Introduction: Wrestling with God

From the writings of Vincent Fitzpatrick, S.T. (Privately published by the Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity, January 2007). Father Vincent Fitzpatrick (1915-2006) was a young seminarian in Holy Trinity, Alabama, who knew both Father Judge and Mother Boniface. After his ordination, he taught Latin and Greek in the minor seminary, served as Novice Master and was on the General Council. He was a highly respected figure in the development of the Missionary Cenacle.

Too often the intensity of our prayer life waxes and wanes to the extent we are seriously challenged by the pressures of everyday living. Unfortunately too many of us see prayer only in its usefulness to heal, to reassure, to restore confidence. Would that we experience it more often in the sunshine days of our life when overcome not by tragedy and serious need but rather by the unexpected joy and exaltation this marvelous gift produces in our life. Prayer is a dangerous occupation. Prayer changes us. Prayer transforms us. Prayer is the major instrument which brings about the conversion of attitudes imposed upon us by the gospel. The basic requirement of every prayer is an openness on the part of the one who prays to do the will of God. Behind every prayer should be the willingness to change those things in my life in need of change; the desire to remove any and every impediment which interferes with that oneness with God and the acceptance of His will.

How often in prayer do we find ourselves locked in serious combat feeling the pain of our will competing with God’s? We demand God to do things our way. We want God to follow the process of human reasoning. Our way rather than His. One of the early examples of prayer offered to us in Sacred Scripture appears in the Book of Genesis. It is the story of that contest of wills, when Jacob wrestles with the Lord, God. The struggle went on all night. Prayer is essentially this wrestling with God. It is that difficult at times to yield to the Divine Will. God has endowed us with magnificent gifts; empowered us to be stewards of all creation. God has entrusted us to build the universe according to His plan. Such independence and power are hard to surrender. We are never far from our first parents in our ability to yield to that ancient temptation and see ourselves wiser than God. Jesus faced that same temptation when beginning his public life and, again, when facing his death.

It is in Jesus that we encounter God. The person of Jesus during his life time and the Spirit of the Risen Jesus assured for us in the Pentecost event mark a new direction in prayer. Jesus altered our understanding of God to whom we address all our prayer. As a matter of fact, Jesus comes as the Image of his Divine Father. We recognize what divinity is all about when Jesus reveals the mystery of the Holy Trinity; when Jesus taught us to deal with God person to person; when Jesus identifies himself with the Father. To the disciples he assures them: “The Father and I are one” or as he says to Philip “he who sees me sees the Father . . . ” It is almost as if we were not communicating adequately with God in prayer before that. We had to learn God’s language. This we did in Jesus. We were never convinced how God could love us until we experienced love in the person of Jesus. The mystery of the Incarnation opened up new horizons in our effort to communicate with God. We never realized how beholden we were to God until God invested so much in the human family through the gift of Jesus.

For years we lived by the older definition we memorized from the penny catechism. Prayer is lifting the mind and the heart to God and, of course, to adore, to praise, to seek forgiveness, to petition. The newer description is much more suitable – “Prayer is an encounter with God.” Prayer is the special way in which creature meets Creator. This explanation avoids the misunderstanding as to our portion of responsibility in this activity related to God. . . . One very important feature is stressed in this formula. Prayer is not a one-way street where we do all the talking and God does all the listening. As a matter of fact, it may be quite the opposite. But I fear too many engaged in prayer won’t relinquish the microphone. Have you thought about what it means when we know prayer is a dialogue and not a monologue? We have not made listening a feature of our prayer. It has been suggested somewhere that that is why we have two ears and only one mouth. Dialogue calls for twice as much listening as talking.

We do have a way of putting the total responsibility of prayer on ourselves. Don’t we really carry the impression that we must do all the talking? We are for the most part very poor listeners. We ignore the elementary operation of this dialogue and never give God a chance to speak. Yet it is a fact of human living that God never ceases from speaking to us. God speaks in the beauty of nature; in the goodness of people. God speaks in joy and speaks in sorrow. God speaks in success and speaks in failure. God speaks in our human family and he speaks in our institutions. God speaks in a more formal and special way in our acts of worship and the celebration of our liturgy. God speaks and reveals so fully what is his Will in his Word, Sacred Scripture. God speaks to us through Jesus.

In many ways Jesus makes it plain that prayer does not belong to us: a loan as it were, a key to our success and salvation. It should be evident when he cautions us: “You have not chosen me, I have chosen you.” It offers some explanation why Jesus invites us to prayer by means of those three words of petition: ask, seek, knock. Each of those terms emphasizes the passive element attached to those petitions. We are totally disposed to what God will determine for us. It is not ours for the having but only by asking, seeking, knocking. By no stretch of the imagination can prayer be seen as a managerial function. It is possible that much of our prayer effort can be blemished by that human tendency to be in control.