“It must be our prayer. In spite of the fact that the prayer is denied, reviled, contradicted, made sport of, mistranslated every hour of every day – by the powers and dominations, by Church and State, by law courts and schools and think tanks. Yet, the prayer needs to be verified, insisted on, repeated, persisted in, learned by heart, shouted in unison, enacted, pondered. It exists indeed only to the degree that it makes sense to Christians, that they stretch their wills and voices to its understanding. To make of it their credo; to make of eternity their native ground.
…At every hour his angel of deliverance comes to us. In noise and stench and foolish anger, and the ever-flowing spate of damaged lives. In the evidence of breakup all around – broken bones, broken hopes, splayed carcasses of sound beginnings. In this jail. Where we must dwell. Not a lake of glass, you understand. But in a desert of fire. The ever present demons within. enticements. Despair. Depression of spirit. Disabused hopes. And even with one another; a certain paralysis, outreach cut short.
…The prayer would deny it. “All manner of things shall be well.” We must, by sheer grit of faith, live in that future, live it until it is as vividly present as any beloved possession, any loved one, could well be. We join those for whom all manner of things is well; they join with us, for whom all manner of things is intolerably unwell. The future and the present join hands – barely, but truly. The meeting is incandescent, an ecstasy in the midst of torment.
You can understand the prayer, its audacious character, only if you understand this: the prayer is everywhere and at all times denied.”
An excerpt from Beside the Sea of Glass by Daniel Berrigan
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