Blogger’s Note: This was my final paper for the fourth semester of the Catechetical Institute, “Prayer: The Blessing Given and Received.” In this reflection, we were not only to discuss the final pillar of the Catechism, but the book and Institute as a whole. After two years of study, the Class of St. Padre Pio graduated this evening, following Mass with Bishop Kettler presiding. 

The fourth pillar of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) calls us to deeper relationship with our heavenly Father who loves us and redeems us by the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus, and the actions of the Holy Spirit in the world today. This relationship is cultivated through the gift of prayer, “a vital and personal relationship with the living and true God” (CCC 2558), approached “‘out of the depths’ of a humble and contrite heart” (CCC 2559). We are creatures, completely dependent on God’s love and mercy, not only for salvation, but for our basic needs, our next breath, our very existence. Even our desire to pray is prompted by the One who desires us, seeks us, spies us from afar and runs to greet us with great joy and love.

As with the previous pillars, I was struck by how much of the “work” of prayer is in God’s hands, not ours. We bear it like a burden at times, but it is He who beckons and inspires, who teaches us what to pray for and in what order (CCC 2763), who knows our needs before we express them and even when we can’t express them. It is He who changes us in prayer, not the other way around. I was also drawn again to His proximity: We sometimes cry out to Him as though He dwells a long way off in Heaven, but that Catechism reassures us that the heaven in which God dwells—“Our Father who art in Heaven”—is less elsewhere and more elseway:

This biblical expression does not mean a place (“space”), but a way of being; it does not mean that God is distant, but majestic. Our Father is not “elsewhere”: he transcends everything we can conceive of his holiness. It is precisely because he is thrice holy that he is so close to the humble and contrite heart.

“Our Father who art in heaven” is rightly understood to mean that God is in the hearts of the just, as in his holy temple. At the same time, it means that those who pray should desire the one they invoke to dwell in them (CCC 2794).

So we are not only immersed in God, but He in us—the Holy Spirit is not only as close as oil on skin, but so thoroughly fills us that, in truth, our only escape from Him is an act of the will in which we reject His love and refuse to turn back to Him. He who has the power to save us desires my salvation more than I do myself!

The Catechism is not just a thorough compilation of Catholic faith and teachings for the reference of the faithful. It is also, and more importantly, a beautiful articulation of God’s revealed plan of salvation of all mankind through the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ on the cross and the ongoing mission of the Church— the new Body of Christ on Earth, breathed into being by the Holy Spirit, of which we are the eyes and ears, hands and feet.

• The first pillar, The Profession of Faith, communicates what we believe: the story and plan of salvation and the teachings of the Apostles.
• The second pillar, The Celebration of the Christian Mystery, communicates how we come to believe it: the ways in which God continues to enter into our world and lives in a real and profound way, through the sacraments, in order to save us.
• The third pillar, Life In Christ, communicates how we live as believers: the ways in which our actions and motivations are brought into conformity with God’s will and contribute to sharing His love and building His kingdom.
• The fourth pillar, Christian Prayer, communicates how we enter into God’s own life—“no longer I, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20)—even now, in this mortal state and fallen world.

Reading the Catechism, you can learn a great deal about God and His Church, but praying with it, you are called to conversion and conformity of heart: life with and in God. The phrases that come to mind are duc in altum, by which St. John Paul II calls us to put out into the deep, and Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassatti’s  verso l’alto, calling us to the heights. We are summoned both deeper and higher, both into our hearts and outside of ourselves, in keeping with a God in Whom we “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:27), but Who also dwells within each of us, as in the tabernacle.

I admit I was surprised by the spiritual growth that has taken place during the past two years of the Catechetical Institute. Completing the pillar on prayer during the final days of Lent was, for me, a source of profound encouragement to embrace the already of God’s plan for salvation, which our instructors have so often described as “already, but not yet.” I often struggle with the virtue of hope—with trusting that God is indeed on my side, desiring my soul and actively loving and saving me. But this Good Friday evening, as my bride, my teens and I watched The Passion of the Christ together, Jesus’ words from the cross—“It is accomplished”— struck me in a new way. Jesus is not simply speaking of His personal suffering, His earthly life or His mission of salvation. He is speaking of my redemption—and unlike his disciples that first Holy Saturday, I know the end of the story: the empty tomb and risen Lord. My Holy Saturday was spent with a smile on my face and “O, how He loves us!” in my head. How could it be helped? I am coming to terms with a God who loves me personally, without question, without reason except that I am His. And that understanding is freeing.

Where do I go from here? Wherever He leads. I have a job in the Church that is bearing fruit. I have writing to do, and opportunities to evangelize families in new ways in the coming months. I desire to find ways to more actively serve those in need, and diaconate discernment may also be on the horizon.

O Lord, you have revealed the great love and mercy you have for me personally, which is a source of great hope and trust in You. Keep me each day as close to your heart as I am in this moment. Make my heart like yours, that I may love as you love. Open my heart to your will, and give me the courage to carry it out without fail. May I follow you, only and always. Amen.