By Fr. Roy Cimagala *
IF we understand that prayer is what keeps us always in
contact with God who is the very essence of love, then we should
realize that we indeed need to pray all the time. Prayer should not be
understood merely as some spiritual exercise that we do only at
certain moments of the day.
It has to be our very life itself. Everything in our life
should be an act of prayer, including our sleeping. Our very
consciousness, our breathing and heartbeat should be converted into
prayer.
Obviously, we need some training for this. But it should be
a training that would enable us precisely to convert everything into
prayer. Even when we work, whether of the white-collar or blue-collar
type of work, whether intellectual or manual, etc., we should be
praying. That is to say, we should maintain our contact with God and
channel what he has, his will and his ways, in all our daily affairs.
In that way we can reflect God’s love in all the situations,
circumstances, predicaments, challenges in our life, etc. This love,
of course, is concretely shown to us by Christ whose life and teaching
we should truly learn and assimilate. Not only is Christ showing or
teaching it to us. He is giving it to us by giving his own self,
especially in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, if we also
understand well the significance of the sacrament.
When we pray, we are actually assuming the very mind and
heart of Christ who is the personification of prayer himself. His life
was fully offered to the Father, spending it entirely in obeying the
will of the Father who wants us to return to him, since we are his
image and likeness that was damaged by our sin.
In other words, we can say that we are truly praying when we
would have the same sentiments of Christ. His desires, his mission,
his ways of doing things, especially in loving everyone, including the
enemies, his willingness to bear all our sins through his suffering
and death, should also be ours.
So, if we want to be truly in love and to keep that love
burning, we need to be authentic persons of prayer. We need to be like
Christ, to be “alter Christus” (another Christ) if not “ipse Christus”
(Christ himself). And that is not a fantastic, baseless assertion,
because that is what is truly meant for us. There is no other formula
for love.
We need to understand very well the intimate relation
between praying and loving, and between our loving and becoming
Christ-like. That is where true love can be found, and no other. We
may have to do a bit of explaining for this, but I think it is all
worthwhile to do so, especially these days when many people,
especially the young ones, have a very deficient understanding of
love.
We have to reassure everyone that when we actually learn to
truly pray, we will enjoy the ideal condition of our life, and such
condition will remain so whatever the situation and circumstances of
our life would be or wherever our life would lead us.
Prayer keeps us in contact with God who will empower us to
love truly. It would help us keep a right focus and sense of direction
and purpose of our life.
* Chaplain Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City
Email: roycimagala@gmail.com
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