Intimate

Saint Edith Stein, pray for us who have recourse to thee…

Edith Stein (ca. 1938-1939)

How easy it is to pray when there is no intimacy.

I would sit here right now and recite a rosary without even once thinking of anything connected to the Blessed Virgin or the various experiences in Christ’s earthly life, which are the point of the reflections of that most Holy Prayer.

When Our Lady of Fatima appeared to the three shepherd children at Fatima in the early twentieth century, she came with a message – several in fact.  But the messages that resonated with me were that we must pray and suffer greatly for sinners, who have wounded the Sacred Heart of Christ, and secondly, that we must pray the Rosary every day…

There were also secret messages that have fascinated people over the last century or so, but if those messages were relevant for a miserable soul like mine, they would have been revealed to me.  Instead, the two messages that I understood were that I needed to suffer for sinners and must pray the Rosary.  And I have been reflecting on that.  The Rosary is a repetitive prayer.  It is very easy to drone on over and over without thinking at all about the words or the mysteries behind the prayers.  The intentions become muddled and lost and instead of a conversation with God, the prayer becomes background noise for Him and for me because there is no intimacy in my communication with my Beloved.  I am not opening my heart to Him.  I am not concentrating on Him.  I am not even trying very hard to please Him.  I am fulfilling a duty in the same way that I brush my teeth in the morning – without thought…

And Christ warned about this – because this lack of intimacy means that I cannot be ready for God…

“Then the kingdom of heaven shall be compared to ten maidens who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps...  Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” (Matthew 25:1-13).

And there is great merit to be found in that intimacy – and we never know how God will use it for His Holy Will…

Saint Edith Stein was born of Jewish parents in 1891, but stopped believing in God as a teenager.  She became a philosopher, but her atheism was first tested when she observed a woman with a shopping basket in Frankfurt stopping by a Cathedral and kneeling for a brief prayer. She wrote, “This was something totally new to me. In the synagogues and Protestant churches I had visited, people simply went to the services. Here, however, I saw someone coming straight from the busy marketplace into this empty church, as if she was going to have an intimate conversation. It was something I never forgot.”

The Saint became a nun and was later killed in the Gas Chamber in Auschwitz during the Second World War.

And as I have been praying for the intercession of this Saint, I have been reflecting on the significance of intimate prayer.  You see, if I could ask for the Grace to pray intimately, it would not only allow me to work towards my own salvation by pleasing my God, but perhaps, it would be an example for others, so that they could work towards theirs as well…

Saint Edith Stein, pray for us who have recourse to thee…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.