Prayer:
Thanks to faith, the Word of God, forgiveness of sins, and the healing power of the sacraments, humanity is rescued from perdition and led toward growing closeness with God. His healing and strengthening presence in the soul causes the new life of God to unfold within it. This new life, which restores the image of God in man, requires daily nourishment to grow and mature. The Lord provides this nourishment to us through the various means we have meditated on over the past few days, and most importantly, through a life of prayer.
St. Teresa of Ávila, a teacher of the interior life, calls prayer “the great dialogue with God.” Through prayer, our soul turns to God and becomes receptive to Him. God Himself calls us to prayer, and the Holy Spirit leads us ever deeper into it.
Those who pray emerge from their inner isolation and experience with increasing naturalness the loving presence of the Lord.
Prayer thus becomes an exchange of love with God, restoring trust and a constant connection with Him. Particularly, restoring trust in God is a profound step toward healing the human heart. Conversely, the loss and limitation of this trust cause serious disruption in the relationship God intended to have with human beings.
When fear and mistrust dominate a person, their soul is sick, and their life is darkened. This affects their relationships with God and with their neighbors. These feelings threaten to dominate completely, and the more they succeed, the gloomier, barer, and less joyful life becomes.
Through prayer, by consciously bringing these feelings before God and asking Him to free us from them, we allow the Holy Spirit to touch them. It is through this contact that negative feelings begin to dissolve. At the same time, when we ask God to grant us trust, our souls are freed from the bondage of those negative feelings.
The life of prayer is not, in the first instance, an obligation imposed on us so that we do not forget God, honor Him, and are protected from evil. Rather, prayer is an invitation to cultivate an intimate, loving relationship with God. It is the great dialogue through which we learn to know and love Him better and better. Out of respect for the freedom that love implies, prayer should not be subject to a “I have to.” Of course, prayer requires discipline, which helps us not be at the mercy of our fluctuating nature.
Understanding prayer as time devoted to cultivating our relationship with God frees us from certain pressures that may still weigh on our prayer life, from that sense of obligation that darkens the soul. For example, we may feel a kind of pressure within ourselves to achieve: “I must save as many souls as possible through my prayers” or “I must offer atonement for so many of humanity’s sins.” Without questioning these noble intentions or minimizing in any way the importance of such prayers, we must ensure that prayer is not determined by a strong sense of obligation, but that it breathes a spirit of freedom in all its stages. Encountering and living with God leads us precisely to the freedom of the children of God. Of course, this freedom should not be confused with arbitrariness or doing whatever one wants. True freedom allows us to escape all kinds of pressures and brings us joy as fruit.
True joy—joy in God and in all that He has created and done for us, human beings—joy as the fruit of the Holy Spirit, is a powerful remedy for the soul. This joy transfigures and impels life in the light of God and is already an expression of the healing that is taking place in the soul. The person adopts an attitude of acceptance toward life and its challenges. In the light of growing love, their soul is healed and strengthened.
However, we must still struggle while living in this world so as not to lose the grace God has given us and cooperate with it. In this struggle, though, we are not abandoned or helpless. The soul strengthened by the Lord in prayer can face this struggle without relying on its own strength. The soul is aware that this struggle will help it continue to grow and fulfill its mission in this world.