Exploring
Ways of Prayer
Many
stories begin with the arrival of a stranger in a small town. This
outsider disturbs the settled way of the neighborhood. In a place
where
everybody knows everybody else a sudden and unannounced arrival can
provoke reactions that range from mild curiosity to acute fear. People's
attention is engaged and questions are asked. Who is this? Why did
he come here? Where did he come from?
In today's Gospel we hear Matthew's classic story of the arrival of
strangers in Jerusalem. Their number is unknown - though tradition
has assumed them to be three from the gifts they bring. They are called
"Magi", which is variously translated as astrologers, magicians,
or wise men. Whoever they are, their identity remains quite a mystery.
But they know something that the local people do not know - that the
king of the Jews had just been born in the vicinity of Jerusalem.
The presence of the strangers with this special knowledge worries
King Herod, the chief priests, the scribes and the whole of Jerusalem.
Matthew
develops the scene with the care of a master storyteller. On one side
he has the wise men who follow natural means - a star. They are totally
free, humble and open. On the other side he has the wise men of Judea
who are following the Scriptures, and who enjoy the good graces of
Herod. It is clear from the story that they have enough information
in the Scriptures to discover the place where the new king would be
born: but they do not discover him because their intent is not to
do homage but to destroy. Herod and his advisers are scared of a newborn
babe and their fear makes them blind and ruthless.
By
contrast, the pagan strangers are willing to be instructed in a Scripture
that is foreign to them. They are humble and flexible, seeking only
the truth. They act on what has been given to them, and their journey
leads them to their destination. They are able to recognize that an
infant lying in a manger is the one whom they seek. They offer homage
to the child, offer him their gifts, and then make their own way back
to their own country.
The Magi in the story represent all who seek to find and know God,
to put it another way, all who are serious about prayer. These people
see sign posts that others neither see or follow.
One
such person was the Benedictine monk John Main who was first taught
pure prayer - to meditate repeating a single word for two periods
daily - by a Hindu Swami in Malaysia. He was later to discover that
this way of prayer was part of the Christian tradition going back
to Apostolic times. When he shared with religious and lay friends
about the road of meditation he was following, they often treated
him as if he had picked up some weird or newfangled fad in the East.
For so many people prayer is limited to just talking to God and asking
for what they want. If not doing this, they believe that they are
not praying.
For
John Main and those who follow him or practice Centering Prayer, the
prayer word becomes the guiding star that points out the way. If in
prayer one's mind begins to wander, on discovering this one knows
what to do. As the ancient navigators looked to the stars for direction,
the meditator just goes back to saying the prayer word. (John Main
recommended the word MA-RA-NA-THA). Just as the navigators in the
past, who took their direction from the stars, never actually reached
them, trying to say the prayer word will give us direction even if
we never quite succeed in saying it for very long without distraction.
Most
of us travel to God by routes that have been mapped out by generations
of faithful Christians. We should hesitate to condemn those who take
other roads searching for the same God. If we are all exploring we
can teach each other something new about the almighty. We may seem
strangers to each other but what if the stranger is the one who has
the correct address of God!
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Taken
from Sundays
into Silence - A Pathway to Life. Copyright © 1998 by Claretian
Publications
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