Willing to Ask

More from Jean Lafrance's Give Me a Living Word:

You are willing to ask, but you want to have alternative solutions in case your supplication does not "work".  That is precisely why your supplication does not have this desperate power which overturns mountains and casts them into the sea.  You withhold an alternative solution and you do not yield yourself totally to this prayer of petition.

I would add to Fr. Lafrance's words that we often also lack, in addition to abandonment to God's solution to our problem, abandonment to God's plan, which might include our problem.  Of course, both deficits are merely instances of the same attitude that says, "Do my will," rather than, "Father, not my will, but yours," (Lk 22:42).

Crazy Love

"If you are madly in love with Christ, you will beget others madly in love with Christ. If you thirst, you will become a wellspring, if you are hungry, you will become nourishment for your brothers.You will not say you are the wellspring; on the contrary, you will say: 'I am not the wellspring, it is greater than I am. It is permeating me, flooding over me, spilling over my heart, it is drowning me and I am proposing it to you. I am drowning, do you want to sink with me? If so, do as I do: eat the flesh of Christ, drink his blood and, especially, pray in contemplation,'" Jean Lafrance, Give Me a Living Word, 9.26.

The Face of Christ

More from Fr. Jean LaFrance's Give Me a Living Word:

"27. The face of Christ must become alive for you: it must have eyes that see, lips that speak and a heart that loves. This is a gift of God and there is no trick to it. Nevertheless all spiritual masters testify to it: you must seek to have the face of Christ become alive for you and that can only be the work of the Holy Spirit.

28. At one time, you felt this breath go by in your life and your eye meet that of Jesus, otherwise you would not be here. From that day on, Jesus Christ ceased to be an abstract entity for you and you had but one wish: to find him again in contemplative prayer.

29. But after that, the sea ebbs away and you are cut short! As the Fathers say, grace abandons us. Your situation is then very painful, for you are yearning for Christ like Adam when he was chased from the Garden of Eden. At certain moments, contemplative prayer may even have lost all its meaning for you or at least most of it. How can you prevent this encounter from falling into oblivion, not in the manner of Proust's "madeleines", but in the biblical sense: "Remember all that happened to you when the face of Christ took flesh in your sight." St. John Chrysostom says that at the moment of baptism, we are enlightened by the grace of the Holy Spirit, but that grace very quickly disappears into the depths of our being and we hasten to forget it. A catechumen recently made the same remark to me," Give Me a Living Word, 9.27-29.

Waiting in Prayer

"20. We are told that St. Ignatius could find God in contemplative prayer as he wished, when he wised, and wherever he wished. You undoubtedly are far from enjoying such facility, but do not go and say that this grace is not for you: it will surely be given to you if you persever in prayer. It is also said that after he had seen the Blessed Virgin, Ignatius ceased to be tormented in his flesh. Know that this grace can also be given to you as experience has proved to me.

21. Until such time, prepare your heart to receive this gift and wait for it patiently in a prolonged yearning like the elderly Simeon who, prompted by the SPirit, came back every day to the Temple of Jerusalem to wait for the Savior. Like him, you will someday receive the Child in your arms and you will be rewarded for this long wait.

22. And to pass away this time of waiting, do what you can. Say the Jesus Prayer or the rosary, read the Word of God. In last resort, do nothing but wait knowing that, at any moment, prayer may well up in your heart."

Give Me a Living Word: Maxims on Prayer (1.20-1.22), Jean LaFrance