To pray is to wait: today or tomorrow, God will answer. Catechesis of the Pope

Vatican City

Pursuing his cycle of catechesis on prayer, Pope Francis spoke at the general audience this Wednesday, December 9, on the prayer of petition. Christian prayer – he said – is fully human, for it encompasses praise and supplication. We find this reality in the prayer that Jesus taught us, the “Our Father”, model of all prayer. In her we turn to God as children and with filial trust we present all our needs to him. We implore him for the most sublime gifts, such as the coming of his Kingdom and all that is needed to welcome it, as well as the simplest gifts, such as daily bread, which includes health, home, food. , essential to our bodily life, and also the Eucharist, nourishment for our spiritual life.

Prayer opens flashes of light in the thickest darkness

Although sometimes we may believe that we don’t need anything, that we are self-sufficient and that we live in the most complete self-sufficiency, sooner or later, Francisco stressed, this illusion “fades”. And in these “seemingly dead end” situations, there is “only one way out: prayer.

Prayer opens flashes of light in the deepest darkness. Lord help me! This opens the way.

In us echoes the multifaceted moan of creatures

“Pray all creation,” the Holy Father also said, quoting Tertullian: “domestic and wild animals pray, and they bend their knees and, when they leave their stables or their lairs, they raise their eyes to the sky. and with their mouths, in their own way, they make the air vibrate. The birds too, when they wake up, take flight to the sky and spread their wings, instead of their hands, in the shape of a cross and say something that looks like a prayer ”. And, although human beings are the only ones to “consciously pray”, we “share this invocation of help with all creation.”

We are not the only ones to “pray” in this exterminated universe: each fragment of creation is inscribed with the desire of God.

Don’t suppress the plea that spontaneously arises in us

Therefore, the Pope continued, “we do not have to be scandalized if we feel the need to pray” or, when we need to, to “ask”. We should not be “ashamed” to pray: “Lord, I need this”, “Lord, I have this difficulty”, “Help me! », Because this cry reaches the heart of God, who is Father. But we must also do it in happy times, not just in bad times, because we must not take “nothing for granted or due”, since “all is grace”, the grace of God.

However, we do not suppress the supplication that spontaneously arises in us. Prayer of petition goes hand in hand with accepting our limitations and creativity. […]We can even come to not believe in God, but it is difficult not to believe in prayer: it simply exists; it comes to us like a cry; and we all have to deal with this inner voice that can be silent for a long time, but one day it wakes up and screams.

God will answer

We know that today or tomorrow “God will answer”, assured Francis, because “there is no one who prays in the book of Psalms who lifts his complaint and is not heard: God always answers”

The Bible repeats it countless times: God hears the cry of those who call on him. Also our chattering requests, those which remain at the bottom of the heart, which we are ashamed to express, the Father listens to them.

It is because the Father “wants to give us his Spirit, who animates all prayer and transforms everything”. It is a question of patience – said the Holy Father -, of “enduring the wait”.

Even death trembles when a Christian prays, because he knows that each person who prays has a stronger ally than him: the Risen Lord.

For all this, the Holy Father encouraged us to “learn” to wait on the Lord. The Lord – made present – comes to visit us, not only on these great feasts – Christmas, Easter – but he visits us every day in the privacy of our hearts, if we wait. However, “often we do not realize that the Lord is near, that he is knocking on our door and we let him pass.”

“I’m afraid this will happen and I won’t realize it,” said Saint Augustine. And the Lord is passing, the Lord is coming, the Lord is calling. But if your ears are filled with other noises, you will not hear the Lord’s call.

“To be on hold”, the Pope concluded: “it is prayer”.