I have to admit that I felt some anxiety during May’s election of a new pope. Perhaps I had visited too many websites and listened to too many pundits. Maybe it was because the election seemed unpredictable. When I heard there was “white smoke,” I turned on my TV. Sitting alone and waiting to learn the result, I realized that I needed to be with others. So, I went across the street to the Catholic Center where there was a live feed. Before long, others gathered to watch and wait. The camaraderie helped, but I still felt anxious.
When the announcement was made, my anxiety dissipated and I rejoiced. Pope Leo XIV was an inspired choice. But there was still much to do: drafting a public statement, doing media interviews, celebrating a Mass of Thanksgiving and more. In the meantime, calls and emails from friends and co-workers came pouring in.
By day’s end I was tired and thought I’d sleep soundly. But after a few hours, I awakened, still keyed up. I knew I had to center myself. I knew I needed my daily holy hour more than ever. There were just too many competing thoughts, questions and desires welling up in my mind and heart.
The next morning, sitting in the chapel of my residence, I was still tempted to check out what was being said about Pope Leo, and I continued to receive many emails and text messages. But with God’s grace, I put it all aside. It was time to shut it all down and enter into the Lord’s presence. In silent prayer, I understood that competing worries and desires were overwhelming the one thing I should desire the most: to enter into the Lord’s presence, to place myself, my ministry, my life and my Church in the hands of the One who loves us most and loves us best.
Quiet prayer is not merely a technique for overcoming anxiety. In prayer, we lay at God’s feet all that roils us and all the desires that compete for our attention. Yet, even at prayer, we may have to fight off the same distractions and desires that beguile us all day long. When that happens, I find it helpful to repeat a simple phrase from Psalm 62: “My soul, be at rest in God alone.”
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus teaches us to go into our “inner room” to pray (Mt 6:6). The room to which Jesus refers is our heart and soul, that place where we are alone with God (cf. “Gaudium et Spes,” 16). Jesus urges us to pray in secret because he also knows we need a sanctuary, a place of refuge. When a hurricane is brewing, the weather service advises us to go to a safe place in the house, such as a small interior room or hallway. Our inner self should be like that: a place where we can shelter, if only briefly, from life’s stormy weather – the storms that hit us from the outside and the ones we ourselves generate.
Retreating into our inner room to quiet our soul is not an avoidance technique. It’s not hiding out or shirking responsibility. Quiet prayer inflames our desire for God. When we desire God alone, we can wisely evaluate those competing desires that come our way, and sort out which are of God and which are not. We can also begin to see ourselves as God and others see us.
My former seminary rector, the late Archbishop Harry J. Flynn, used to say: “Given an hour before the Blessed Sacrament and eight hours of sleep, and I’ll do anything the Church asks of me.” Good advice, don’t you think?
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