Bishop Patrick's Christmas Letter- Christmas 2004

From:    Rt Rev Patrick O’Donoghue

            Bishop’s Apartment, Cathedral House

            Balmoral Road, Lancaster LA1 3BT             Tel: 01524 596050

Cathedral Church of St Peter
Lancaster.

Dear Friends,
We have come again to that time of year when you expect to hear bishops and priests lamenting the secularisation of Christmas! It is difficult to keep the right balance. We should celebrate. It is entirely appropriate to mark the anniversary of God's sublime gift to us of his Son with feasts and parties and the giving of gifts.

But, if we are to prevent this wonderful feast from dissolving into a squalid exercise in self-indulgence, there must be something more. In the midst of all the bustle and excitement we need time out, a change of texture and of pace, a time for stillness and peace: we need time for prayer.

Now, how you react to that comment - whether you turn to it with acceptance and Relief or whether you think it just shows how out of touch the bishop is with the pressures of family life at Christmas - really depends on whether you see prayer as duty or as joy. It is my hope to persuade you to the latter view.

Don't pray because someone says you have to, or because you are scared God might punish you if you don't. Pray because God is your dearest friend, because you are more comfortable in his presence than anywhere else in the world, because you have discovered for yourself that, when he summoned to him those who labour and are overburdened and promised to refresh them, he would be true to his word.

There are dozens, hundreds, of ways of praying. You don't need to find them all effective or even helpful - but I do urge you to build some variety into your prayer-life. I want to focus today on three categories of prayer: asking God for all that we need, expressing worship and glory of God, and dialogue with God.

I am sure that all of us, at some time, have sent up a desperate prayer to God for help - usually as a means of escaping the legitimate consequences of actions we have or haven't taken! You know the sort of thing I mean : "0 Lord! Please let me pass this exam. I know I haven't done any work for it, but, if You help me this time, I promise I'll work in the future."
Hopefully, as we grow up, our prayer becomes a little less like Aladdin giving instructions to the Genie of the Lamp. We start to pray for solider things and we start to pray for others as well as for ourselves. As we do so - and particularly as we experience God answering our prayers - the prayers and our attitude to them change. As we engage with God, we find ourselves less certain about what to ask for.

Take someone who is terminally ill. Am I asking God to prolong that life? Or am I asking for the pain to go away? Or am I asking that he may die with dignity? Or what exactly? As I grapple with this - and I can only do so to the extent that I become involved with him as a real person and not simply an 'object of prayer' - I become drawn into an understanding of his real needs. And, as I do so, there open up in front of me possibilities by means of which I personally can ease his burden.

The very process of intercessionary prayer both brings me to love more deeply the person for whom I am praying, and also can allow God to answer that prayer by using me. This is a very deep and a very wonderful mystery.

One of the very first prayers we learn as children is: 'Glory be to the Father and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be world without end. Amen'. In our early years of prayer, probably most of our prayers of worship and glory are formal prayers we are taught. In order to move from the mere recitation of words to worship, we need to have some personal experience of wonder and this can come about in the most unexpected of ways.

I have always loved the psalms and this feeling is beautifully expressed in Ps 62, which we often use at Morning Prayer:
0 God, you are my God, for you I long;
for you my soul is thirsting.
My body pines for you
like a dry, weary land without water.
Similarly, there is a passage in Habakkuk where, after cataloguing all the catastrophes that might occur, the prophet's love and faith pour over:
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord
and exult in God my saviour.
The Lord my God is my strength.

These experiences of God echo down to us over 25 or 30 centuries and, as we share in them so we are drawn into them. At first, we recognise only tiny droplets but they build up and up into a mighty stream which washes the blindness of scepticism and rationalism from us until we see the majesty and glory of God in all that is and in all that happens.

It may seem very strange to talk of dialogue with an invisible God - and I am certainly not encouraging you think you are hearing spectral voices! What I mean by the phrase is illustrated by the developed form of intercessionary prayer when having placed yourself before God, you hold the person you are praying for in your mind s eye and open your heart both to his needs and to God's Word. You find that your understanding of the person and the words of scripture start to come together to illuminate both.

This is the basis for a famous meditation technique taught by St Ignatius ofLoyola in which you imagine yourself to be a participant in a scriptural scene. Your understanding of God's revelation interacts with your experience of life, enriching both.

Much the same thing takes place if you meditate on a moral issue or try to discern God's will with regard to a problem that confronts you: as you ask yourself whether you should do this, that or the other, scriptural passages come into mind and you consider whether or how or if they apply; as you reject some, others float into your mind; and, out of that process, the answer emerges - and you know when it is right because it fits with the word of God at all points.

I profoundly believe that in this, and in all types of authentic prayer, when we open
ourselves to the action of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit never fails us and we experience the power of God in a way that can never be mistaken for merely human experience.

So, this is Christmas. It is a time for celebration and feasting and the giving of gifts. Make the time to give yourself the gift of prayer and feast on the rich banquet the Lord has prepared for you.
May God bless you all,

Patrick O' Donoghue, Bishop of Lancaster

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