When we think of spirituality, the activity of prayer is usually near to the center of what it means to be “spiritual.” We use words like meditation, visualization, imagination and intercession. Such dynamics are all summed up in the word prayer. As people of the Spirit, a crucial role we play is to offer ourselves as living locations of the Spirit on behalf of others where we become places of prayer. Romans chapter eight teaches us that, in Christ, we can offer ourselves to be the location of a mystical communion between our human spirit and the Holy Spirit. In the language to Teresa of Avilla, in prayer, we enter the interior castle of our being, where mind and spirit meet. In this place, by the Spirit, we become living temples where empathetic, meditative, intercessory prayers occur.[1]
It is crucial to notice the connection and logical flow from suffering to prayer. Both are rooted in the Spirit who now aids us in our endeavor to be human and spiritual in the midst of suffering. Listen to Paul’s beautiful declaration of a new spiritual reality. In his vision, we now have the potential to access when we live life according to the Spirit. He writes,
“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words” (Romans 8.26).
While we are vulnerable in this world to suffering and weakness, this vulnerability can lead us to an even deeper vulnerability of spirit to Spirit. So often in the face of our personal suffering and weakness we attempt to overcome our difficulties with an autonomous strength of will. This is not the way of the Spirit for our own lives or for those we would minister to. In the face of suffering we are to remain vulnerable to the Spirit and consent to the Spirit’s work in us even as we experience a diminishment of energy through intercession. In the face of tragedy, pain and suffering, words fail more often than they succeed. Oftentimes, we are stunned into silence at the prevalence and power of suffering in the living of life. In such situations, our response is a vulnerability to the Spirit to be the presence of God to and in us, whereby God is the one, “who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8.27).
There is reciprocity of divinity when we remain vulnerable to the Spirit in our weakness and allow our empathetic prayers to be embodied by the Spirit’s empathetic “groaning,” interpreting our prayers to the mind of God according to the purposes of God. Our confidence is that God searches. God knows. God interrelates with us. God is not systematic. God is relational and God is open to hearing the interpretation of our prayers through the intercession of the Spirit who is God with us.
Let us conclude St. Paul’s flow of spiritual logic completely. Notice that Chapter eight of Romans begins with the potential of living in two directions, the potential of life according to the flesh and life according to the Spirit. Paul then moves forward developing suffering and prayer as two spiritual realities that can be transformed in the Christian by the Spirit. But the apex of Paul’s argument is in verses 28-39 which represent a majestic crescendo giving meaning to what often seems meaningless. Listen to his conclusion and notice how it crescendos with the reality of spiritual transformation into the image of Christ, or more clearly, the reality that Christ is here in those who are being made like him by the Spirit, and that this spiritual transformation is the purpose of life, and gives meaning to the suffering we so often experience. Because we are being formed into the image of Christ, by the Spirit through suffering,
“we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he fore knew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family” (Romans 8.28-29).
Thus, we with St. Paul we can concur:
“What are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?…Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who is indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?…No, in all these things we are more than conquers through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present,, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation , will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8.31-39).
This is a declaration of the Spirit’s revolution in our lives and the reality that awaits those who live according to the Spirit even in the face of the “all things.” This is a vindictive against our fearful retreating. Our managing. Our manipulation of life for what we consider to be our purposes. Christian spirituality does not promise freedom from the suffering of this world, only a means of moving through and in it. For the Christian, the Spirit way of life is the means of living in the mist of suffering defined passionately by Paul’s litany of experiences that ultimately will not (contrary to what it may appear at present) conquer us.
This is indeed the power and the beauty of the Spirit who enables intercessory, interior transforming prayer whereby God is here in and through us. Because of the indwelling Spirit, Christians are in process. We are be-coming like Christ, dying to self and living to God, bearing the qualities produced by the Spirit and anticipating a different world to come even in the midst of suffering. While we wait, we pray, remaining vulnerable to the Spirit in our weakness and ignorance of what to pray. We pray as the suffering world spins around us in a whirl of pain, and at times, immense joy, consenting into the grace of silence where everything is already all right.
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[1]For a useful overview of contemplative prayer see, Tomas Spidlik, Prayer: The Spirituality of the Christian East, Vol. 2 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2005).
Filed under: prayer, suffering Tagged: | lent, prayer, suffering
