The Power
of Prayer
Prayer’s Ultimate Goal
Prayer’s ultimate goal — if, indeed, it
has others — is to close the gap between us and God. If
communication does not take place, then prayer can become a
formula, a routine, nothing more. It continues to be good
because all good customs remain good, even when they are
practised automatically. However, if prayer does not bring us
into a relationship with anyone, then it is nothing but one more
type of therapy. This kind of prayer not only fails to bring us
into a privileged communion with God, but it makes us content
with a gesture that does not even put us into contact with
ourselves. But if prayer is an encounter, then it becomes
something of utmost importance because it is the live connection
with the powerhouse of the universe. It is the source of values
and of love.
Thought of like this, prayer is the
recognition that we are not the center of our world. It
recognizes that the center of our existence is there, in
infinity, outside and above us. At the same time, it is so near
that we can enter into contact with God at any time, in an
instant. So, prayer is the recognition that to live represents
something more than we can perceive in our own limited
experience day to day. It means that we have access to a
lifestyle that is unlimited. That lifestyle is only a step, only
a prayer away from our small, mediocre, personal reality. That
life is what makes our existence here so marvellous.
The ones who do not pray are unaware of
what they are missing. They have been deprived of their eternal
dimension. Their lives may be morally correct and full of
values, yet they will lack depth because they have excluded from
them the very thing which could raise them to a higher level of
relationships.
Prayer means opening oneself to divine
power.
Source: Robert Badenas. Meet
Jesus. Autumn House, Lincolnshire, England, 1995. 137 pp.