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June 17, 2024The meaning of the year of prayer in preparation for the jubilee
Today’s assembly, first of all, gives us the opportunity to reflect on the year of prayer, desired by Pope Francis in preparation for the jubilee 2025 in which we remember the incarnation of the Lord after more than two thousand years. Why did the Pope invite everyone to pray with greater intensity and fidelity?
In the book that accompanies this Jubilee year, published by the Holy See, there are very precious indications on the meaning of prayer and its different forms. The invitation is to live this year by strengthening the prayer dimension of Christian life. The Christians have in prayer, one of the constitutive pillars of their experience. The Christian prays personally and communally.
The invitation that Pope Francis addresses to us is to rediscover the right place of prayer in our lives, considering it not just something spontaneous, momentary, or extraordinary, but constant. The invitation is to adopt the right rhythm of prayer in our daily life.
In our Apostolic Vicariate, the year of prayer was interwoven with the extraordinary jubilee of Saint Arethas and his fellow martyrs. In fact, in our Apostolic Vicariate, from 9 November 2023 until 22 September of this year every day in our churches and in our homes, we are called to pray for the intercession of these Martyrs. In this way the prayer is referred to those Christians who before us inhabited this land and gave their testimony of faith to the point of giving their lives. In this case the Jubilee prayer teaches us to recognize ourselves as part of a long history of Christian faithful who have inhabited the Arabian Peninsula.
Praying to God and praying through the holy martyrs of Najran asking for their intercession for us leads us to recognize that we are part of the Church that lives in this part of the world. The Jubilee Prayer unites us as a Church. Even though we come from different nations, we recognize ourselves as part of this history of the Church which has its roots in the Apostolic preaching, as Saint Paul himself came to Arabia, and in the testimony of the martyrs.
In this way the year of prayer experienced in our Vicariate strengthens our awareness of being members of this Church and of having the task of bearing witness. The risen Christ, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, makes us his witnesses, and thus, the Gospel is communicated from witness to witness throughout the history of the Church. The Gospel does not spread through proselytism but through testimony, as Benedict XVI and Pope Francis unanimously affirm.
From this perspective I briefly recall the constitutive and inspiring elements of Christian prayer which should characterize every Christian aware of their vocation to be a missionary and witness, but which certainly qualifies in a particular way in those who intensely live an ecclesial experience like yours, as an association of faithful Jesus Youth.
Holiness and prayer
There are many references to the magisterial texts. All of the recent Popes have spent a lot of time, concretely calling for the practice of prayer in its various forms. For my part, I will refer to some passages found in a very important document of the pontificate of Pope Francis: Gaudete et Exultate.
This is not a text about prayer but about holiness, about the vocation to holiness in the contemporary world. In fact, I think that the original context of the discovery of prayer for our life is the vocational one and in particular in reference to the vocation to holiness that concerns every baptized person.
Also to grasp the connection between prayer and mission, prayer and evangelization, it is necessary to root prayer itself in the baptismal life which constitutes the original call to holiness. Only by rediscovering this fundamental call we can grasp the connection with specific Christian vocations: to marriage, to the consecrated life and to the ministerial priesthood. If we lose the awareness of being baptized, everything else becomes dry and functional.
Among the many statements of Pope Francis in Gaudete et Exultate, I would like to recall in n. 147 where it is said: “holiness is made of habitual openness to transcendence, which is expressed in prayer and adoration. The saint is a person with a prayerful spirit, who needs to communicate with God. He is someone who cannot bear to suffocate in the closed immanence of this world, and in the midst of his efforts and his giving of himself he sighs for God, he comes out of himself in praise and broadens one's boundaries in contemplation of the Lord. I don't believe in holiness without prayer, even if it doesn't necessarily involve long moments or intense feelings."
The saints cannot bear to live as if God did not exist, the saints cannot bear to have God excluded from their life or made merely private. For the saints, the question of God is the human question par excellence.
Using the language of monastic and religious life, which is so dear to Benedict XVI, it must be said that man experiences freedom when he/she can live the search for the face of God. The saint cannot reduce his/her desire to happiness and fulfillment: the saint is a person who wants to be free to seek God.
Now, what is the most expressive sign of this human yearning? Pope Francis places this openness to transcendence in the prayerful dimension of Christian life: prayer and adoration.
The desire for transcendence is not a part of the saint's life, it is rather a tension that characterizes every breath of his day. For this reason, the Pope does not only speak generically about prayer, but about constant prayer, which needs explicit gestures of prayer but lives above all from its permanent character, like a karst river (subterranean river which flows at least partially under the bed of the earth) that fills with water in the depths of the earth and then emerges into life at the right time.
In this regard, it is impossible not to refer to sacred writing, in those passages where this constant dimension of prayer is affirmed. I would like to refer first of all to the Pauline context, to two passages of his letters: first to 1Thess 5:15-21, his context is eschatological:
"See to it that no one repays evil for evil to anyone, but always seek good among yourselves and with everyone. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit, do not despise the prophecies. Sift everything and keep what is good.”
Here the invitation of the apostle of the Gentiles is precisely that of praying uninterruptedly, without stopping. It is a request to have prayer as the cornerstone of Christian life, which allows us to live charity with everyone, to be happy, and enables us to live the great discernment in reality: sifting everything and keeping what is good.
The second text is always Pauline, it is Rom 12:9-13 : here too the context is that of a holy life in love:
"Let not charity be hypocritical: hate evil, be attached to good; love one another with brotherly affection, compete in esteeming one another. Do not be lazy in doing good, but be fervent in spirit; serve the Lord. Be joyful in hope, constant in tribulation, persevering in prayer."
The invitation is specifically to perseverance in prayer. Prayer intertwines the hope for good with tribulation, with the fatigue of existence.
Finally, the evangelical parable of Luke 18:1-8, taught by Jesus precisely in order to instruct his disciples on the need to always pray and never get tired. This is the widowed woman who asks a dishonest judge with extraordinary insistence to do justice against her adversary, until she manages to shake her resistance, thanks to her persistent asking:
[And the Lord added]: "Listen to what the dishonest judge says. And will not God do justice to his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he make them wait a long time? I tell you that he will do justice to them promptly. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"
Persevering prayer is effective, it wraps daily tribulation in the beneficial cloak of hope. However, from Jesus' conclusion there seems to be a decisive assumption: prayer must be done with faith, with hope in the one who completes what he has begun.
The enemies of prayer: Pelagianism and Gnosticism
Pope Francis in Gaudete et Exultate also talks to us about two enemies of prayer who can block our spiritual path and make our evangelization inauthentic. Pope Francis refers to two temptations, which was present also in the first centuries of Christianity: Pelagianism and Gnosticism.
Pelagianism is a heresy of a monk who lived in the time of Saint Augustine; it is the temptation to rely on one's moral abilities without taking into account that we are all wounded by original sin and are always sinners, in need of grace. When we believe we are spiritually self-sufficient and rely on our moral abilities, we stop praying because we expect strength from ourselves and no longer from God. Maybe we continue to pray but we don't expect anything from God.
The other temptation is that of Gnosticism, that is, that of relying on our strategies, on our pastoral strategies, on our perfect theories on the poor and on the world to be evangelized. We trust our own thoughts and forget about Christ. Even the Gnostic does not pray, does not beg, does not ask because they rely on their own thoughts and not on the grace of God.
The center of prayer: filial prayer
What overcomes the two temptations that block prayer? Recognize that we are creatures and that we are sinners, recognize that we are chosen by God, and we are not authors of our own life. For this reason, the Christian image of prayer is centered on Jesus and is characterized by identifying ourselves with Jesus in his relationship with the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit.
True Christian prayer is Trinitarian: we are called to be sons and daughters of God, made participants in the relationship that Jesus has with the Father. Our missionary impetus and our desire to evangelize the world must be experienced as participation in the mission that Jesus received from his Father and in which He himself makes us a participant: "as the Father loved me, so I have loved you; as the Father sent me, so I send you, receive the Holy Spirit."
Here is a summary of the structure of Christian prayer. Participate in the feelings of Jesus towards the Father in the vibrant breath of the Spirit.
a) Eucharist
And how do we participate in this unique relationship that Jesus has with the Father? Jesus himself established the way: first of all, we are incorporated into Christ through baptism and animated by the Holy Spirit in the Sacrament of Confirmation.
But above all it is the celebration of the Eucharist that is at the center of Christian prayer. The Eucharist is the true Christian worship of God, because it is participation in the offering that Christ makes of himself to the Father for the salvation of the world.
Every other Christian prayer must find its model and its form in the Eucharist. What is not directly or indirectly related to the Eucharist can hardly be considered Christian prayer. Through constant participation in the Eucharist, Christ conforms us to himself and makes us participants in his prayer towards the heavenly Father.
As Saint Augustine said: by nourishing ourselves with the Eucharist we ourselves are transformed into the body of Christ, we become the Eucharist, we ourselves become bread broken for the world.
There is nothing more powerful to live the Christian mission in the world than living the Eucharist intensely. All the other sacraments also find their meaning around Eucharist: reconciliation reintroduces us ever more deeply into communion with Christ, freeing us from sin.
The sacrament of marriage and Holy Orders give us the form of stable Christian life with which to live our mission as disciples and witnesses. Even suffering becomes participation in the mission of Christ the Redeemer through the sacrament of the anointing of the sick.
b) The Word of God
In the Eucharistic celebration we also find reference to the word of God which is proclaimed and celebrated. The word of God in the Eucharistic celebration is understood as a word that becomes flesh and nourishment. In the celebration, as the Sacrosanctum concilium reminds us in n. 7, when the word of God is proclaimed, it is Christ himself who addresses us in the present. It is not a word from the past, but a present word that moves us and enables us to carry out the evangelizing mission.
c) Our Father
Furthermore, in the Eucharist we find the prayer of the children of God that the Lord has given us and where it becomes evident that only as children can we be missionaries and evangelizers.
The ‘Our Father’ expresses our deepest nature: to exist means to be children, to recognize ourselves as loved and wanted by God, chosen for a task, called for a mission.
The fundamental feeling of life for every person is being wanted. Nothing can replace the awareness of being loved, chosen and sent. If we lack the certainty of being loved, in the mission we seek only ourselves and not the good of others.
For this reason, Christian prayer continually tends to provoke in us a change of mentality, a new way of understanding and feeling life. Prayer helps us learn to have in ourselves the same feelings that were in Christ Jesus. Jesus' fundamental feeling is that of being a son for whom the Father and his plan of salvation are everything.
d) Meditation and Adoration
Here we discover the fundamental meaning of meditation on the word of God and Eucharistic adoration. When we meditate on the word of God, we prolong the experience of the celebration of proclamation of the word, so that this word takes root in us as a word that mobilizes and calls to mission.
In the same way, Eucharistic adoration is the personal and community extension of the celebration. In particular I would like to invite you to consider adoration as the extension of the final doxology when the priest sings: “through Him with Him in Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honour are yours, forever and ever”. This is the synthesis of our missionary vocation: in fact we are called to live for Christ, with Christ, and in Christ: this is the form of Christian life.
e) The prayer of the Church
Do not forget that the Eucharist is not celebrated alone, it needs a minister, and it needs the Church. The Church is always from the Eucharist, the source and summit of the Church. This is how it is with the mission of evangelizing, no one is sent alone, we are always invited as the Church, as the people of God, as members of the body of Christ.
For this reason, I invite you to give great value to a fundamental prayer that has accompanied the Church since the beginning, and which is rightly called the prayer of the Church: I am referring to the liturgy of the hours. It is no coincidence that this is the prayer that is recited by all priests and all consecrated people as part of their mission.
You who are a movement at the service of the mission of the Church cannot avoid being fully entering into the prayer of the Church which is the liturgy of the hours, where we encounter hymns, psalms, and passages of the Scripture.
The Fathers of the Church recommended the recitation of the psalms, to read them from a Christological perspective, as the word of Christ and of the Church. In the psalms you find all types of possible feelings, you find joy and lament, questioning and thanksgiving in the form of prayer. I invite you to make the prayer of the Church as your own, at least the morning and evening prayer.
Conclusion: the prayer and the Holy Spirit
I conclude with a decisive reference to the gift of the Holy Spirit: to live Christian prayer and the Christian mission we need to be moved by the Holy Spirit. He is the secret director of the history of salvation, the one who implements the Father's plan in history. Everything happens through the gift of the Holy Spirit.
He is the Spirit of children, He is the unity between Father and Son, He makes us sons and daughters with equal dignity, he purifies us, guides us in the mission and makes us docile to the will of the Father. In the Holy Spirit we can cry “Abba Father”. It is the Spirit that makes us missionaries and evangelizers.
This is the same Spirit who acts in the sacraments of the Church; this is the same Spirit that inspired the sacred Scriptures, this is the same Spirit that allows us to understand the Scriptures, this is the same Spirit that distributes the charisms among the people of God so that they can always be ready to live the mission of the Church at every moment of history in different cultures and nations.
I invite you to reread your charism as a gift that allows you to appropriate the richness of prayer in the Church in an original way. Charisms are not a force parallel to Sacred Scriptures and the Sacraments. Charisms allow us to bear more fruit from the grace of the Sacraments because they move our lives towards cordial adherence to the Gospel.
Thank you very much for your Christian testimony, for being a movement at the service of the Church. You are an international association of faithful of pontifical right. I invite you to truly live up to what the Church has recognized in you, overcoming boundaries and partiality to truly be at the service of the whole Church.
And for this reason, there is nothing better than deeply experiencing the prayer of the Church in all its aspects. Only those who pray can be missionaries and bring Christ to others and not themselves.
I entrust you to the Most Holy Virgin, to Mary, Mother of Jesus, and mother of the Church. She knew how to be docile to the Spirit, she knew how to welcome the word of God and offer it to the whole world. May she help you to be at the service of the Church and docile to the Holy Spirit, fruitful missionaries, and tenacious evangelizers. Amen.
+ Paolo Martinelli OFM Cap.
Apostolic Vicar of Southern Arabia
