Fr. Vojtěch Zieba
Lecture II.
1. In previous reflections, we focused on how prayer grows from silence, how silence deepens prayer, and how it is its necessary prerequisite. Now we will contemplate the relationship between prayer and faith. “The fruit of prayer is faith,” says Mother Teresa, and let her words be the starting point for our further reflection.
2. To begin, let us try once again to think more closely about the essence of prayer. In previous reflections, we recognized that prayer does not always require many words; it can entirely do without them. Why? Because prayer is primarily a meeting of two loving hearts – the heart of God and the heart of man – which open to each other. It is a meeting that takes place in love, a living and the closest possible union. When we compare it to relationships between people, we see that the image of two lovers helps us better understand silence and prayer, because “there is a time for speaking and a time for silence” – both are necessary. Sometimes the mutual relationship is more about silence, quiet, listening, and sometimes, when the situation changes, words are needed. But all of this serves love, bringing together, mutual understanding, joy of meeting, and remaining in it.
However, lovers are not always together, able to hold hands or rest in each other's embrace. In their mutual relationship, feelings of longing and waiting for a meeting are not absent. This waiting can be filled with thoughts about the expected person, various preparations for the meeting, writing letters... And although they may be physically apart, how close they are in spirit! This anticipation, all those preparations, are no less important than the meeting itself. They enrich it – without prior waiting, the meeting would lose much of its fullness.
When we apply this situation to the relationship between man and God, we are indeed talking about prayer. I will not talk about the various ways of praying, as such categorization would not be useful in this case. It is about the very essence of the matter – prayer is a meeting with God in love (intentionally I do not say: a conversation, as that would limit the concept of prayer to only some of its forms), it means clinging to Him with one's entire being, turning one's entire person towards Him. It is also a time of desire for this meeting and preparation for it. In this way, the entire human life can become prayer, in which man clings to God “with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his mind” and longs to respond to His will and glorify Him.
3. However, there is a time especially dedicated to God and only to Him. This time, these “meetings” with the Lord God, are meant to serve establishing and deepening a special connection with Him, expressing one's relationship, feelings, and stance towards Him. In this time, of which God is the sole and highest goal, occurs in a special way an indescribable dialogue of love, where God always has the precedence – He speaks first so that man can hear and respond, offering Himself with complete trust, simply throwing Himself into His arms. But the ability to hear God’s call and respond to it does not depend solely on us – it primarily relies on the action of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth and love. It is not enough that we come to that meeting. The “meeting” must primarily be carried by Him. That is why genuine prayer is a gift from God, a gift of grace and love. An insufficient appreciation of God's initiative in prayer, a misunderstanding of the reality that prayer is a dialogue of love between two loving hearts, can lead to its caricatured distortion, turning it into our monologue, a list of requests and expectations that we present to an absent God. In such a case, one becomes merely a petitioner waiting for the resolution of their affairs. But the Lord God is not an indifferent official who accepts or rejects submitted requests based on their compliance with regulations, proper justification, and appropriate documentation attached. He is a living, loving being who longs to meet us and hear our response to His call; and our effort in prayer is an expression of the desire for this meeting to take place.
4. When this understanding of prayer becomes rooted in our lives, it will influence it very strongly. It will change it, enrich it, give it direction and meaning. It is impossible for life to continue independently of God – not because He forces us to do anything, but because we ourselves will desire it. For who among us can be indifferent to the love that is revealed to them? Who – even if they flee from it – will ultimately not reciprocate it? Prayer will cause our portion to become love and that ultimately nothing will be able to hold back our hearts when it rushes toward it.
5. When we speak about prayer in this way, we can notice that in many cases we can speak in the same way about faith, and it is not necessary – in many sentences – to change a single word except for that one. There are indeed many points of intersection between the reality of prayer and the reality of faith, and both of these realities strongly influence each other. Faith is not only a conviction that God exists and a rational acceptance of a certain number of religious truths. It is primarily a dedication to God, trust in Him, reliance upon Him, seeking support in Him, and complete surrender. It is not enough to “believe in God.” It is also necessary to believe God. Not just to believe His word – but to believe His word. Only then can we entrust ourselves, our matters, our lives to Him. Because faith understood in this way gives us inner certainty that He cannot disappoint us and encourages us to completely entrust ourselves to Him – simply throw ourselves into His arms. During prayer, we may hear God speaking to us: “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands” (Isaiah 49:15-16). And in response to this loving declaration of God, we can reply with faith and utter trust, which brings an extraordinary inner peace: “As a weaned child rests against his mother, so my soul is at rest within me. O Israel, put your hope in the Lord both now and forevermore!” (Psalm 131).
To believe in God and what He tells us – also during prayer – means that we have accepted in love the divine call addressed to us and that we have responded to it. Only then can we speak of a full, authentic reality of faith, for it truly influences our decisions, actions, life plans. But can we respond to a call we have not heard? And can we hear God’s call without prayer? Certainly, God has His ways to address every person, but the usual way to meet Him is precisely through prayer. I do not think we have the right to expect that in our case God will perform a miracle and speak to us in another way, without any effort on our part.
6. And so we arrive at the heart of the issue we want to contemplate: how does faith become the fruit of prayer? On one hand, we can say that prayer is an expression of faith: it would be hard to pray to someone we do not acknowledge, or even believe in their existence. Faith is necessary at least in its initial form. In this sense, it can be imagined that what Mother Teresa means is that prayer deepens faith, becoming the driving force of its development and improvement. But we cannot deny that there are cases of unbelieving people who, precisely because of prayer, receive the gift of faith. “God, if you are, if Bonum, answer me!” – this could summarize such a type of prayer. And God will not remain deaf when He hears such a desperate call – He responds with all His love to the longing of the human heart. Let us consider examples from the Gospels that it is truly possible.
7. Thus, a father comes to Jesus and asks Him to free his son from an evil spirit and heal him. In this matter, he had already been to the apostles, but they could not heal him. Jesus replies with a rebuke: “O faithless and perverse generation! How long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Bring him to me.” Jesus suffers the unbelief of those who come to Him, seeking only their own benefit or sensation. But the dialogue with the father continues. Jesus asks how frequent the seizures are. The father ends his explanation with another plea that reveals his little faith: “If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us!” Jesus responds to him: “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes!” Immediately the boy’s father cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief!” The boy is then healed. Jesus gives a sign of His power – His healing was aimed at making His mission credible and awakening faith among people: “If you do not believe me, believe my works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father” (John 10:38). After the whole event, the disciples asked Jesus privately, “Why could we not cast him out?” He told them, “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer” (cf. Mark 9:14-19).
Here we see a dual connection between prayer and faith. The father of the sick boy, though he does not fully believe, turns to Jesus with a request. Jesus “strengthens his little faith” and heals the boy. On the other hand, we see the apostles who are unable to heal him. And yet “everything is possible for the believer.” When they ask why they could not heal him, Jesus advises them to pray. Apparently their faith was not strong enough, and prayer could strengthen it. It is no wonder that they once came to Jesus with the request: “Increase our faith” (Luke 17:15).
8. And here we have another example. “There was a certain royal official in Capernaum whose son was sick. When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to Him and implored Him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Jesus said to him, ‘Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe.’ The royal official said to Him, ‘Sir, come down before my child dies.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go your way; your son lives.’ The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, and he went his way. And as he was now going down, his servants met him and told him, saying, ‘Your son lives!’ Then he asked them at what hour he got better. And they said to him, ‘Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.’ So the father knew that it was at the same hour in which Jesus said to him, ‘Your son lives.’ And he himself believed, and his whole household” (John 4:46-53). Thus the official begins to believe first: “He believed the word that Jesus spoke to him.” Later, “he and all his household believed” – they became witnesses to the miracle, which was a response to the request they directed to Jesus.
There are more such examples. Personal encounters with Jesus, conversations with Him, listening to His teachings, witnessing His love and power, seeing the great works He performed that confirmed His credibility – all these became a source of faith. Thus the Samaritan woman believed, who asked the Lord for the gift of living water, and in the end, Thomas the doubter believed, who demanded a personal encounter with Jesus. And Jesus responded to those requests, to those longings, although He also said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29).
9. But can we use those examples in our lives? After all, Jesus does not walk this earth anymore! We cannot meet Him as they did, see Him, touch Him... That is true, but it does not mean that Jesus has ceased to act among us. He is with us “all the days until the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20). He also sent us His Spirit, who is to guide us, strengthen us, and teach us everything. Jesus has not left us as orphans (cf. John 14:18). We can encounter Him, among other ways, in prayer. During it, the Holy Spirit also acts, who “comes to our aid in our weakness. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Romans 8:26).
10. Meeting the living God in prayer, which is somewhat of a mystery and difficult to describe in words, is simply essential for faith, for the object of faith is not merely a number of truths but ultimately the living personal truth, which is God Himself. To believe in God means to know Him, but not in the sense of finding out that He exists and what He is called. It is not about some kind of knowledge. In biblical terms, the word “knowledge” indicates deep intimacy, the establishment of living relationships, community – the term was used, for example, for relationships in families or between spouses. To know God means to experience His love and forgiveness, to conclude a truce with Him (cf. Jeremiah 31:33-34). Such knowledge is a living proof of His presence, a meeting with Him in love – that is precisely what I spoke about when describing the reality of prayer. Such an experience cannot be replaced by anything else, therefore precisely in prayer and nowhere else does the faith understood in this way arise.
11. Faith is born from listening. We listen to the Word of God in which God speaks personally to us, and we meditate on it. We listen to the testimony of others when they speak to us about their experiences of encounters with God. And finally, we listen to God’s voice in our hearts, where He Himself, without any intermediaries, declares His love to us. He declares it completely unambiguously. Hear how He spoke through the mouth of the prophet Hosea and how He speaks today just the same in our hearts: “I will betroth you to myself forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in steadfast love and mercy. I will betroth you to myself in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord” (Hosea 2:21-22). This is what God longs for; He wants to connect with us so closely. But it does not mean that He wants to enslave us. He speaks, after all, of people who are close to Him: “I drew them with gentle cords, with bands of love. And I was to them as those who take the yoke from their neck; I stooped and fed them” (Hosea 11:4). Will He speak to us differently? When He is trying to attract us to Himself in this way, there is only one problem – it solely depends on us whether we will let ourselves be drawn by those cords of love, whether we will believe in God that these are not chains of slavery, whether we will believe in God, who is Love. However, for such faith to dwell in our hearts, we must first hear that gentle voice speaking to us in the silence of our hearts during prayer. God reveals Himself to us in an apparently paradoxical situation – our Creator and Lord loves us with such tender love that, while leaving us free will, He becomes dependent on us in this love and allows us not to believe in Him: we can reject Him, we can avoid encountering Him. But the more He reveals Himself to us, the more He shows us the depth of His love. When we taste this love in prayer, without hesitation, we say: “We have come to know and believe the love that God has for us. God is love” (1 John 4:16). God becomes for us a very close person, a well-known person, even though we will never know Him completely, for the time for complete knowledge face to face has not yet come, nor has the time for the betrothal and the wedding banquet of the Lamb. But we are able to repeat with St. Paul all our strength: “I know whom I have believed!” (2 Timothy 1:12). To speak at that moment of faith as a gift from God, for which we ask in prayer, is simply banal, for it is God Himself who offers Himself, who is the object of our faith. Mother Teresa, when she speaks of faith as a divine gift, clarifies: “That great gift has been given to us by God Himself in the Holy Communion to satisfy our hunger” – and it is a hunger for love. Even from her heart, prayer flows full of great faith: “My God, you, only you. I trust your call, your inspiration. You will not disappoint me.”
12. When God reveals Himself to us and we recognize Him in prayer, we become convinced that everything God reveals to us is truth. We are convinced of the truth of His word, which has been written in the Holy Scriptures throughout the ages. The God whose presence we vividly experience reveals Himself to us as the Truth itself, in whom it is possible to believe and to whom it is possible to entrust ourselves. When we come to know God at this level of prayer, we will no longer need to be convinced that God reveals Himself not merely to instruct us (and thus to introduce us to a set of truths, norms, regulations, prohibitions, or commands), but primarily to save us, that is, to lead us to total and definitive union with Himself in love, to the eternal betrothals that He already speaks of and promises us. The Lord appears to us as a faithful and truthful witness, when already now He allows us to taste what He has prepared for our future.
We also become convinced that to know God and to believe in Him – that is simply to accept Him fully – does not mean to acquire knowledge, information, logical reasoning, or analyze content, but to experience an encounter with Him through some form of “enlightenment” or “instinctive” experience, which allows us at least to somewhat penetrate the inexpressible and elusive mystery of God’s existence. In such an encounter, personal relationships with God are also established, which cannot be categorized in theological handbooks and which are fully necessary for the fullness of faith.
13. As I have already said, complete and final knowledge of God will take place later, in eternity. It will be knowledge of Truth not through scientific research or logical reasoning but through love. In part, we can already know this here and now. However, we have hope, which is closely tied to faith, that this full knowledge will become our share. “For we are saved in hope; but hope that is seen is not hope. For why does one still hope for what he sees?” (Romans 8:24). Yes, in that which is the object of our hope, we can only believe with that special certainty, the certainty of faith, which is all the stronger the more we feel God’s presence in prayer, although we cannot yet meet Him fully and see Him. But we know well that faith, whose substance is love, just like love undergoes constant changes. These changes can be of two kinds: it can be development (faith can become ever stronger) or decay (faith can weaken). I believe that we, those present here, have an interest in our faith developing. I believe there is no need to broadly justify that such prayer, which I spoke of earlier, is simply necessary for such development – prayer “enlarges” our hearts, making them increasingly capable of love, that is, of knowing God and accepting Him into our innermost beings, and thus our faith, enriched by ever new experiences of love, becomes more and more full, more perfect, and more fruitful.
In conclusion, let us listen once more to Mother Teresa’s words about faith: “Hope in God. Experience the sense of security that God’s providence gives. Hope in God. He knows. He takes care of everything. Let Him test your faith, and trust Him. Make yourself available to Him. Hope and believe.”
(Translated by Růžena Kouřimová)
