Nunraw Harvest

Catholic Life (Monthly 1970s). My Way of Prayer No two people pray the same way. But hearing how other people approach prayer can be of great help to us in our own prayer life. This month's contributor to our regular series is DOM DONALD McGLYNN, Abbot of Nunraw the Cistercian Abbey in Scotland THE BEAUTY OF GOD IS THAT he takes us where he finds us. When he finds me at prayer I really do feel for him: how anyone could sort this-lot out! Since he is presented with the jig-saw of the inner me so often it is not for me to complain when Catholic Life asks me the absurd question: "How do you pray?" Ask Princess Anne how she won the Olympic Show jumping, or ask .George the gardener how he grew the prize winning cabbage and you may be sure of an eloquent answer. But that answer may be inspired more by the joy of winning and the interest of others than by the actual jumping or the growing of cabbages. Talking about one's prayer is a kind: of babbling in the same way about something which absorbs one's interest but is no more one's own than the growth of the cabbage. l\1an's to plant and sow and water, but God's alone to give the increase. In the great muddle of my supposed prayer, which at times is literally being all things with all men: saying the Divine Office, sharing in the Rosary, meditating with silent brethren, rejoicing with a charismatic group -- always seem to come back to the quiet time before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. The feeling is that this is .the real prayer, And, in fact, in spite, of the silence and nothing happening, it always is the decisive time of prayer. PRACTICAL NECESSITY Prayer is catching and still keeps catching me. It even gets to the point where Christ's "pray without ceasing", and Paul's '''pray constantly" is no longer a kind of wishful ideal but a downright practical necessity. One goes through the day with the secret life of Our Lady's Tumbler-not knowing how to pray but juggling all one does and says into some kind .of continuous stream of prayer. When I get up in the morning and I have to make it a few minutes earlier in order to waken myself up properly, there lies before me not only a whole programme of liturgical prayer, but also all the other comings and goings, of the day. If I don't do something about it, everything is just going to spill on top of ··me .and roll on meaninglessly. So I make a mental jump to the end of the day and .then trace each hour back to the present moment and offer each hour as the embodiment of the wordless prayer of Morning Offering, which is all I can .make at this early hour. Inevitably the very thought of the day ahead is going to remind me of certain people and the stage could be set for a depressing start. Now I have discovered the best way to handle this. Instead of trying to forget the objectionable people I take them one, name by name, and raise each one up in prayer thanking God for them as they are, and allowing him to pro­vide the best means of meeting their needs-and he does provide! But when I am really in a fix, or the task ahead is just too much, it is only in the peace of the Blessed Sacrament that I am always sure of the help I need. Without an hour in his presence it feels as if the decision or the sermon or whatever, is going to be futile or fruitless, It is something new for me - and the charismatic renewal has something to do with it - that this aloneness before God has taken on a new meaning. It is just no longer possible to be alone in that sense. One is so much aware, perhaps as the result of the emphasis on praise and on sharing in group prayer, of everyone else united in the one chorus of praise in the Body of Christ. And at the same time one is aware of a deeper sense of God alone, God as unique, holy, worthy of all our love. BREATH OF THE SPIRIT When people speak of charismatic renewal I suppose this is what they are looking for: a new breath of the Spirit. It is a renewal which regardless of the heap it finds begins to activate it and set in motion every part of one's response to Christ; and. at the same time renews the sense of the Body of Christ in his members. Where the gifts of the Holy Spirit are at work this last aspect is not surprising since it is of their nature, according to St Paul, that such influence of the Holy Spirit is for the common good. As a result one has a greater appreciation and begins to see the tangible possibilities of a new sense of community, the Body of Christ, the sharing of life, spiritual and material, in witness of Christ's love.