A luminous mystery

 Transfiguration (1516 - 20) by Raphael

Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain where they could be alone by themselves. There in their presence he was transfigured: his clothes became dazzlingly white, whiter than any earthy bleacher could make them. 

Mark 9:2 - 3

One of the ‘Luminous Mysteries’ appended to the Rosary of our parents and grandparents by the late Pope St John Paul II was the Transfiguration of the Lord. The disciples Peter, James and John are witness to the appearance of Elijah and Moses together with a transfigured Jesus. The image that often attends this experience is that painted by Raphael between 1516 and 1520. This high altar piece now hangs in Pinacoteca Vaticana of the Vatican Museum. I was privileged to view it and meditate on its beauty and composition when I visited Rome.

Yet as rich as Raphael’s expression is, it cannot contain the depth and breadth of what the disciples saw and felt, of the early Church and of our experience of the divine in our own lives, although his attempt is nothing short of majestic.

The Transfiguration, then, is not just a retelling of an event, it is the event. It incorporates the story of Israel’s salvation, the messiahship and mission of Jesus, and reveals the transformation that awaits us within the kingdom (the here and now) but which also anticipates our own exaltation at the end of time.

The Transfiguration reveals a part of the inner mystery of Jesus and part of our potential as human beings seeking divinity. Here is Jesus, alongside Moses, the redeemer of the Hebrews from their slavery in Egypt, with Elijah, the great prophet who worked miracles, who ascended into heaven in a whirlwind and who would return to announce the coming of the Messiah.

The early Church was in need of this affirmation and doubtlessly co-constructed this pericope to advance their understanding of their place in this extraordinary story.

As such the Transfiguration is my story too. It is about my journey. It is about raising my consciousness and awareness of the presence of Jesus in my life and his capacity to transform me into a vehicle for his Good News. It is also your story should you choose to engage in and invest yourself in it. It needs to be retold in your own life, as a story of hope, as fulfilment of a promise.

Raphael’s Transfiguration is most worthy to meditate upon, pray with it as part of your Rosary devotion, but most of all – live it out in hope.

 

Peter Douglas

 

LENT REFLECTION by Anne Chisholm

Blessings may break from stone

Every week through Lent, a writer will reflect on a time of pain and challenge, and what good – if any – came of it. Anne Chisholm begins the series.

Bittersweet fruit of the womb

IN 1975, I inherited my younger sister’s son, Jesse. He was five years old. In 2002 I inherited her granddaughter, Tabitha. She was one. And so, as a consequence of two agonising premature deaths (my sister was 30 when she died; her son was 31) I found myself, despite, as it turned out, being unable to bear my own child, able to become a mother and then a grandmother: to find, in stepping into my sister Clare’s shoes, two of the determining, demanding and most joyful relationships of my life. Through death I had been given some of the greatest happiness I have known.

I have often, over the years, contemplated this paradox, this bittersweet gift. I have even wondered if it might, deep down, be a source of guilt, as if benefiting in any way from my sister’s death should feel wrong. But guilty though I often feel about all kinds of things, I do not and never have felt guilty about this. When I think of Clare, and what she lost and I gained, I feel first deeply sad for her and then a surge of gratitude towards her.

Over the years, people have occasionally asked me if it was a difficult decision to take on Jesse, whether taking on such responsibility was hard. The answer has always been no; it was never difficult, because it felt inevitable and profoundly right. This, surely has always been what families do, have always done, if they can, at all times and in all cultures; someone steps into the gap and tries to look after the motherless or fatherless child. Of course such arrangements, as legends and fairy tales tell, do not always work out well. In my case, though much happiness followed, there was also recurring pain. No child, no matter how well loved and looked after, survives the loss of a parent without damage.

Looking back, I can discern some of the particular reasons why Jesse brought me so much happiness. I had always been more involved with him than most aunts; while I was in a settled relationship with the man I was soon to marry, my sister’s life was complicated and Jesse’s father had disappeared from their lives when he was two.

As a successful model – she was a great beauty – she often travelled at short notice, and we had been a second home for Jesse from when he was a few months old. I was besotted with him from the start, and given that by the time Clare died I had been trying and failing to have a baby myself, I remember very well telling myself to be careful not to love him or need him too much, to remember that he was not mine, that I had to give him back, stand back. And then Clare became ill, and during the eight months it took her to die he spent much of the time with us.

And then I did not have to stand back any more. There was a fearful symmetry at work: a child who needed a mother, and a woman who needed a child. Four days after her death, it was Christmas. We went to church, and the lines, “Unto us a son is given”, made us both cry.

The fact was that Jesse, a loving, golden, happy child, gave us as much as we gave him. He was always a charmer, easy to love. He grew up just as handsome as his mother had been beautiful, and, like her, was drawn into the modelling world at the age of eighteen. The glamour, the travel, the money were seductive, and dangerous. There were drugs, a girlfriend with a cocaine habit, temptations he found impossible to resist. He moved into the music business, ran a nightclub, produced a record or two. We swallowed hard and hoped for the best. He was always cheerful and affectionate with us but I suspected he was in trouble. I was afraid.

Then, in his late twenties, he met Alison. Before long they were living together and in 2000 they had a daughter, Tabitha. Later, Alison told me that after Tabitha was born, Jesse promised to stop the cocaine, and for a while he did; but then he slipped back, and she told him he had to leave. There was a spell in rehab; it seemed to do the trick. He went home, went regularly to AA meetings and found a new job working as a sound man for the BBC. By Tabitha’s first birthday, in November 2001, his life was back on track. Tabitha had already became my granddaughter even more simply and naturally than her father had become my son. She was adorable. I felt very lucky.

Early on a frosty January morning the phone rang. Two days before, I had put Jesse on a train back to London after we had been to a family funeral in the country together. He was fine, happy at home and at work and feeling better, he told me, than for a long time. We made plans to meet soon with Tabitha and hugged goodbye. But that morning he had left home early in a colleague’s car to film an interview for a BBC documentary. On a corner somewhere in Lincolnshire in the dank winter mist, their car hit a truck. The driver colleague was unhurt; Jesse died.

From that dark day on, after the shock that for a while left me barely able to walk or eat or sleep, I knew what I had to do. Again, it was not a duty but a compulsion; everything in me was drawn towards Alison and Tabitha and finding ways to look after them. Again, the seed of my own recovery was the existence of a small child who needed me, who like her father was full of sweetness and energy, who was also too young to begin to understand what she had lost until much later. Her uncomplicated love felt like another gift.

Again, I was lucky: there was an insurance settlement, and help with housing from family friends meant that Alison was able to go on living near me in London. She and I became closer, and looked after each other. In due course Tabitha went to good schools, where she shone. As beautiful as her father, she was more academically inclined, so that suggestions of modelling were not followed up, to my unconcealed relief. Instead, she was so good at gymnastics that she took up circus skills and has since been invited to train with the Team GB winter sports squad as a potential international competitor. She has also started studying Psychology and Neuroscience at Cardiff University. She is now twenty; I am eighty. She is the light of my life.

Although the consolation of a specific religious faith has played no part in this story, as I have little or none, my cultural framework is Christian. I have always understood and often needed, especially in times of trouble, the emotional power and beauty of Christian language and imagery.

At such times, I read a lot of George Herbert and John Donne. Not long after my sister died I found myself at a friend’s house in Tuscany, looking at the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century paintings I loved with new eyes. Not all were soothing; my eyes were drawn less to gentle Madonnas holding plump infants than to the terrors of the Massacre of the Innocents, the limp, small bodies chiming with my fears for Jesse’s safety and of my own inadequacies.

Then one night I had a dream, in which my lovely sister, as beautiful as ever, returned to tell me, very clearly and strongly, that I was not to be so worried and fearful. “I’m all right,” she said, “and everything is going to be all right.” My own version, perhaps, of Dame Julian of Norwich: All shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. I had never been given to significant dreams: this one was almost too good to be true. Rationally, I knew it to be wishful thinking, not hard to explain away, but the dream gave me strength then, and has never left me.

Anne Chisholm has written biographies of Rumer Godden, Nancy Cunard, Lord Beaverbrook and Frances Partridge, and has edited the letters of Dora Carrington.

 

From The Tablet, 20 February 2021

 

Enter Galilee

 

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.

Mark 1:12 - 15

As a principal I had extraordinary opportunities for renewal. Many years ago I attended the ELIM course run by the Parramatta CEO and during which we were privileged to spend a week with Frank Anderson MSC, composer, musician and theologian. Later I completed an intensive Italian language program at the Instituto Galileo Galilei, a theological summer school, the Sedes Sapientiae in Louvain and another summer school in theology at Christ Church College in Oxford. What a joy it was to meet colleagues from across the globe sharing a common interest and passion. My return to work was always preceded by an expectancy and a refocusing of my energy - and a certainty that I would meet the goals I had set myself.

There is nothing like being invigorated by the experience of a retreat, a thrilling and imaginative conference, travel or adventure, of a significant gathering of your family and friends. There is also the sense of relief that comes after a period of fasting or anticipation. Whatever that enlivening episode might be, we emerge from the chrysalis of that experience with a desire, often a compelling desire, to share it with others. Indeed we have colleagues who have attended the Ecce Homo Institute in Jerusalem or the LA Religious Education Congress and who have returned with renewed vigour.

Following a somewhat lengthy 40 days in the desert (the number 40 in scripture often goes hand in hand with lengthy periods of testing, for example, Moses, Jonah, Ezekiel and Elijah, and, from the Resurrection to the Ascension), Jesus returns to Galilee, proclaiming the Gospel. The renewal that Jesus experiences in the wilderness is a provocation to his ministry. Jesus emerges with a clarity of purpose, with courage and determination. Sustaining that energy into his ministry was his relationship to his Father in prayer (see Mark 1:32f, 6:31, 9:29).

While the extraordinary opportunities are very rich in experience, they also stand side by side with the ordinary, life-giving, transformative moments that occur by happenstance or planning: birthday celebrations, expeditions to (Tasmania's) East Coast, walking the beach with our dogs here in Penguin, a day's reflection with a school staff, planning with our team, eating marvellous food, cracking a bottle of Janz - just because, getting messages from old friends, the birth of a new grandchild.

One more ordinary opportunity that can strike home is this liturgical season of Lent. In the northern hemisphere from which it originates, Lent signals the lengthening (hence 'lent') of days as spring begins. The daily readings provided in the lectionary are a deeply rich source of encouragement, self-reflection and focus. Now is the time to set our goals, to let go of the parts of our lives that no longer give us life, ready to leave the 'wilderness' and to enter the 'Galilee' of everyday life. The five weeks of Lent lead us to the Cross, and ultimately, to the Risen Christ.

 

Peter Douglas

 

An extract from Cardinal Pell’s Prison Journal, Volume 1

 

The author describes how solitary confinement during Holy Week was helped by phoning friends, the BBC’s Songs of Praise and praying for his fellow prisoners

 

SUNDAY, 3 March 2019 THIS IS THE FIRST Sunday for many decades, apart from illness, that I have not attended or celebrated Sunday Mass – probably for more than seventy years. I wasn’t even able to receive Communion.

The first reading in the breviary today has Job’s troubles just beginning. It all lies ahead for him… I took some consolation from Job, because his good fortune was restored in this life, unlike the good Lord’s, and I still believe that the only just verdict for the judges is to quash the convictions. …..Muslim chants floating into my cell. I wonder who he is….I am not sure what religion he follows as he claims to be god or a messiah. A bit noisier tonight with at least one fellow shouting out in distress.

Fidelity to Christ and his teaching remains indispensable for any fruitful Catholicism, any religious revival. This is why the “approved” Argentinian and Maltese interpretations of Amoris Laetitia are so dangerous. They go against the teaching of the Lord on adultery and the teachings of St Paul on the necessary dispositions to receive Holy Communion properly.

Called unexpectedly for a medical check this morning. All was well, although my blood pressure (standing 120/80) was low, as I suspected, because I was feeling a little lethargic.

God our Father, I pray for all my fellow prisoners, especially those who have written to me. Help them all to see their true selves; indeed, help me, too, to do this better myself. Bring all of them some peace of mind, especially those who most certainly do not possess it. EASTER SUNDAY, 21 April 2019 I CANNOT REMEMBER the last time I did not celebrate Easter with a community or in a church. This has probably been my invariable practice since before I reached the age of reason. I have celebrated the Easter ceremonies as a priest for nearly fiftythree years. But not this year. When phoning friends and family during my exercise spells outside (the only permitted time to phone), I was asked a number of times whether I was able to attend Mass, receive Communion during the Triduum, or even participate in an ecumenical service. My answer was no.

I was not able to prepare the Easter candle outside the cathedral affirming that all time, all ages, all glory and power belong to the (risen) Christ.

I was not able to turn in the sanctuary to face the congregation and see the light from the newly lit candles spread slowly but surely in fits and starts through the dark vault of the cathedral… I renewed my baptismal promises quietly to myself, not with the newly baptised and the cathedral congregation. And, of course, I could not consecrate the bread and the wine or receive Communion. EASTER MONDAY, 22 April 2019 WHILE I COULD FIND very little religious television on Good Friday, this was not the situation on Easter Sunday, and I watched every program as a religious substitute for the real thing…The English program Songs of Praise was a beautiful Easter service celebrated in St Mary’s [Anglican] Church, Portsmouth, UK, many hymns, with a couple from Handel, including “My Redeemer Liveth”… The news clip of the Holy Father’s Easter Sunday Mass in St Peter’s Square showed an immense congregation filling even the Via della Conciliazione. It is strange that Christian programs at Easter don’t address the central message.

I have spent a good part of the last three days opening letters of support and Easter greetings. They nearly always promise prayers, which is consoling, and often contain good advice, prayers, poems, or holy cards.

I found today something of an anticlimax after yesterday’s feast, so when one message urged me to remember that each day passed meant that one less remained, I was heartened.

 

Extract from The Catholic Herald (January/February 2021) p. 26

 

 

Heal me

 

A leper came to Jesus and pleaded on his knees: 'If you want to,' he said,'you can cure me.' Feeling sorry for him, Jesus stretched out is hands and touched him. 'Of course I want to!' he said. 'Be cured!' And the leprosy left him at once and he was cured,

Mark 1:40 - 42

Platitudes are wasted breath. There have been a thousand apologies for those whose country we have invaded and occupied for a mere blink in the eye of this continent's human history. There is no scale to the pain of those 130,000 forgotten British children whose lives were torn and shredded by do-gooding agencies who exiled them and transported them for life to foreign lands, or those children who were betrayed and abused by those who knew better but took advantage of their childhood and silence – who will be ever scarred with the terror of lost innocence and whose childhood memories of places, rooms and haunting faces are now etched into a solemn and unforgiving tragedy.

The tears that fall from our eyes as we hear the pained stories of heroic and panicked escape from misery; the recounted miracles of being saved by the ordinary - and sometimes extraordinary - efforts of people who gave a damn and made a difference, can often veil our own struggles to make sense of senseless suffering.

And for those whose lives lie buried in trauma, it may well seem that it is all indeed hope-less. But I cannot believe in this hope-lessness, though I cannot deny the depth of their despair. The stories of Jesus might well not assuage these bereaved and victims, yet there is a power that only the Gospel can offer.

Mark (1:40 – 45) tells of the leper who came to Jesus pleading to be cured. Feeling great compassion, Jesus touched him and he is healed. Jesus ordered him to say nothing, but to present himself before the priests and make the appropriate offering according to the Law of Moses - yet the man went off and freely told his story everywhere. The consequence was that Jesus could no longer go openly into the townships.

The key to this story is not the leper’s physical recovery, but that Jesus has the power to save even those who are excluded from Israel by the Law of Moses, the helpless, the hopeless. Secondly, despite Jesus’ injunction to say nothing, the healed man is compelled to proclaim the Gospel. Thirdly, leprosy is a metaphor for uncleanness - a statement about our human condition. There is always hope, for Jesus has the capacity and desire to touch each of us, and most especially those left bereft and in suffering. His compassion and touch is extended to each and every one of us. As each person is healed, in time and grace, their healing will be a true proclamation of Jesus’ presence and saving power among us.

Jesus, for all his power for healing may be invoked through prayer, but the need for human intervention to transmit is most often required. Our action, our compassion, our personal and professional expertise, the support of government and community are necessary, medicine, counsel, presence are the tools he most often employs (see Matthew 25:35 - 40)

We pray earnestly for the survivors’ safety, their health and the strength to carry on. This is not some banal, empty platitude. It is at the heart of our faith.

 

Peter Douglas

The following article was submitted by Sr Margaret.

WHY PRAY?

 James Martin SJ

 

There are as many reasons to pray as there are people. But as one of the world’s best-loved Christian writers explains, all are different ways of responding to an invitation from God rest of your life.  

Let me suggest the first reason: God wants to be in a relationship with you. How can you know this? Because you want to pray. And how do I know that? Because you’re reading this. That may sound sarcastic, but it’s not. There’s a serious point here: your desire for prayer reveals something about how God created you. Deep within you is a natural desire to communicate with God, to share yourself with God, to have God hear your voice, or, more basically, to encounter God. Deep within you is a longing to be in a relationship with God. So, you long to pray. You may doubt many things when it comes to prayer. You may doubt that you’ll be able to pray. You may doubt that God wants to communicate with you. You may even doubt God’s existence. But you cannot doubt that you feel a desire for prayer. After all, you’re reading this. So clearly something within you desires prayer. Where does the desire for prayer come from? From God. The most common way God draws you closer is by placing within you the desire to be closer, the desire that drove you to think about prayer and to read this article. Strange as it sounds, your reading of these lines at this moment is a sign of God’s call. How else would God draw us closer, other than by planting a longing inside us? Once I saw a ceramic plaque in a retreat house that summed this up: “That which you seek is causing you to seek.” This insight is helpful to those beginning their journey of prayer because it helps them feel, even before they’ve started to pray, connected to God. It helps them to know that God has taken the initiative, that God is calling to them, that God desires them. It helps people take the first tentative steps toward God. Many of us have felt that there is more to life than what we know. We feel a sense of incompletion. We long to feel complete, to be connected, to be satisfied, to know. Inside us are nagging feelings of longing, restlessness, and incompletion that can be fulfilled only in a relationship with God. There is a hole in our hearts that only God can fill. Augustine put it best when he wrote: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord. And our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Your desire to pray is a sign that God desires you. It’s an indication God is calling you. And that is perhaps the most important reason to pray. Not simply because you desire it, but because the desire is a sign of something else. You desire to pray because God desires it.

A second reason for prayer is a slight reframing of this. We pray because we want to be in relationship to God. That may sound obvious – of course we pray to be closer to God. But it’s important to state that the aim of prayer is not simply physical relaxation, mindfulness, knowledge, or a connection to creation, as important as those things are. These are goals that many people mention when speaking about meditation. But the goal of prayer is closer union with God. More basically, we pray because we love God. William Barry SJ writes: “The primary motive for prayer is love, first the love of God for us and then the arousal of our love for God.” We pray to come to know God as well. “Who is God?” is an important question in the spiritual life. So, are “Who is God for me?” and “Who am I before God?” Prayer reminds us of our need for God. It reminds us that we are not the centre of the universe and that we are not God. Sometimes when things are going well, we can grow arrogant and complacent in our self-sufficiency. Prayer, which places us in the presence of God in an intentional way, reminds us of who is in charge, or rather who is nurturing us. Gerard W. Hughes writes in God of Surprises: “To begin prayer it is sufficient to acknowledge that I am not self-sufficient, that I am not the creator of myself and creation. If I can do this, then I acknowledge that there is some power – I may not know whether it is personal or not and may be in complete ignorance of its nature – greater than I.” This inevitably moves us to humility, as we realise more and more our need for God. Thomas Merton went further, saying that prayer is inseparable from humility. Humility, he said, “makes us realise that the very depths of our being and life are meaningful and real only in so far as they are oriented toward God as their source and their end.”

A third reason is that we have to. If you’re not used to praying, that may sound ridiculous, but once you start, you’ll see that it can feel as natural as breathing. Our innate desire for God means we naturally crave a relationship with God. Prayer is an outgrowth of the human longing for the divine. In a sense, we can’t not pray, because prayer is part of being human.

There are other reasons that prayer feels necessary. In the face of your problems, how can you not ask for help from your Creator? I’ve never met anyone who felt that his or her life was free of problems.

So, we pray for a fourth reason: we are in need.

A fifth reason is that prayer helps us. This may sound selfish, but it’s another common motivation, similar to reasons for doing physical exercise. If you never get off the couch, you’ll end up out of shape, and that will influence your overall physical condition; less exercise means more pulled muscles, perilous cardiovascular health, and greater stress. Not praying – not spending intentional time with God – means your spiritual life will be out of shape, even flabby, and that will influence your overall physical condition. Less exercise means more pulled muscles, you’ll probably be less grateful and thus more irritable, less connected to the deepest part of yourself and thus more scattered, less aware of your reliance on God and thus more frightened. Prayer helps you. On the rare days that I don’t pray I feel off balance. And I always know why. Certainly, I feel guilty that I’ve not spent time with God in an intentional way, but I also feel, to put it bluntly, worse. I’m more irritable, more distracted, less patient, and less able to maintain perspective on life. Even when prayer feels “dry” it helps me feel more connected to the centre of my being, which is God. Being cantered in that way always means more perspective, because you know where you stand.

Prayer is also a way to unburden ourselves when we’re feeling sad, angry, stressed or frustrated. That’s a sixth reason. Often, after you have told God your problems, you feel less alone. God is always with you, but praying in this way is a great aid, nonetheless. Sometimes I’ve stood up from prayer and said: “At least I know that God knows how I feel.”

A seventh reason for prayer is that it helps us praise God. If you’re a believer, you may wonder about the best way to express your gratitude. You can do good works, live a moral life, and help your fellow human beings. Those are fine ways to show your love in gratitude. As Ignatius Loyola says: “Love ought to show itself in deeds more than words.” But it’s just as important to say “thank you” to God. Prayer is one way of doing this. Simply resting in things you’re grateful for is a way of giving thanks.

Prayer, however, is not a solitary act.

This leads us to an eighth reason: solidarity. When we pray, we are, consciously or unconsciously, expressing a connection to our brothers and sisters who also pray – even if they’re not physically with us. Prayer in common is an essential aspect of the spiritual life. As social animals, we naturally find comfort and support in groups. Praising God in a group makes double sense: we naturally want to do it, and we naturally want to do it with others. Both are part of being human. Whenever we pray, we are united with believers across the world who are lifting their hearts and minds to God. We are also united with those who have gone before us, who continue their prayers before God. This is one part of what Catholics mean by the “communion of saints”.

A ninth reason: we pray to be transformed. This is somewhat different from praying to God for help – but it’s related. Knowing that we are flawed and imperfect, many of us look to God to help us grow into better people. This is not to say that we are all terrible sinners or irredeemable reprobates. Rather, we are all human beings in need of God’s grace. In my own life, that desire manifests itself especially during prayer. If I do something sinful, I am filled with a remorse that becomes more obvious when I spend time with God. A few years ago, I did something selfish that affected a friend. In my prayer the next day I saw how uncharitable it was and was moved to seek out my friend and apologise. I was also reminded of my need for God’s grace and my desire for more charity. We might also become aware not of one particular sin, but of a general pattern in our lives, a place where we are unfree. We may ask for freedom from this in prayer. There is a kind of petitionary prayer here too, but of a different nature. “Help me to be a better person, God” might be called a prayer of transformation. Not long ago, I had been praying that God would change me in a particular way, and not much seemed to be happening. Then, suddenly, it was discovered that I would need some minor surgery. Lying in the hospital bed a few weeks later, tethered by tubes to various machines, I started to think about all the things I was hoping to change in my life: my flaws and failings, all the things I hoped God would change or eradicate. As I enumerated the things that were distracting me from being the person I wanted to become, they began to seem in a word, ridiculous. In other words, I saw the emptiness of whatever was moving me away from God. During those days I felt God saying to me in prayer: “What kind of life do you want to lead?” It was not so much a matter of waiting for God to change me or remove my flaws; God was telling me that the change was largely up to me. It was a transformational moment, as it seemed to offer me freedom and reminded me of my own agency in life. Transformation is another reason for prayer. That short list of reasons why people pray is by no means complete. There are as many reasons to pray as there are people. For now, let’s say that there are many reasons to pray, chief among them that God is calling to you. It’s as if God is saying: “Would you like to spend some time with me?” Why not say yes?

also reminded of my need for God’s grace and my desire for more charity. We might also become aware not of one particular sin, but of a general pattern in our lives, a place where we are unfree. We may ask for freedom from this in prayer. There is a kind of petitionary prayer here too, but of a different nature. “Help me to be a better person, God” might be called a prayer of transformation. Not long ago, I had been praying that God would change me in a particular way, and not much seemed to be happening. Then, suddenly, it was discovered that I would need some minor surgery. Lying in the hospital bed a few weeks later, tethered by tubes to various machines, I started to think about all the things I was hoping to change in my life: my flaws and failings, all the things I hoped God would change or eradicate. As I enumerated the things that were distracting me from being the person I wanted to become, they began to seem in a word, ridiculous. In other words, I saw the emptiness of whatever was moving me away from God. During those days I felt God saying to me in prayer: “What kind of life do you want to lead?” It was not so much a matter of waiting for God to change me or remove my flaws; God was telling me that the change was largely up to me. It was a transformational moment, as it seemed to offer me freedom and reminded me of my own agency in life. Transformation is another reason for prayer. That short list of reasons why people pray is by no means complete. There are as many reasons to pray as there are people. For now, let’s say that there are many reasons to pray, chief among them that God is calling to you. It’s as if God is saying: “Would you like to spend some time with me?” Why not say yes?

From The Tablet of 6 February 2021, pp 4 - 5.