Prayer: wonder and despair

  • Father Anthony Bloom makes a case in an essay in “God and Man” that our approach to God when we come in prayer can be part won­der and part despair. The despair he has in mind obvi­ously isn’t what is often called ‘faint­heart­ed­ness’ by the Church Fathers — that dis­so­lu­tion of our mind and spirit that makes us give up on every­thing. It’s some­thing dif­fer­ent, some­thing best under­stood by reflect­ing on the story of Bar­ti­maeus, the blind man who cried out “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

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    Prayer and holi­ness seem to me to be rooted in a twofold expe­ri­ence, not in two expe­ri­ences but in a twofold, cor­rel­a­tive one.

    On the one hand, there is the amaze­ment that we feel in the short — but real — moments when we per­ceive God, when we almost touch the hem of His gar­ment; and they leave us in a con­tem­pla­tive state, in deep­en­ing prayer, med­i­ta­tion and inte­ri­or­ity which are on the bor­der of pro­found con­tem­pla­tion and life in God.

    On the other hand, at the other pole of this twofold real­ity of prayer and holi­ness, we find despair and com­pas­sion: despair such as we see, for instance, at the end of the 10th chap­ter of St. Mark, the despair of blind Bar­ti­maeus at the gate of Jeri­cho, the despair of a man who has been blind and has suf­fered from it, who has fought for his sight for years and finally, crushed by mis­for­tune, has set­tled into his blind­ness. And then sud­denly he hears that there is a man liv­ing in Galilee in Judaea who has the power to give sight to a man born blind, to cure every sick­ness, to heal every infir­mity. And this man is pass­ing his way. And this moment when the last hope is pass­ing by is a moment of reawak­en­ing of all the feel­ings of despair that he bears within him as well as all the hope of which he is capable.

    We can pray at moments when we become aware of our blind­ness — and we can include in this term what­ever makes us blind to God and to all that sur­rounds us — and when we sense that the One who can cure us is pass­ing near. Prayer arises at moments when we become deeply aware of our sep­a­ra­tion and of the fact that our life is sus­pended over death, that noth­ing­ness is within us and lap­ping round us from all sides, ready to engulf us. And when we turn our gaze towards oth­ers, in place of that despair linked to an ulti­mate hope, which is the hope that Bar­ti­maeus had, it is com­pas­sion which awakes in us, the capac­ity to suf­fer deeply, intensely, … and in a mys­te­ri­ous way, beyond all expe­ri­ence, par­tic­i­pate within this unity of the Body of Christ, in the com­mon suf­fer­ing which is His.

    – Fr. Anthony Bloom, “Holi­ness and Prayer” God and Man


    Related posts:

    1. The scary Mary prayer
    2. St. John of Kro­n­stadt, on prayer
    3. Answer to prayer
    4. New Tes­ta­ment holi­ness and Old Tes­ta­ment holiness
    5. Prayer request

    December 9th, 2007 | Grace | No Comments |

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