Needing Another

Loving is not just looking at someone, it is living with him. It is sharing our life and all our reasons for living with another, sharing even our self awareness. It is becoming inseparable. Loving is forming a bond so close, that our inmost being would change if the other ceased to exist. We can no longer see ourselves except in terms of this other. So we truly no longer belong to ourselves. We are radically stripped bare of our self possession because we know that everything we are is in relation to another, in communion with him. There is nothing left but this presence.
This presence can be obscure but it must either remain our deepest truth or we perish. We cannot live otherwise. Our poverty is so radical that it must be a cry to God. God cannot be purely and simply absent. Our poverty itself speaks of him and he dwells in it.
Praying is keeping away from all those things where we do not find what we seek. We are waiting, appealing for him who can satisfy us. We turn towards him. We live in vital need of him. We are open to him. We cry for what will one day satisfy our heart and is already present in hope. We can now only guess at the fulness for which we are made, and our desire for it. Our openness to God is a grace, a gift. We should accept it as such and live with it, in simplicity. We are barely aware of it, we wait. However it is by this gift that we are all that we are. It is our one deep truth. The gift of living in prayer is one with the gift we shall receive of living in heaven. It is the same living reality and the seed contains the fruit. So our humble prayer contains within it a hidden fulness. The only worthy praise of God is our whole being involved in communion with him and only living in and through this loving communion. This is the joy of being filled by God, turned towards God.

from Courage to Pray, by Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh
and Georges LeFebvre

Prayer's Purpose

Prayer is the chief agency and activity whereby men align themselves with God’s purpose. Prayer does not consist in battering the walls of heaven for personal benefits or the success of our plans. Rather it is the committing of ourselves for the carrying out of His purposes. It is a telephone call to headquarters for orders. It is not bending God’s will to ours, but our will to God’s. In prayer we tap vast reservoirs or spiritual power whereby God can find fuller entrance into the hearts of men.
G. Ashton Oldham