To become a living prayer

The deep personal encounter with God in prayer redefines our entire existence. Recognising Him as the author of grace gives us the opportunity of loving as children, of losing ourselves in His gaze, until we become living prayer.

… As we know, our spirituality is both personal and communitarian. It leads us to extend our love vertically, as people say nowadays, towards God, and horizontally towards our neighbors. And keeping the balance between these two loves is what leads us to holiness.

For some of us it’s easier to develop the horizontal dimension of love – and so there is the tendency, at times, to engage in constant activities – rather than developing the vertical dimension.

It’s true that we usually direct all that we do to God – we love others for him, we work for him, we suffer for him, we pray to him. But if it is true that by continually “making ourselves one” with our neighbors we have often reached the point of loving them with our hearts too, can we be just as certain that we love God not only with our will, but also with our heart?

At the end of our lives, we won’t be able to present ourselves to God together with others, with the community; we’ll be alone.

Can we be sure that in that moment all the love stored up in our hearts during our lifetime will spontaneously pour out, as it should do, to the one we ought to have always loved, the one we will meet …and who will judge us? …

That moment will come for us too, and keeping it in mind, we should try from now on to improve our relationship with God as much as possible. …

In fact, we can love God as servants do, doing all that the master wants, without speaking to him at all. Or we can love him like children, with all our heart, full of the Holy Spirit, filled with love and trust in our Father. This kind of trusting relationship leads us to speak with him often, sharing all our concerns, our resolutions and our plans. We experience the trust and the divine desire that makes us eagerly look forward to the time which is only for him and be in contact with him in a deep way.

This is prayer, true prayer! We have to aim at this, to the point that we become living prayers.

The theologian, Evdokimov, said something beautiful about prayer. He said: “It’s not enough to say prayers; one must become prayer, be prayer, grow into being a living prayer.”¹ Grow into being a living prayer, be prayer, as Jesus wants, since he said: “Pray always”².

I believe that the hearts of many of us contain a real wealth of divine love that can transform our lives into authentic prayer, that can make us grow as a living prayer. We only need to make use of it at the right moment.

So, during this period, let’s make the commitment to speak often with God, even in the midst of our activities. Let’s try to improve in this.

Saying “for you” before every action already transforms it into prayer. But that’s not enough. Let’s start to have an ongoing dialogue with him, whenever possible. Only in this way, at the end of our life, will our love for God fall from our lips in words similar to those of the saints. …

Chiara Lubich

(Chiara Lubich, Conversazioni, Cittá Nuova 2919, pag. 551-553)

1. P. Evdokimov, Ortodossia, in Aforismi e citazioni cristiane, cit. p. 153.
2. Cf. Lc 21, 36.