Giving Thanks: Pray Without Ceasing

When I was old enough to memorize formal prayers, such as the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Glory Be, Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep, etc., I did so with diligent vigor. I distinctly remember pacing the perimeter of my parents’ bedroom in second grade while reciting the Act of Contrition over and over. And over.

As I grew older and gained the ability to recite these formal prayers with ease, I embraced creativity in my bedtime and mealtime prayers, learning how to pray without using the formalized forms. I began actively pursuing a personal mode of communication with God that incorporated both my own words and those that our brothers and sisters have prayed with over the centuries.

Eventually, I realized that prayer does not have to be composed of words. This is why, in 1 Thessalonians 17, we are called to “pray without ceasing.” What does this mean?

A challenge and a call of ours as Christians is to lift our daily lives to God. When we intentionally dedicate ourselves to our studies and are grateful for our education, we are giving glory to the Lord. When we do good through our extracurriculars, honoring our talents and passions, this is also a form of prayer. Caring for and loving one another is prayerful too; the list goes on and on and on.

We can also pray through menial tasks.

Every Tuesday night, a group of friends comes to my room to share tea, baked goods, and fellowship. This group varies from week to week, but is typically made up of between five and fifteen bodies all crowded into our humble abode and cozied up under various blankets. So much joy has been shared on those Tuesday evenings, so much stress has been (at least temporarily) alleviated, and an inordinate amount of tea is inevitably consumed.

With the tea come the dishes. My friends have often offered to stay behind after the “Tuesday Soiree” is over to help clean up, but my roommate and I always insist that we will gather all of our mugs and wash them ourselves. Admittedly, I do not always look forward to the prolonged process of soaping, rinsing, and drying the 10+ mugs in our room, and often put it off for a while. However, when I finally get down to it, doing Tuesday dishes becomes a meditative act upon the practice of our gathering with friends. It is a small act of service that means that we get to do it again the following week and allows me to reflect on the joy exchanged over the tea we shared.

It recently occurred to me that this weekly thanksgiving and reflection of mine is a form of prayer.

Even something as commonplace as sharing a meal in the dining hall usually involves some sort of bread (or, my gluten free friends out there, a substitute to bread). Breaking bread. “Do this in remembrance of me.” Every meal we share with friends and family reflects the Eucharist. And what does the word “Eucharist” mean? Thanksgiving.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, we are called to “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” In offering up our daily activities to the Lord, even the seemingly insignificant chores, we are entering into ceaseless prayer. 

During this week of great thanksgiving, may we actively engage this call to give thanks through all that we do.

"Here Am I, the Servant of the Lord": Humble Motherhood

How did Mary feel when she found out she was to mother the Son of God?

Terrified…frustrated…uncertain…overwhelmed…beautiful…full of grace...probably a strange assortment of all of these and more.

It certainly could not have felt easy or natural. I find it extremely difficult to imagine an angel of the Lord coming to me and informing me that I am to miraculously be with child and that my child “will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High,” and that “the Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David” (NRSV, Luke 1:32). In fact, Mary probably could not have envisioned this happening to her, either, until it did.

Instead of responding with confusion, incredulity, or fear, though (human reactions to be sure), Mary simply takes a moment to “[ponder] what sort of greeting this might be” upon the salutation of the angel (Luke 1:29). She doesn’t say anything. She just pauses and considers. After her period of reflection upon the news she has just heard, Mary first wonders “how…this [will] be” since she is a virgin, and then goes on to accept the news: ‘“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word”’ (Luke 1:34, 38).

What would this look like in modern society? Mary was not even technically an adult when the angel of the Lord appeared to her. If a teenaged girl approached you tomorrow and announced that she was pregnant sans relations with a man and that her child was the Son of God, would you be able to accept that in stride without blinking an eye? If your answer is yes, please teach me your ways. It would take a great deal of wrestling, pondering, and seeing differently in order for me to come to a point of acceptance if I witnessed such an event.

In his Gospel, Luke is concerned with presenting Mary in a specific way: she has embraced her freedom to ponder, to wonder, and to speak, and so she does so. Flipping back to the story of Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 18, we can recognize Sarah’s barrenness as showing the wonder of God’s work and the power of trust in the Lord. In Genesis 18:14, God says, “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” With this in her heart, Mary wonders. There is a waiting for understanding, but not a fear or a doubt. This paints uncertainty as a beautiful thing in light of God.

Mary is human, so by definition she does not have it all together. But she doesn’t need to due to her utter reliance on the presence and action of God in her life. The other day, I mentioned to one of my good friends that recently I have felt much more comfortable with the uncertainty of my future. I am actively striving to let go of my perfectionist, always-have-to-be-in-control-of-this-situation-and-the-next-one tendencies and hopefully allowing for a more organic process of character formation to occur in the midst of ordinary life as a result of my habituation to a different perspective.

My friend simply nodded in response to my comment, remarking, “We need the question mark.” In the context of Marian Consecration and a close reading of Luke 1, viewing the question mark as a trusting sort of wonder, I absolutely have to agree with her. We have only to respond like Mary did: “Here am I, servant of the Lord” (Luke 1:38).

PFATW: Festival of Lights

Welcome to post #2 of my Prayer From Around the World (PFATW) series!

This past Sunday, I had the privilege of attending the Diwali celebration hosted by Campus Ministry in collaboration with the Indian Association, the Graduate Student Union, and International Student Services. Admittedly, I went into the event knowing little to nothing about Diwali besides the fact that it is the Hindu Festival of Lights. But I like to think that I came out with a little more knowledge (and a bit of personal experience) about this beautiful celebration.

Diwali is a major festival in the Hindu tradition. It “celebrates the triumph of good over evil by commemorating the return of Lord Rama (a popular Hindu deity) from a fourteen year exile and the banishing of the demon Ravana. After the return of their king, the people illuminated the city with lanterns and burst firecrackers in celebration” (1). Thus, the celebration is referred to as the Festival of Lights. The word “Diwali” literally means “a row of lights” (2). Diwali urges participants to acknowledge, celebrate, and focus on the shining of one’s own spiritual light (1).

The event of Diwali itself occurs over a period of several days, but the main celebration takes place on the darkest new moon night of the Hindu month of Kartik (October-November). This year, Diwali fell on October 22^nd in South India, Malaysia and Singapore, and October 23^rd elsewhere (2). The Prayer From Around the World Event took place a couple weeks later, but the same spirit and intent were present in the celebration. This event traditionally brings family and friends together in joyful celebration, and it certainly did so on Sunday.

The evening opened with a communal prayer of peace celebrating the good in the world. We then listened to the recitation of a beautiful prayer in the form of sung word, and then the social aspect began: traditional Indian food was distributed to all present, and we crowded LaFun ballroom with bodies young and old in colorful garb and loud, merry conversation. Later in the evening, a Bollywood-style dance party commenced.

During my last PFATW post, “Let’s Talk Zen,” I wrote about the importance of silence. Looking around the room during our shared meal during Diwali, I found myself reflecting upon a bit of an opposite concept: the significance of community in our faith lives. There is something wonderful and deeply human about joining in community with the ones we love in the simple celebration of life. Diwali acknowledges each individual’s light and goodness while simultaneously bringing people together in community. This reminded me of a quote regarding the nature of human community by Sister Thea Bowman:

“If each one of us would light a candle, we’ve got a tremendous light.”

Breaking bread: it comes in many forms, whether we partake in the Eucharist on Sunday, share naan at a Diwali festival, dine as a family around the table, or have a conversation over sandwiches at South Dining Hall.

How will you break bread this week?

Sources

1: http://campusministry.nd.edu/about/events/

2: http://hinduism.about.com/

…And With Your Spirit. {Part 2}

The Sign of Peace, as I mentioned last week, has always been a part of Mass that holds great significance for me. It truly serves a healing purpose in my mind, a notion which originated in my family’s treatment of the Sign of Peace as a time to hug one another, even if others around us at our home parish were shaking hands.

In high school, the hugging became the norm: in fact, I am sure visitors to Jesuit High School are shocked at the amount of enthusiastic hugs that are shared during weekly Friday Masses. The Sign of Peace is quite a unique countercultural experience for teenagers at my high school, which was (and is) key to forming the incredible sense of community there. I have that community to thank for so much of who I am today.

So what does the Sign of Peace mean at Notre Dame?

The Sign of Peace at a Ryan Hall retreat

The Congregation of Holy Cross takes as its model the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.  Speaking to hall staff this past summer, Fr. Pat Reidy, C.S.C. described this familial charism as guiding the residential mission of Notre Dame: 

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph offer us the model for how any group of people should love each other, united in charity.  Following their model of love, Holy Cross seeks to build communities that attend to one another in struggles, assist one another in good works, and celebrate together in times of joy.  Family isn't necessarily an easy thing for us – it certainly wasn't always for the Holy Family - and yet, it’s precisely the work of our growing into holiness, into wholeness, into the men and women that God created us to be.”

In a very real way, the Sign of Peace is the epitome of the familial atmosphere in our residence halls. It is a time to show one another both that we are a family and that we are loved as individuals. The point is not to prove that one knows everyone in the dorm; the time set aside for the Sign of Peace can, I think, be taken too far. There is a right concern with interrupting the prayerful atmosphere directly after the Our Father, and the community love seems to be taken to an extreme when the priest must practically wrestle people back for the Lamb of God.

But when the Sign of Peace is a nod to the community gathered, flowing from the Eucharist, it serves the function it is meant to in the Mass. “Eucharist” means “Thanksgiving.” Through the Sign of Peace, we reverence Christ’s presence in others as we prepare to share the Eucharist, and allow them to do the same in us.

The Catholic faith is an incarnate faith. In-carnate. Embodied in flesh. Human createdness – incarnational createdness – is expressed very clearly through the physicality of practically everything we do at Mass. We pray with our bodies; we are not just spirits. There is a reason what we do involves water and bread and wine. We hold hands at the Our Father. We represent what is going on at Mass by sitting and standing and kneeling at various points. If we didn’t have bodies, in fact, many ways in which we experience God, such as in nature in things like mountains and sunsets (to give some larger, more typical examples), in a very real way wouldn’t matter.

On this same strain, I love hugs. I know I am not alone in saying that the Sign of Peace would not have the same effect for me if it was constituted by a set of a couple stiff handshakes with the people immediately to my right and left. My cousin, a recent graduate of Notre Dame, commented,

“[During the Sign of Peace] we are wishing that peace and God be with other people who we attend mass with on a pretty frequent basis (whether we actually know them or not). This should be something to hug about!!!” 

While I understand the need to re-evaluate the ways in which the Sign of Peace might more fully meet the faith-based needs of the congregation (as discussed above), I believe it should meet the community-based needs as well. Obviously this will look different for various communities, but I think hugging accomplishes the goal of the Sign of Peace quite well in its current form in most residence halls here on campus.

Before the Church expanded all over the world, parishes used to be made up of one’s family. Our dorms are our homes, and dorm Masses are like celebrating Mass with family. They are our mini parishes. At least in worship, our residence halls are, in a lot of ways, the family and community many parishes are meant to be and hope to create. Rather than making normative a lesser, more formal ideal, why not make normative a community living in the loving image of the Holy Family and strive for that?

While it will clearly vary from parish to parish, region to region and country to country, the Sign of Peace remains both a sign of community shared and a real manifestation of Christ’s unconditional love and peace just before we break bread with one another. It is important, as the Circular Letter points out, to evaluate whether the Sign of Peace meets these goals for each specific community. I would certainly argue that the hug-fest-style Sign of Peace in residence halls at Notre Dame, when done respectfully and reverently, serves just the purpose it is meant to.

May the Peace of Christ be with you.