes that this sense of wonder, when it comes to ecclesial renewal, lies in the realization that the Church is not something made by men, but is “given to us all.” The “wonderer” is not preoccupied with an overemphasis on the Church or idealistic visions of what the Church could be; rather, he consistently looks to God, unites himself to God, and desires that God be known today. Wonder says “no” to empirical confinement and “prepares man for the act of faith, which opens him to the horizon of the eternal and infinite. And only the unlimited is large enough for our nature and in accord with the call of our essential being.”  

Who can discover that this pathway of truth, beauty, and goodness—even though it passes through the valley of the shadow of death—leads ultimately to that end? The baptized liturgist. What does the resurrected soul discover when the world is done the way it was meant to be done? That what is inward, below, and given for present enjoyment is only a pathway to this seat on high.