This had special meaning for me and a friend, as read in Magnificat this month:
“The purpose of prayer is perhaps less to obtain what we ask than to become someone else. We should go further and say that asking something from God transforms us, little by little, into people capable of sometimes doing without what they ask for. …
Now we understand why God seems to delay: not in order to test us arbitrarily, but to compel our desire to become more intense and to become truly like his. …
If God takes his time, he does so for our sake. Because of the unusually delicate nature of his love, he does not want to effect our happiness without us, but wants to produce it from within, to make us work at it and give it to us only after exhausting the possibilities of our waiting. …
The purpose of prayer is to bring this desire, which leaves a man restless and disturbed, to become a feeling of hope, guaranteed … but by an infinite effectiveness since it comes form God himself.”
~ Father Bernard Bro, OP
Thanks Danielle. How very accurate this is for me, especially now being unemployed and looking for work.
.mike
I copied the entire reflection into my journal and looked for the book (out of print and the used copies were just way too expensive … ) I, too, unemployed and looking for work, found it very on point. I especially loved the line “On each man’s journey, there will be meanderings, those times when we do not seem to be moving ahead, and also huge gaps and the call of the estuary.” There is also that sense of being temporarily caught in an eddy before heading back in the stream to meander to the next place. Trying to be patient for God to reveal the next movement …
peace,
marika
Thank you for this post. I was just thinking of a post along these lines but couldn’t find put it in words (Darn bloggers block) I’ll go the easy way out and just link to you.