10 Days

10 Days until I leave for Jerusalem!

I'm working on crafting a pre-departure novena prayer to say up until the day I leave, starting tomorrow. I've searched high and low for one that's already written (a novena for pilgrimage to Jerusalem, that is), but have found none. What I have found, quite interestingly, is that traditionally Psalm 122 has been prayed by Jews and Christians as they approach the Holy City:

Psalm 122

A song of ascents. Of David.

¹ I rejoiced with those who said to me,
"Let us go to the house of the LORD."

² Our feet are standing
in your gates, O Jerusalem.

³ Jerusalem is built like a city
that is closely compacted together.

⁴ That is where the tribes go up,
the tribes of the LORD,
to praise the name of the LORD
according to the statute given to Israel.

⁵ There the thrones for judgment stand,

the thrones of the house of David.

⁶ Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
"May those who love you be secure.

⁷ May there be peace within your walls
and security within your citadels."

⁸For the sake of my brothers and friends,
I will say, "Peace be within you."

⁹ For the sake of the house of the LORD our God,
I will seek your prosperity.

What I also found was Pope Benedict XVI's prayer that he left in the Wailing Wall after his trip to Jerusalem, which is also nice:

God of all the ages,
on my visit to Jerusalem, the "City of Peace",
spiritual home to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike,
I bring before you the joys, the hopes and the aspirations,
the trials, the suffering and the pain of all your people throughout the world.
God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
hear the cry of the afflicted, the fearful, the bereft;
send your peace upon this Holy Land, upon the Middle East,
upon the entire human family;
stir the hearts of all who call upon your name,
to walk humbly in the path of justice and compassion.
"The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul that seeks him!" (Lam 3:25)

Looking at these prayers, and some others I've found, I've realized that the Church and the whole People of God, first, the Jewish people, and then us Christians, have continually prayed for PEACE for Jerusalem. While I go on pilgrimage, I want to keep in mind my own intentions and those intentions which my friends and family have entrusted to me, but also, to pray for the wider intention of peace in the Holy Land. As I travel, I hope I will have the opportunity to visit local Christian communities - to visit communities of Christians that have weathered much persecution throughout the centuries and who still find themselves a minority in a hostile place. Meeting the local Christians in Jerusalem, I hope will inspire me to join them in praying for peace in their homeland. Their intention - and the Pope's intention - will be mine as well.

But at the same time, I want to craft a prayer that is deeply personal, and which also speaks to the great desires of my heart and the ways I want God to work in my life. Consequently, I've also been looking at a number of other prayers that really speak to me in my current situation, including this famous prayer by Thomas Merton:

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that my desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope that I have that desire
in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything
apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this
you will lead me by the right road
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust you always
though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear
for you are with me,
and you will never leave me
to face my perils alone.

I've got to find a way to combine all of these. Wish me luck!

"God Of My Life"

This prayer has really spoken to me lately. I thought I'd share it here.

"God of My Life" - A Prayer By Karl Rahner

Only in love can I find you, my God.
In love the gates of my soul spring open,
allowing me to breathe a new air of freedom
and forget my own petty self.

In love my whole being streams forth
out of rigid confines of narrowness and anxious self-assertion,
which makes me a prisoner of my own poverty and emptiness.
In love all the powers of my soul flow out toward You,
wanting never more to return,
but to lose themselves completely in You,
since by Your love You are the inmost center of my heart,
closer to me than I am to myself.

But when I love You,
when I manage to break out of the narrow circle of self
and leave behind the restless agony of unanswered questions,
when my blinded eyes no longer look merely from afar
and from the outside upon Your unapproachable brightness,
and much more when You Yourself, O Incomprehensible One,
have become through love the inmost center of my life,
Then I can bury myself entirely in You, O mysterious God,
and with myself all my questions.

Prayer, Random Thoughts, and Theology of the Body

There's nothing like a new relationship to motivate you to pray.

I can honestly say that I haven't prayed this much or this intently for a long time. It's not that I don't normally have a prayer life, but for some reason, I find my prayer has become much clearer, much more focused, much more intense since I've started dating.

Perhaps it's because I'm so much out of my comfort zone, I'm finding myself clinging to God, asking Him to calm my nerves and help me just be me. Or maybe it's because I'm scared and I need to learn trust. Mostly, it's because I'm just incredibly thankful right now; I feel like the tenth leper who just got cured and I can't help but run back to Jesus and tell him "THANKS!!!". On the other hand, maybe it's because I really like this person and I really want it to work out between us. Or - maybe I know that this whole thing is in God's hands and unless I surrender my desires, my hopes, my dreams to Him, I'm going to be grasping, and miss the opportunity to receive him as a gift from God.

The last point is something that struck me while I was reading TOB Explained by Christopher West. "The [person] who lives "the gift" recognizes [the other] as a gift to be received both from the hands of the Creator and through the freedom of [the other's] own self-determination as a personal subject. But the [person] who denies the gift does not wait to receive [the other] as a gift. Instead, [one] extorts [the other's] gift; [one] grasps at [the other] instead of receiving [the other]" (TOB Explained, p. 219).

Another point that stuck out to me was that this person does not belong to me. Although in another sense, one can say of one's beloved that there is a sense of belonging; however, "a man and woman can only speak of belonging to each other only by way of analogy." (TOB Explained, p. 205). Ultimately, each of us belongs only to God.

I think what all this means is that the only way we can understand the saying "one belongs to another (the lover to his or her beloved, and vice versa)," that is, to a person other than God, means to say that one has received their beloved as gift from God, and similarly have themselves been given to the other by God. I think one can ultimately say that this is true (most really and profoundly true) only when the two are married to each other. Thus, even as my affection grows, I have to remind myself that the reality in which I currently live is not one of belonging but of hope; of hoping, and patient waiting to see if it is God's will that one day I will receive him as a gift from God.

There is a certain humility required here; a certain acknowledgment that I do not know the plans God has for me, or for him. I do not know what God has in store. I cannot anticipate it, but must patiently wait for the plan to be revealed in the fullness of time. What I've noticed is that this view can sound in many ways similar to a pessimistic realism. But it is quite different in quality, the essential difference between the two views being the theological virtue of hope. Hope is looking forward to the fulfillment of a promise - which is greater even than this present reality. It is the fulfillment of a promise that is beyond our vision (to use a line from Romero's work which I referenced in an earlier post). In that sense, there is a true peace and joy in knowing that whatever happens, God is in control. And the God who holds me and my future in His hand is a God who wills both my good and my happiness.

What a liberating, consoling thought!