Deep Personal Prayer in the Lives of Some Gospel Characters
Introduction
Praying Alone Together is a blog rooted in Carmelite spirituality. There are over eight hundred years in the tradition of this treasure trove of spirituality.
When someone comes to this blog, they are looking for one thing. In one fashion or another, they want to be happy. They have come to the conclusion that the yearning in their heart is in some way related to God. If they are not seeking God, even in the most remote way, the Internet offers a seemingly endless array of other options.
There are two questions fundamental to the human search for happiness that Praying Alone Together / Orando Solos Juntos hopes to address. The questions are: Where are we going? How do we get there?
If you take a moment to think about it, almost every day of our life is driven by our search for an answer to these questions. Most often, our search is utterly futile. Far too often, we think we are on the road only to realize our GPS has led us to another dead end. Every so often we find love. Then we know something is guiding us in the right direction.
Carmelite spirituality starts with an awareness that God loves us first and loves as we are. The Gospels are filled with stories that reveal this truth. The stories of the women are especially clear examples: the Samaritan woman, Mary Magdalene, the woman with the hemorrhage, and the woman caught in adultery.
The following reflections are a consideration of the role of deep personal prayer or its absence in the lives of several characters in the Gospels. These reflections help make deep personal prayer a concrete reality for both the Gospel characters and ourselves.
Carmelite spirituality tells us we best get in touch with Jesus by deep personal prayer. We learn that prayer is always love responding to love. Prayer continuously creates upheaval in our lives and values. Prayer helps us to know god and to know ourselves. The final goal of prayer is to be boldly in love with God. Prayer’s task in this journey of love is to lead us God’s will and teach us how to live it. Prayer assists us in understanding Jesus’ message that is the liberating truth of where we are going and how we get there. This is our Pilgrimage to God.
