Prayer that takes on Flesh...

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)

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/