Many of you know that I love reading Henri Nouwen’s writings. He has a way to touch my soul in such a way that reminds me of the most important things in walking with Jesus as no one else can. When things get rough and I start to focus on what is going on around me rather than the One with me, his writings remind me of that one who is always there. Anyway, I am reading a book that is a compilation of his writings on prayer, The Only Necessary Thing. As we pray together as community, I though it expressed an appropriate sentiment about why community prayer as critical as personal prayer and I thought I would share excerpt with you entitled, “The Community of Faith & Prayer” in The Only Necessary Thing (Henri Nouwen, Wendy Wilson Greer ed. Crossroad books, 1999)
Just because prayer is so personal and arises from the center of our life, it is to be shared with others. Just because prayer is the most precious expression of being human, it needs the constant support and protection of the community to grow and flower. Just because prayer is our highest vocation needing careful attention and faithful perseverance, we cannot allow it to be a private affair. Just because prayer asks for a patient waiting in expectation, it should never become the most individualistic expression of the most individualistic emotion, but should always remain embedded in the life of the community of which we are part.
Prayer as a hopeful and joyful waiting for God is a really unhuman or superhuman task unless we realize that we do not have to wait alone. In the community of faith we can find the climate and the support to sustain and deepen our prayer, and we are enabled to constantly look forward beyond our immediate and often narrowing private needs. The community of faith offers the protective boundaries within which we can listen to our deepest longings, not to indulge in morbid introspection, but to find our God to whom they point. In the community of faith we can listen to our feelings of loneliness, to our desires for an embrace or a kiss, to our sexual urges, to our cravings for sympathy, compassion, or just a good word; also to our search for insight and to our hope for companionship and friendship. In the community of faith we can listen to all these longings and find the courage, not to avoid them or cover them up, but to confront them in order to discern God’s presence in their midst. There we can affirm each other in our waiting and also in the realization that in the center of our waiting the first intimacy with God is found. There we can be patiently together and let the suffering of each day convert our illusions into the prayer of a contrite people. The community of faith is indeed is indeed the climate and source of all prayer.
