Roberta Bondi on Prayer

“It is true that without grace, without God’s active presence, we would have no hope for healing these terrible wounds of the heart we carry. The fact is, however, that God very rarely comes into our lives and hits us over the head with help in such a way that we can’t resist it. Rather, God has made us in the image of God for friendship with Godself. Though God will often intervene to help when we can’t figure out how to help ourselves, God doesn’t generally run over us disrespectfully or patronizingly to fix us up without our own active participation.

“This means that, while we are dependent absolutely on God for our healing, the work we do in prayer really makes a difference. God provides the grace and the healing. Our job is to pray for the graceful presence of the God we need, to seek it, to make ourselves available to it, to wrestle with it, to endure boredom for the sake of it, to be wounded by it, to let ourselves be surprised by it, to let it show us things in ourselves we don’t want to see, to let it bring up painful memories, to deliberately expose ourselves to it, to be humbled by it, to be fed by it, to laugh with it, and above all to ask for it and expect to receive it. It is tough, I know, but it is worth it.” (38, 39)

~~Roberta C. Bondi
In Ordinary Time: Healing the Wounds of the Heart