Prayer in Letter of St James. Fr. Raymond

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Fr. Raymond. Wall hanging of
Madonna image
from family 1950, Rome.

On Monday, 30 June 2014,  Raymond ...wrote:

PRAYER IN THE LETTER OF JAMES

“If any of you lacks wisdom let him ask God who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given him. But let him ask in Faith, without doubting,  for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, that is driven and tossed  by the wind.  For that person must not suppose that a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways, will receive anything from the Lord.”

The key to the understanding of these verses lies perhaps in the object proposed for our prayer.  It is: “The Wisdom that that is asked for in Faith”:  the wisdom that knows to call God Father and knows how to live by his life.  It is, in other words, the living grasp of Revelation; the ultimate object of all deprecatory prayer:  Holiness, Union with God.

But first we read in the Latin text: “si quis indiget sapientia” and surely “indigent” expresses more than a mere lack of something.  It means rather the lack of, or want of, something which is vital to us.  And so this phrase sets the perfect atmosphere of prayer.  It not only draws from us the humble  ac-knowledgement of our complete indigence in the supernatural life, but also it shows us the most fitting manner in which to gain the necessities and, even the riches, of this life.  No man is indigent if he can earn his living.  Only a  beggar is indigent!  “Come and buy bread”, Isaiah cries, but “without any money!”.  “Ask, only ask!” says St James.  We all stand before God poor and naked, having nothing we can offer for that for which we ask.  Even the coin of our merit is a token which has its value only from the decree of Him who accepts it.  The saints insist that they do not reach God by their merits.  Merit is a merciful path opened by God to the mediocre; a pious stratagem by which God finds a way to give himself to those who have not learned the nature of love; who have not learned of their own helplessness before the unattainable heights to which they are called.  Love gives itself because it wants to, not because it has been paid for.

Therefore the perfect approach to love is simply to ask for it.  The theology of merit only enhances the gratuity of Grace, and when we learn the secret of our own impotence we will with unspeakable joy learn to fly with Divine swiftness along this truest way to God; the way of the Saints; the way of Asking; the way of Desire.  Not that the saints don’t outshine us all in merits, but the understanding of what merit is only increases in them the confidence that they have found the true way to God.  “Ask, only ask!” says St James.  The Divine Life is so inaccessible that the only approach is humbly to knock and ask.

But when we realise just what it is that we are asking for we do indeed need the assurance James gives us that God “will not upbraid us” for our temerity and presumption, “it will be given us” he says.  So too says Our Lord Himself: “How ready is the Father to give the Good Spirit to those who ask” and St Paul says: “Let us go with confidence to the Throne of grace” and “This is the will of God: your sanctification.”

So, St  James has wonderfully expressed the nature of prayer and indeed of all the life of grace in one short phrase – “to ask and to ask in a Faith that does not waver”.  Herein he holds up to mankind its two greatest crimes – not murder and adultery or war and oppression, but that we do not believe enough in the gift of God and we do not desire enough its consummation in us.  After all what is to ask, but to express desire and what is that but charity, the great fundamental of the spiritual life. The nature of Love is that it is mutual and is not perfected in the self giving of the one till it is fulfilled in the reaching out of the other to embrace that gift.  Love that offers itself and finds no desire to meet it is a tragedy, a deformity of truth that entered creation only with sin.  To ask, to desire is essential to love.  This explains how prayer is not, to persuade God to  give us what we want, but rather, to dispose us to receive what He so wants to give us.  
Here too is explained St James’ insistence on the unwavering nature of faith in the reality of God’s love.  Love that cannot convince its object of its sincerity is likewise a terrible tragedy; a deformity of truth.  It is like a man dying of thirst in the desert and reaching out to the oasis that is only a mirage.  It is frustrated  and unfulfilled.  It can only fall limp and helpless .  Those who respond like that mirage to the thirst of God’s love will not receive anything of Him says St James, and not because God wills it so, but because their lack of faith in his love is the very thing that frustrates it.

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    http://www.tldm.org/bible/new%20testament/james.htm  

THE CATHOLIC EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES THE APOSTLE

This Epistle is called Catholic or Universal, as formerly were also the two Epistles of St. Peter, the first of St. John and that of St. Jude, because they were not written to any peculiar people or particular person, but to the faithful in general. It was written by the apostle St. James, called the Less, who was also called the brother of our Lord, being his kinsman (for cousins german with the Hebrews were called brothers). 

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  right of Mary
  James of Jerusalem

  He was the first Bishop of Jerusalem. In this Epistle are set forth many precepts appertaining to faith and morals; particularly, that faith without good works will not save a man and that true wisdom is given only from above. In the fifth chapter he publishes the sacrament of anointing the sick. It was written a short time before his martyrdom, about twenty-eight years after our Lord’s Ascension.

 NOTE:

The African Bible, Biblical 

Text of the New American Bible. 

Paulines Publications Africa 1999

The Catholic Letters James (p.2051)

James, Faith as Active Love.

The Letter of James.

Author: ... “It was written in his name and with his authority by a well educated Hellenistic disciple who may have made use of genuine traditions that originated with James."

See previous details of the Apostles below.

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