An Idea I Had

Yesterday I was praying in Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Church, University College Dublin, as I do on most workdays. It's a very plain, airy church, the kind I find highly appealing. (I feel choked by too many columns, corners, shadows, side altars, and so forth.) As I knelt there going through my usual list of intentions, and trying to keep my mind from wandering as it is all too prone to do, it struck me (as it often does) what a very dramatic situation prayer really is-- especially a solitary individual praying in some deserted place. (People drift in and out of UCD's church, but very often I'm there all by myself.)

Prayer is perhaps the most simple and yet the most far-reaching of all human activities. I always love it when the parish priest in Ballymun says, at the beginning of Mass, "We put whatever is going on in our life, all our worries and problems and issues, on the table of the Lord". Prayer is completely wide-open. Nothing is irrelevant. All the screens of circumstance, of place and time, of convention and communication, fall away, and the solitary soul stands naked before God.

It struck me that a solitary man praying (out loud, for the most part) would be excellent material for a one-man play. What part of a man's life wouldn't float through the mental sea of prayer? What external drama could not be mirrored in that inner chamber? What adventure is more exciting, more consequential, than the adventure of faith?

(I often think that I could make much better arguments against religious belief than I ever hear even from even the most militant of atheists. So that would be an interesting thing to throw into the mix, too, as this solitary character at his prayers works through doubts and difficulties.)

I don't know if anyone has ever done this before. In any case, it should be fun. I think I might even post it here as I write it. I've written all my life but writing this blog is by far the most fun I've ever had writing. Those who read it are extraordinarily indulgent of my more adventurous (possibly read: pretentious) posts. And knowing that there is somebody reading is a huge boost. (I know from my blog statistics that people seek out this blog by name, most days. And I'm honoured.)

Vocations Sunday

There was a very interesting article in The Irish Catholic this week, by Fr. Gerard Dunne OP, Vocations Director for the Dominican Friars. He wrote:

The vocations situation in Ireland has remained somewhat static over the past decade, with one obvious exception to his: the Year of Vocation (2009) which was an initiative of the Irish Church.

There was a small but significant increase to entrants to seminary and religious life during that year. While many will speculate about the reasons for this, there is an acceptance among many working in vocations ministry in Ireland that it was as a result of a concentrated period of prayer that brought about this increase. There is a lesson to be learned here, surely.

There certainly is. It is so easy to see prayer as a last resort rather than a first resort. Or rather, a first, medium and last resort.

I often think that prayer, in today's world, is the most subversive activity there is. An old woman on her knees before a statue of the Blessed Virgin is directly defying all the assumptions, brainwashing, marketing campaigns and ideology of the society around her. That, to me, is a very potent image.

We send signals out to space, in the hope that some extra-terrestrial civlization might be advanced enough to read them. And yet we think it ridiculous that there might be an Intelligence out there so "advanced" that we don't have to bother with space shuttles and transmitters at all, that we can address Him whenever we want. Isn't that a failure in imagination?

Even in the midst of our vocations crisis, there are some ninety men training for the priesthood in Maynooth right now. Considering the challenges facing the Church in Ireland; considering the workload they will face; considering the message we are constantly being drip-fed by the media and advertising industries, that a celibate life is less than human; considering the hostility and suspicion that faces priests after the abuse scandals; considering all this, isn't it something of a miracle that men still step forward for this life, so utterly thankless by the logic of the world?

And of course we should not forget the heroic women who consecrate themselves to religious life, whose work and witness we also desperately need.

Pray for vocations today, and every day!