Prayer

20 seconds ago I was making funny faces and making my baby cousphew (he's really my cousin but like a newphew) laugh while I really should have been blogging about my homework reading. The cool thing is that my baby cousin is 20 miles away on the other side of San Diego, suited up in his jammies ready for bed. His adorable giggles were being Skyped to me. Now, whether or not that last sentence makes grammatical sense, the fact remains that when he moves to Japan next week :*( with his mom and dad, my beloved cousins, cousuncle Chuck will only be a click away via video conferencing. It'll be kinda like chatting through the glass at a ticket window...only more personal... and across several time zones...and an ocean. Whales hum serene messages into the deep blue while above them a digital ocean carries waves of words and symbols across the world in sharp flashes. Like excited atoms on the surface of the sun our email, instant messages, and other electronic packages bounce around in a sizzling fluid of ones and zeros.

But does more connection necessarily mean more communication? Potentially maybe. However, communication between client computer and host computer is entirely different than the kind of communication I'm really interested in; Love. Computers modulate and demodulate sounds and images, sound waves to my eardrum, light waves to my retina. But I think love provides a different kind of communication. Its the devine medium that connects us in a supernatural way. Unconstrained by space and time. There's something more important beneath the words. Kinda like that song goes, "I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do. They're really saying I love you." The Catechism says, "Such attentiveness of the heart, whose decisions are made according to God's will, is essential to prayer, while the words used count only in relation to it. Abraham's prayer is expressed first by deeds." What I find myself learning more and more each day is that our very lives, when working according to God's will, are like prayer. When we greet eachother, when we make eachother laugh, when we work, when we play, suffering and joy, all things can be oriented towards God. Making my baby cousin laugh is more than a physical action and reaction. It is the movement of a free will, choosing to love another for love of God. It is thanksgiving for the gift of life. It is recognizing and delighting in the dignity of this ensouled creature made in the image of the Creator. It is sacred communication. Perhaps if husbands and wives viewed their marital embrace as a prayer, families would begin to harmonize and resonate with charity like never before. With an openness to God, prayer is made fruitful according to His will. And how great is the fruit of new life.

I sense there are endless insights into the beautiful logic of our faith waiting to be articulated. It will be interesting to see what kind of communicators JP Catholic will forge for the Church. The professors are ignited and the resources are growing. However, regardless of the caliber of our apparatus, only proper disposition of our hearts will produce communication worth communicating, both to God and to humanity.