What kind of affair

Is prayer?

True prayer is desire
A longing, a yearning
A stoking of fire
That purges and brands without burning

A sigh– to unsmother
A cry– soaked in hope
A glance– at the Lover
Who with every soul, would elope

Before prayer begins
The Stag has been leaping (2)
Across peaks within
To trade His own joy for our weeping

Prayer answers that thirst
Our heartaches make known
Yet God has it worse
Prayer merges His thirst with our own (1)

To pray is to dine
On “meat” and “wine blended”- (2.5)
The “choicest of wine”- (3)
Our drought and our famine upended

To hand off what harms
To slough off dismay
To sink into Arms
That mold to His image this clay (3.5)

The soul’s transformation
A bath in love’s Flame
Sweet divinization
The Bridegroom’s new life free from shame

When things go as planned
Or couldn’t have gone worse (4)
When life’s “fine and dand”
Or soon to be hailing a hearse

When warmed by the sun
Or while the flakes fly
When the fight’s lost or won
When “Thanks” is the only reply

Where silence is falling
And list’ning unfettered
Where no voice is calling
But HIS Voice, within, or red-lettered

In bedrooms or churches
On hikes to the peak
In the bus as it lurches
There‘s no place where one cannot seek…

And be found…

By the One Who, for love, ever searches

*****

(1) Catechism of the Catholic Church #2560

(2) Song of Songs 2:9

(2.5) Proverbs 9:2

(3) Psalm 127

(3.5) Isaiah

(4) “Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances” -1 Thessalonians 5:18

(5) Zephaniah 3

“I assure you that God is much better than you believe. He is content with a glance, a sigh of love.” “For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.” -St. Therese of Lisieux

“Labour, therefore, to increase the fire of your desire, and let not a moment pass without crying to Me with humble voice, or without continual prayers before Me for your neighbours.’ -God to St. Catherine of Siena, from the Dialogue