When begging is useless

Somewhere in life, we find ourselves facing walls that will not move. We have a child who needs special care now—and will need special care all their lives. We lose the savings of a life time and all the retirement plans go with them. We develop a chronic disease that will not end our life but will certainly limit it severely. We watch the business fail through no fault of our own but so far beyond us there’s not a thing we can do to save it.

 

Now, we find ourselves new people. We have become the spiritual beggars we never before understood. Except that even begging is useless now. And we know it.

 

So for what do we pray at a time like this? In fact, why bother?

 

The questions are important ones. It is possible that there is nothing that teaches prayer more quickly, more effectively than having nothing to pray for that can possibly happen. We are lost in the land of nowhere to go but God, not to change the circumstances of our lives but to change our whole attitude about what life is really about.

 

We learn now in the throes of a heavy heart that the grace simply to be, may be one of the greatest graces of life. We discover in the silent arms of God that is it enough to be loved, to be understood, rather than “saved,” from things that are their own kind of salvation.

 

Sickness saves us from glorifying the cosmetics of life.

Need saves us from isolating ourselves from the rest of the world.

The limitations of others save us from self-centeredness.

Powerlessness saves us from the sickness of arrogance.

Then, when we go to prayer we go, not to be given something but to be quiet, to develop a heartbeat of acceptance, to become the calm that is calming. Humility makes listeners of us. And in listening to everything that happens to us, we find God’s word for us.

       —from The Breath of the Soul (Twenty-Third Publications) by Joan Chittister

Give Us This Day: Daily Prayer for Today’s Catholic used this reflection by Sister Joan for its Sunday, February 13, 2022 reading. To subscribe to this monthly published by Liturgical Press, click here.