Pope Benedict XVI - Let Us Become Friends of Jesus: Meditations on Prayer

LET US BECOME
FRIENDS OF JESUS

MEDITATIONS ON PRAYER

MEDITATIONS ON PRAYER

POPE BENEDICT XVI

Compiled by Jeanne Kun

Copyright 2013 Libreria Editrice Vaticana
Compilation Copyright 2013 The Word Among Us Press

All rights reserved.

Published by The Word Among Us Press
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ISBN: 978-1-59325-224-3
eISBN: 978-1-59325-446-9

Pope Benedict XVIs homilies and addresses are taken from the Vatican
translation and can be found on the Vatican website, www.vatican.va . Used
with permission of Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture texts used in this work are from
The Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible,
copyright 1965, 1966 by the Division of Christian Education of the
National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture texts marked NAB are taken from the New American Bible,
revised edition 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian
Doctrine, Washington, D.C. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Cover design by John Hamilton Design
Cover photo Alessandra Benedetti/Corbis

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Benedict XVI, Pope, 1927

Let us become friends of Jesus : meditations on prayer / Pope Benedict XVI ; compiled by Jeanne Kun.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-59325-224-3

1. Prayer--Catholic Church--Meditations. I. Kun, Jeanne, 1951- II. Title.

BV210.3.B46 2013

248.32--dc23

2012045428

Let us become friends of Jesus, let us try to know him all the more! Let us live in dialogue with him! Let us learn from him how to live aright, let us be his witnesses! Then we become people who love and then we act aright. Then we are truly alive.

Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, Holy Thursday, April 1, 2010

The deepest desire of the human heart is to be united to God. It is in prayer that we speak to God and seek to touch his heart, and in turn, God speaks to us, listens to us, and opens his heart to us. So it is in prayer that our longing for union with God begins to be satisfied. And as we begin to pray regularly, we are rewarded: we enter into a true friendship with Jesus, who reveals to us the face of God.

During the eight years of his pontificate, Pope Benedict continually stressed that faith requires a personal encounter with Christ, and such a personal encounter happens in prayer. He continually recounted the innumerable blessings that come from prayer, even while acknowledging that it requires effort: The experience of prayer is a challenge to everyone, a grace to invoke, a gift of the One to whom we turn (General Audience, St. Peters Square, May 11, 2011). Rich in personal experience and in wisdom, this holy man is well qualified to inspire and guide us in the ways of prayer. With the insight and warmth of a gifted pastor, he encourages us to pause often and long before God. He also shows us how we can approach Godwhether through Scripture, the Eucharist, or meditation, or simply by gazing on a crucifix.

The meditations on prayer brought together in this collection have been selected from Pope Benedicts audiences, homilies, addresses, and writings from the eight years of his pontificate. These selections, while grouped in major themes about which he frequently spoke and taught, have all been chosen for the purpose of drawing us into a deeper experience of prayer and thus into a deeper relationship and union with God. Among the selections are several meditations from Pope Benedicts catechesis on prayer, which he presented at his weekly Wednesday audiences.

The Word Among Us Press is delighted to bring you this book. It is our hope that through your own prayerful reflection on Pope Benedicts meditations, this invitation of his will be fulfilled in you: that you become a true and devoted friend of Jesus!

Jeanne Kun

Man bears within him a thirst for the infinite, a longing for eternity, a quest for beauty, a desire for love, a need for light and for truth which impel him toward the Absolute; man bears within him the desire for God. And man knows, in a certain way, that he can turn to God; he knows he can pray to him.

St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest theologians of history, defines prayer as an expression of mans desire for God. This attraction to God, which God himself has placed in man, is the soul of prayer that then takes on a great many forms in accordance with the history, the time, the moment, the grace, and even the sin of every person praying. Mans history has in fact known various forms of prayer because he has developed different kinds of openness to the Other and to the Beyond, so that we may recognize prayer as an experience present in every religion and culture.

Indeed, dear brothers and sisters, prayer is not linked to a specific context but is written on the heart of every person and of every civilization. Of course, when we speak of prayer as an experience of the human being as such, of the homo orans, it is necessary to bear in mind that it is an inner attitude before it is a series of practices and formulas, a manner of being in Gods presence before performing acts of worship or speaking words.

Prayer is centered and rooted in the inmost depths of the person; it is therefore not easily decipherable and, for the same reason, can be subject to misunderstanding and mystification. In this sense too, we can understand the expression: prayer is difficult. In fact, prayer is the place par excellence of free giving, of striving for the Invisible, the Unexpected, and the Ineffable. Therefore, the experience of prayer is a challenge to everyone, a grace to invoke, a gift of the One to whom we turn.

In prayer, in every period of history, man considers himself and his situation before God, from God, and in relation to God, and he experiences being a creature in need of help, incapable of obtaining on his own the fulfillment of his life and his hope. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein mentioned that prayer means feeling that the worlds meaning is outside the world.

In the dynamic of this relationship with the One who gives meaning to existence, with God, prayer has one of its typical expressions in the gesture of kneeling. It is a gesture that has in itself a radical ambivalence. In fact, I can be forced to kneela condition of indigence and slaverybut I can also kneel spontaneously, declaring my limitations and therefore my being in need of Another. To him I declare I am weak, needy, a sinner.

In the experience of prayer, the human creature expresses all his self-awareness, all that he succeeds in grasping of his own existence, and, at the same time, he turns with his whole being to the One before whom he stands, directs his soul to that Mystery from which he expects the fulfillment of his deepest desires and help to overcome the neediness of his own life. In this turning to Another, in directing himself beyond, lies the essence of prayer, as an experience of a reality that overcomes the tangible and the contingent.