In today's Gospel reading from St. Mark, we're told something that ought to cause us to do some serious reflection:
"When it was evening, after sunset, they brought to Jesus all who were ill or possessed by demons. The whole town was gathered at the door. He cured many who were sick with various diseases, and he drove out many demons…. Rising very early before dawn, he left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed."
Why should this passage provoke serious reflection? Not because Jesus healed a multitude. Not because an entire town pressed at the door of the place Christ was staying, eager for a word or a touch from him. What strikes me upon reading this is a very simple but perhaps overlooked fact --- Jesus prayed.
Jesus, the Son of God, seated at the right hand of the Father, prayed. What this makes me ask myself is, if Jesus prayed, why don't I?
It's not that I never pray. I pray. I just don't pray very much. I pray when I'm frightened. I pray when I'm desperate. I pray when I feel lost. I pray when I feel like my life is out of control in a serious way. But today's Gospel reading suggests that Jesus finds it either necessary, or desirable, or both, to routinely pray in the course of his ministry.
This makes me think that, if prayer is a source of strength, power and intimacy with God for Jesus, certainly prayer is needed for you and I to find strength, power and intimacy with God. Let's face it, Jesus had a serious head start on the average human in each of these categories. If he needs to pray to stay in touch with God, we humans have the same need, multiplied perhaps a few million times.
So why don't I pray more regularly? Probably because I am easily lulled into a sense of self-reliance. I work. I get paid. I provide for myself and my family. I am not physically hungry or financially poor. But I am spiritually starving most of the time, and I am relatively miserly to the needy in our world and in my community. Yet I don't pray nearly as often as I might.
I don't know if Jesus ever felt spiritually hungry, or poor. I don't know if Jesus ever felt frightened, desperate or lost. Probably not. But still he prayed. There must be something vitally necessary happening in that encounter.
When his first followers find Jesus alone in prayer, they tell him that the multitudes are looking for him. "'Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also,' Jesus responds. 'For this purpose have I come.' So he went into their synagogues, preaching and driving out demons throughout the whole of Galilee."
Jesus emerges from his prayer with a renewed sense of his mission and priorities. He knows what he is called to do, and has the strength and determination to do it. Perhaps the reason I feel spiritually hungry and poor most of the time is because I am not in touch with the source of strength and direction that we see in Jesus Christ.
Jesus is our model of faith, of how to depend on God. Today we see one aspect of how Jesus puts his life in God's hands. He prays. Bill Peatman writes from Napa.
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