Vatican
City, 16 May 2012
(VIS) - After having examined prayer in the Acts of the Apostles,
Benedict XVI announced that he will dedicate his next series of
catechesis to prayer in the Letters of St. Paul, which always begin
and end with an expression of prayer and which have given us a rich
range of forms of prayer.
In
Wednesday's general audience, celebrated in St. Peter's Square before
more than 11,000 people, the Pope explained that the Apostle to the
Gentiles wants us to understand that prayer "should not be seen
as a simple good deed made to God, an action of our own. It is above
all a gift, fruit of the living [and] revitalizing presence of the
Father and of Jesus Christ in us".
When
we pray we feel "our weakness ... our creatureliness, because we
find ourselves before God's omnipotence and transcendence ... and we
perceive our limitations ... and the necessity to trust ever more in
Him". This then is when "the Holy Spirit helps us in our
incapacity ... and guides us to turn toward God". Prayer,
therefore, is mainly "the action of the Holy Spirit in our
humanity that takes charge of our weakness and transforms us from
persons who are bound to material reality into spiritual persons".
Among
the effects of the action of the Spirit of Christ as the internal
principle of all our acts, the Holy Father observed first that
"prayer inspired by the Spirit gives us the possibility to
abandon and overcome all forms of fear or slavery, living the true
freedom of the children of God". Another consequence is that
"our relationship with God becomes so deep that it is no longer
affected by deeds or situations. We understand that prayer doesn't
free us from trials or tribulations but we can live them in union
with Christ, with His suffering, in view of also participating in His
glory".
THERE
IS NO HUMAN CRY THAT GOD DOES NOT HEAR
"Many
times", the Pope said, "we ask God to deliver us from
physical and spiritual evil ... however, we often have the impression
that He doesn't hear us and we run the risk of becoming discouraged
and of not persevering. In reality, there is no human cry that God
does not hear. ... God the Father's answer to His son was not the
immediate freedom from suffering, from the cross, or from death:
through the cross and His death, God answered with the Resurrection".
Finally,
"a believer's prayer, if open to the human dimension and to
creation as a whole ...does not remain locked in on itself. It opens
itself to share in the suffering of our time. It is thus converted
into ... the channel of hope for all of creation and an expression of
God's love that is poured into our hearts by means of the Spirit".
The
apostle, the Holy Father concluded, teaches us that when we pray "we
have to open ourselves to the presence and the action of the Holy
Spirit ... in order to turn ourselves to God with our whole heart and
our whole being. Christ's Spirit becomes the strength of our our
'weak' prayer, the light of our 'dim' prayer, ... teaching us to live
while facing the trials of existence, in the certainty that we are
not alone, opening ourselves to the horizons of humanity and the
creation that 'is groaning in labour pains'".
