…TO PRAY…
Stage 83 / Saturday 18 July / From A Salceda to Santiago de Compostella / 23 km
Yesterday there was a celebration going on in my last stop before Compostella: The Galicians seem to be very epicurean. They love outdoor banquets, music bands and accordion music, firecrackers and fireworks, and wine generously flowing. It was as if they were celebrating my arrival, even though I still have a last stage to cover. Early in the morning I set off, full of appreciation for having already made it this far. I give thanks. I pray that such moments of simple happiness will continue to occur in my life.
But to whom then am I praying? Am I really praying to someone, or am I just praying to see if that can still be useful? Praying because God is? Or am I just praying because it feels good? Apparently this is what even atheists are ready to do when, being seamen on a sinking ship, or mountain-climbers ready to lose their grip, this is their only instinctive solution to be able to survive. Ironic paradox: instinctive prayer!
The God of the Scriptures, inaccessible, sovereign, indecomposable, unique, to be respected as such, is He the recipient of my prayers? He who made me feel His subtle presence by gentle caresses of beauty felt and little miracles experienced is so distant, so imperceptible. I must decide either that He exists, or not, and that it is His nature to only make himself heard very delicately. He is like the soft noise of a breath, a shiver of silence, a gentle silence, like the same that Eli felt in Moses’ cave on Mount Horeb (1 Kings 19:9-15).
I accept by my own decision this willingness of a God eminently discrete, even humble, but who is always available like in a light breeze of air. This is for me the true God. He allows us at any moment to turn to His Spirit, His breath, if we search for Him by prayer and silence as the hermits and contemplatives do. It is also thus that Jesus sought him, often withdrawing far from his companions to pray, and listening to the vibrations in himself that he called the will of his Father in Heaven. Jesus was raised to heaven, says our Creed, as the beloved only son rescued us from the throes of hell. Through Him, in Him, with Him, our being, in any case the essence what distinguishes us from the trivial (our soul!) can also survive death, and that I need to believe!
Guy Trainar decides that his “safeguiding” God is not really this sort of god because, he says, “his impersonality disqualifies him from it.” However he has the impression from time to time that this god accords favors and he doubts that pure chance would accord so much! Having distanced himself through the course of these stages from the religious discourse to which I myself continue to adhere in its essence (that of a mysterious but efficient Trinitarian God), Guy has found consolation in the fact that he has not seen change in the reality which surrounds him. Thus he rightly asks: how could his need to pray address itself to “the reality of the universe?” It seems to him that he would thus pass from one illusion to another…
He thinks that his prayers can influence other consciences by mysterious links which connect them. But he affirms being convinced that if a meteorite threatens to hit the Earth, even all humanity praying with one voice could not deviate its trajectory. In short, he believes a little, but not passionately, dare I say! He refuses in any case to recite the institutional prayers of the Catholic Church. He doesn’t want any expressions going against his thinking “like: all powerful lord, creator, resurrection of the flesh, …not even shepherd.”
Guy feels very strongly his capability of being totally free of any shackles, finding it absurd to pray for example to ask for more faith! He even hesitates to pray to ask for any favor for someone else if that might hamper other freedoms. He even wonders if it isn’t to himself that he should pray: “pray to evolve, to improve himself, to go beyond himself, to connect to others in the world.” That is something interesting, even noble, but which doesn’t satisfy me personally, for I do not see in this degree of independence a factor of gathering other humans around a good common cause. Would this in fact be the beginning of the building of a new tour of Babel (Genesis 1:1-9)?
I believe that this is a pious wish—if I dare say—to hope that culturally discordant human prayers could raise the world to unity, beyond their individual useful infuence, in a universal blooming bearing happiness for all. Even if these prayers seek to align themselves, as Guy proposes, “along the lines directing the dynamics of the universe!”
I have now reached the Mount of Gozo, in the suburbs of the town of Compostela. A statue of Pope John-Paul II recalls the vibrant message that he addressed on Sunday 20 August 1989 on the occasion of the Fourth World Youth Day. The pope recalled the what was announced by the apostle Paul, who lost his life because of his faith, as for that matter did the Apostle James that one venerates at Compostela: “Yes, by the endearment which was given to me, I say to each of you not to exalt yourself in thought more than is appropriate, but think with wisdom, according to the measure of adherence apportioned to each one by Elohims” (Romans 12:3; Chouraqui’s translation).
This same text in the Roman Catholic current translation is read today as follows: “For by the grace given to me I tell everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than one ought to think, but to think soberly, each according to the measure of faith that God has apportioned.”
To each one to pray according to his degree of adherence therefore!
