Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast , the production of the John Paul Tuvery Null Center . I'm Jack Rigard , your host , and I'm so glad that you're with me today . I hope you're doing well .
I was out early this morning and taking a walk and it was quiet and I've got the rosary with me and I thought , you know , I'm going to spend just a little time out here on walking our dog and I look up for the sun and the sun is this beautiful contrast to the rest of the horizon .
You've got some white and a light blue sky , with this orange ball , a perfect circle , and bringing this incredible spot of beauty up there contrasted .
We have a lot of green here , we've had a lot of rain , which has really been good for the crops in the Midwest here , and with all the greens and then the blues and the white , and then you have this orange ball and it's just an amazing beauty . It's like just drew me and I was just standing there and I just couldn't get my eyes off of that .
And you realize that God does this . Why does he do this ? Why the orange ball up there ? Why is this perfect circle in this just mesmerizing beauty ? And you realize that how much evil that man brings into the world , opening up this right from Genesis , all of our history of man opening ourselves up to evil and bringing sin into the world .
And I speak about this a lot and we need to and I always say , and I'll continue to bring up this week and next week and a week after probably , there's a lot of evil going on in the world , this attack on marriage and the family , this attack on the church , within the church and outside the church , and also , you know , on our whole nation right now , our
whole attack on the Constitution , etc . But as I was walking this morning , I thought , you know , god's still bringing all this beauty and this bounty of beauty into this world . He's still protecting us . He's still raining down , you know , I see the crops all coming up . I mean , why didn't it ? Just ?
There was almost the beginning of a , or there was a beginning of a drought , I guess , earlier on in the season , just after the planning got done and farmers were a little worried about it , and now it's all changed , you know , and God brings this bounty .
He could have just let it , you know , held back the rain a little bit more and we could have lost all the crops , you know . But he didn't . And so here I am , finding peace in the midst of all this chaos , and so I had began an article yesterday why I Pray , and I thought you know I'm going to finish that article and share that with you this morning .
So buckle up and get ready for the rest of today's episode . Why I pray ? I pray because I'm human . I pray because I am human . Prayer is as natural to a human person as his breathing , eating , sleeping and loving .
For the philosopher , the poet and every human person , prayer is a connection to awe and wonder and to all that is true and good and beautiful . Prayer opens the individual person , body and soul , to the infusion of grace , the gift of divine life and love , which leads to the potential for human flourishing .
This potential then becomes efficacious when one then acts upon that gift received and so then turns himself out and becomes a sincere gift of self to others . This manifestation of love then builds up the city of God , the body of Christ , and so fulfills the very meaning purpose of our lives .
On the other hand , the default position of the person who does not pray and rejects the divine gift is a body and a soul closed to the infusion of grace . One cannot give what is not possessed , and the potential then for human flourishing is diminished by sin and death .
Living in disconnection , then , like a cut flower , the human person without grace grasps for life in a futile attempt to replace the infinite grace with the finite things of this world .
Human beings become ravenous creatures , lustful creatures , as all attempts to build a city upon a foundation of sin and death failed to satisfy the deepest desires of the human heart . The human heart was made for more . That's why I pray . St Thomas Aquinas said this .
The reason , however , why the philosopher may be likened to the poet is this Both are concerned with the marvelous . My friend , jimmy Patridge , had come home from Vietnam without his legs . The sexual revolution was in full swing . The murder of the unborn had become a right that was codified into law .
On top of this , we had no fault divorce that left me wondering about the meaning of life and love . I wondered how the love between two people , once so beautiful and promising , could turn to dislike for one another and even to hatred . I saw the negative effect that divorce had on my childhood friends .
Then came the sexual abuse scandal in the church , and we were warned for good reason . It turned out that the government itself could not be trusted . At 17 years old , I was the oldest of five boys . I remember feeling confused . I remember feeling boxed in and anxious .
I was working eight hours a day , three o'clock until 11 o'clock pm most nights , as a chef's assistant in the large hotel kitchen . After school , my family needed the money and besides , the world of work brought me a sense of satisfaction and an escape from my troubled mind . But then I began to wonder is this all there is ?
The pain and sorrow and the pain and horror of war , love reduced to sex , marriages that could end Work just to pay the bills and perhaps even to forget ?
An early interest in philosophy led me to Joseph Piper , who wrote more and more at the present time , common good and common need are identified , and what comes really to the same thing is this world of work that's becoming our entire world . It threatens to engulf us completely .
Till , at last , they make a total claim upon the whole of human nature , a world in which there is no room for philosophy or philosophizing in any true sense of the word . He went on to talk about Plato and said as everyone knows , plato virtually identified philosophy and eros .
Eros he would define as this innate desire for all that is true , all that is good and beautiful . It could be an erotic , sensual desire , but not in the sense to use and abuse , but to search for again what's true , what's good , what's beautiful .
And in regard to the similarity of philosophy and poetry , there is the little known and curious saying of Saint Thomas Aquinas , which occurs in his commentary on metaphysics of Aristotle . He said the philosopher is related to the poet in that both are concerned with wonder , with marveling and with that which makes us marvel .
Pope , john Paul II , and Phidès and Razzio . Faith and Reason would add this . The lessons of history show that this is the path to follow .
It is not necessary to abandon the passion for ultimate truth , the eagerness to search for it or the audacity to forge new paths in that search , it is faith which stirs reason to move beyond all isolation and the willingness to run risks so that it may attain whatever is beautiful , good and true . Faith thus becomes the convinced and convincing advocate of reason .
Well , as a young man , that was enough for me . I need a time to find the truth , if it existed . Hopeful that I could discover answers . I left home at the first opportunity with no plans other than to find space to be , space to think , and I wanted to be in their mountains or the ocean . I knew someone in Denver . I'd start there .
I cashed my last paycheck , threw my backpack , my hiking boots , some extra clothes on my 10 speed bike in the back of an old station wagon , sold or gave away everything else and drove away . From the song of songs , hark , my lover . Here he comes , springing across the mountains , leaping across the hills . My lover is like a gazelle or a young stag .
My lover speaks . He says to me arise , my beloved , my beautiful one , and come . The song of songs , huh , the love between a man and a woman , but also the saints and the mystics . It gave them the vocabulary to express the kind of desire and the kind of thirst that they had for God .
They wrote more about that little book in the middle of the Bible , the song of songs , more commentary about that than all of the other scripture writings that they wrote about . It touches the hearts , huh . One time , hiking in the Rockies , I followed a steep animal trail through the trees and brush until I came to a clearing just above the tree line .
The short distance away , I spotted a lone tree standing along what I hoped was the top of the mountain and I headed up toward it . Once there , I stood in awe at the scene before me . Across the valley , rosen , even taller , stunning snow-capped mountain Cascading down from its summit .
Looking like liquid silver , glistening in the Sun , was a waterfall dropping thousands of feet below . The song of birds were everywhere , bees and butterflies were moving among the wildflowers in the valley , below , along with a herd of elk . The calves were running and jumping , while the adults grazed nearby .
I took off my backpack and set down my back against the tree to take it all in . I Didn't find all the answers to my questions that day , but I sensed that the awe and wonder and beauty before me opened the door that I was invited to enter and I began to pray .
Almost immediately , the small circle of my world where I took up so much space Became much larger . I became smaller not because I shrunk , but because I was given sight , and my circle extended outward . I had been trying to find the truth in a small circle that had me in the center .
I was living in a small and cramped eternity , when what I needed were not new arguments as much as to give it fresh air . Prayer , like a branch Reconnected to the vine , opened a smaller story of my life to the awe and wonder of the larger story .
Cs Lewis wrote this we want so much more , something the books on aesthetics take little notice of , but the poets and the Mythologies know all about it . We do not want merely to see beauty , though God knows . Even that is bounty enough .
We want something else which can hardly be put into words To become united with the beauty we see , to pass into it , to receive it into ourselves , to bathe in it and to become part of it . That is why I pray . The catechism on a section of prayer starts like this . This is from St Tres of the Sue . Prayer is an aspiration of the heart .
It is a simple glance directed to heaven . It is a cry of recognition and of love , embracing both trial as well as joy . Finally , it is something great , supernatural which expands my soul and unites me to Jesus . It goes on . Prayer is the raising of one's mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God .
But when we pray , do we speak from the height of our pride and will or out of the depths of a humble and contrite heart . Psalm 130 , verse 1 , he who humbles himself will be exalted . We read in Luke , chapter 18 , verse 9 , humility is the foundation of prayer .
Only when we acknowledge that we do not know how to pray as we ought , st Paul said in Romans , are we ready to receive freely the gift of prayer . St Augustine said man is a beggar before God . Finally , prayer is the place where God's thirst for you meets your thirst for God .
In the Gospel of John , there's a Samaritan woman who comes to the well to draw water . Jesus says to her Give me a drink . And later , if you knew the gift of God who is standing here , the wonder of prayer is revealed beside the well where we come seeking water . There , there , christ comes to meet every human being .
It is he who first seeks us and asks us for a drink . See , jesus thirsts . His asking arises from the depths of God's desire for us . Whether we realize it or not , prayer is the encounter of God's thirst with ours . This is from Catechism number 2559 , 2560 . Go read it , it's so beautiful , and I'm going to end with Catechism 2561 .
If you and this is still pulling from John if you knew the gift of God , jesus said . And who it is that is saying to you Give me a drink , jesus said . You would have asked him and he would have given you living water .
Paradoxically , our prayer of petition is the response to the plea of the living God , who said this they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters and they've hewn out cisterns for themselves , broken cisterns , cisterns they can hold no water .
So prayer is the response of faith to the free promise of salvation and also response of love to the thirst of the only Son of God . That is why I pray . It's the point where God's thirst for me meets my thirst for him . Hey , god bless you . Thanks for being with me everyone .