Abbot Raymond celebrated his 75 Birthday today.
He had the HOMILY for the Concelebrated
Since Jesus himself gives a Commentary on Mt: 24-43, “The parable of the weeds among the wheat”, he chose the Second
Rom 8:26-28 And as well as this, the Spirit too comes to help us in our weakness, for, when we do not know how to pray properly, then the Spirit personally makes our petitions for us in groans that cannot
be put into words; and he who can see into all hearts knows what the Spirit means because the prayers that the Spirit makes for God's holy people are always in accordance with the mind of God. We are well aware that God works with those who love him, those who have been called in accordance with his purpose, and turns everything to their good.
PRAYER WITHOUT WORDS
“The Spirit comes to help us in our weakness”,
What are words anyway? The language of words is, on one hand, one of the greatest gifts bestowed on human nature by God, it sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. Yet, on the other hand, we all know the limitations of human language. When we feel something very deeply we instinctively feel ourselves at a loss for words; we know that our words can never do justice to what we feel. This ‘fact’ forces itself on us especially in prayer, when we try to communicate with God. How inadequate our stammerings and babblings are then! However we must realise that God is a Loving Father indeed and just as any loving father is delighted to hear the babblings and stammerings of his children as they make their first efforts to communicate, so also our Heavenly Father is greatly pleased by our efforts to communicate with him.
But, to get back to our sense of the inadequacy of our words to express ourselves at any really deep level: When words fail us in our dealings with each other we instinctively resort to other means of communication; means of communication which are certainly less precise in what they communicate, yet are deeper and stronger for all that. It is something like the difference between a great artist’s painting of a storm at sea, for instance, and the same scene conveyed by a great musical composer. The painting is more precise and detailed, but the music is much more evocative and moving. So, in our dealings with each other we resort to bodily signs such as a smile of pleasure or a hug of joy or an embrace of compassion.
In the same way then, in our dealings with God, we should try to discover within ourselves the inner world of the spirit which has its own corresponding movements of the soul. The soul has its own inner smile of love, its own inner embrace of compassion, it holds out its own inner pleading hands, and it has many other forms of expression that are beyond the spoken word.
But it takes solitude and silence to enter into these areas of our being, areas which are so tragically unknown to our so crowded and noisy and busy world.
But the most wonderful thing about our efforts to express ourselves in prayer is that we have a power within us that lifts us up to the level of God himself, because that power is in fact the divine power of the Holy Spirit himself. Let us be confident then, Paul tells us, as we approach the throne of Grace, because God has no defence against the power that is in us, he cannot stop his ears to the voice of his own Spirit, nor can he hide himself from the gaze of this same Spirit as it shines through the gaze of our own Faith.
It is so important for us to realise the greatness and power of the Christians prayer because he does not pray on his own, but he prays through and with and in, the Holy Spirit.
A friend, David Smith, Methodist Deacon, has been on Retreat in the Community. During the past few days he has used his CamCorder to have Interviews with members of the Community.
I would like to have the Interview with the Abbot to add to this Post. It is a daring move but I am trying YouTube. The File is probably too large. Is it possible to compress the Video Clip?.
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