In the Magnifat Lenten
Companion, the story/meditation on today’s Gospel (Matthew 6:7-15) is one in
which the writer, Carrie Bucalo, shares the reality of the many people who bear
a “God-wound”; a wound from something which has occurred in life to scar one’s
belief or image of God as a loving Father. Many times, this can be due to a
negative or harmful experience involving a parent, but can also occur from
other wounds or damaging experiences in life which shatter our own personal
reality of God’s unfathomable, unconditional love. Bucalo goes on to say:
As a grown woman, I try to pray, but feel like I fail constantly… [and] Words can’t answer my heart’s deepest questionings… unless prayers become hands that take on flesh and blood and
move through time and space to reach me in my suffering and pain with perfect honesty and truthfulness. The Father’s caress from the cross is gripping. His presence is the perfect and only prayer. (Emphasis added)
As a grown woman, I try to pray, but feel like I fail constantly… [and] Words can’t answer my heart’s deepest questionings… unless prayers become hands that take on flesh and blood and
move through time and space to reach me in my suffering and pain with perfect honesty and truthfulness. The Father’s caress from the cross is gripping. His presence is the perfect and only prayer. (Emphasis added)
I sat stunned and awed as I prayed with these words this
morning. Jesus can satisfy and heal our God-wounds, can restore our destroyed
image of God the Father, because He IS the
Word made flesh. Words are powerful, but mere words cannot answer or solve our
woundedness. Words are human and finite, but God is not. Jesus, the Word of
God, took on flesh to fulfill our deepest voids; to heal that which can only be
healed by flesh and blood. His response to the words of our prayer are not mere
reciprocal words, it is Himself. His ‘words’
back to us are His ‘hands that take on flesh and blood’. Words cannot hold us;
flesh and blood can. So God becomes flesh and blood in response to our deep and
aching need for Him. And though Jesus in His flesh is not walking the earth as
He did during the days of the Gospel, He dwells in His flesh in every
tabernacle on earth, and holds us from within every time we receive Him in Holy
Communion. And this is why Bucalo can say with confidence that ‘His presence is
the perfect and only prayer.’ His presence in the flesh - from the Incarnation
until this very moment in the Holy Eucharist – is the answer to our need for
wholeness.
We all have the ‘God-shaped hole’… we all have need of Him;
we all have wounds and pain and longing; some of us have this ‘God-wound’ that
makes the Father’s love seem distant and unreal. I can’t answer why these
things happen in our lives to disfigure our understanding or belief in God’s
love… but I can tell you that His
Presence is the answer. So as you pray, and as you long for healing as I do, take
five minutes today to just sit in His presence and let Him answer your cry by
dwelling on the fact that He became flesh to hold YOU, knowing words are not
enough.
Photo credit: http://mgniusa.org/testimony/
