Essence of Prayer (Hiddenspring)

To acknowledge that we have absolute need of the mediator, Jesus, means a practical acceptance of the fact that, to attain to God, we must die with Jesus: not of ourselves, or by ourselves, but `in him'. I must enter into his death. This death is a death to my self-centredness and self-possession. It is an ecstasy: a going right out of myself to be

Holding up the cross, bidding us gaze into that bleeding, humiliated face, the Holy Spirit's focus is not first and foremost on suffering, or even on sin and its consequences, but on a love that is absolute, `out

for God to `touch' me, however lightly, means I suffer. I begin to shrivel up, to experience something of my sinfulness and total helplessness. I will come to realise with poignant intensity that I know nothing about God, that to me he has not yet revealed hisname. I had thought I was spiritual, contemplative even; and now I see that I am an empty

Everything depends on our believing God is Love, utterly faithful, good and generous.

Prayer is not just one function in life, not even the most important function; it is life itself. We are truly alive, truly human, only when our whole life is prayer.

All that is most important about us happens at a level below consciousness. So real prayer, prayer in its very essence, escapes our direct consciousness.

Without realizing it, we can call `faith' that assent we give to our own manageable ideas of God. True faith takes us into the unknown. It calls for blind trust; it calls for profound humility and surrender.

Religious people, on the whole, think that by generous ascetic and spiritual effort they can come eventually to an experience of union with God. This is not so. Only One has attained the Father and we can attain him only insofar as we allow ourselves to be caught up in Jesus, carried along by him. In practice this means renouncingany spiritual achi

It is the Father's excess of love for us that, in filling the heart of Jesus, drives Jesus to his self-emptying.