Dear Friends,

"...go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen."
Jesus instructs His disciples (Matthew 6:6) about how to pray; then He gives them the Lord's Prayer as the model prayer>

To 'go into your room and close the door' may mean either to retreat to a quiet space or room to talk to God, or to go the inner recesses of your soul and close out the world from your inner being, alone with God even among a crowd of people.  Monks and nuns, particularly of contemplative or closed orders have done this for centuries.

Do we have to join closed monastic orders to pray properly?  Certainly not!

Prayer is us joining every aspect of our daily living to the loving presence and power of God.

Does that mean we don't need monks and nuns?  We certainly do!  They are essential to us as models or icons of what is spiritually central to human life even though we may never see them.  In the same way a policemen is essential for the keeping of law and order in society when in fact it is the duty of every citizen to uphold law and order.  A nurse is essential for the care of the sick and suffering but that does not alter the fact that we are all called to care for others including those who are sick and suffering.  These people act as icons or models of essential aspects of human life.

The same applies to the Church.  For all its faults and failings the church points all human beings to the kingdom of God in the midst of human life manifest most clearly in Jesus.  Many people obviously miss this essential point judging by the small percentage that actually go to church regularly today.  Who should they go to church anyway?

The answer is quite simple -- without the church, human beings forget God and all He has done and continues to do and teaches us about Himself, and what it means to be human.  And without people to BE the church, the body of Christ on earth, it cannot fulfill its role in the world.

St. Paul explains this in Romans 12:4
"Just as each of us has one body with so many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others."

St. Teresa put it this way:
Christ has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet, on earth but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which He looks with compassion on this world.
Yours are the feet with which He walks to do good.
Yours are the hands with which He blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet.
Yours are the eyes, you are His body.
Christ has no body now earth but yours.

The church, the Body of Christ on earth, depends on all of us.  So be sure to be an active functioning part because with YOU the body of Christ can never be complete and without the Church the world becomes dehumanized and cut off from God.

Alan Hayday