inner selves through a reading of the scriptures, and the practice of prayer in the morning and in the evening. Prayer offers us comfort in knowing that the Savior of the world is available to us for a questioning time, when we may speak freely to God with a directness that allows for even the most genuine freely given parts of ourselves. This giving over to the Savior our innermost sanctuaries, and those private thoughts and desires is part of what prayer life is about. This is recollection, the remembering of things, people, and events that have passed. We can enter into many rooms, many places, many doorways of our day in prayer. We can remember our friends, their voices, their activities of the day or of last week or last year in our prayers. Through this recollection as a lived and remembered intention there is a gift of Grace that allows us to enter into the stillpoint. Through Christ we enter into the knowing of God the Father, and by the Holy Spirit we are illumined with a continuing expression of the newness of the words that are on the page of the prayer we may be reading, or the words of the prayer we may be saying. The unknowing of this practice is the very essence of the experience. Call this a spiritual exercise, a relinquishing to Christ in adoration the kind of desire of Love that is the sweetness of the Lord. From the giving of ourselves in this manner we are partakers of a living water that is a thirst of the Love that beats dearly and closely to reveal that we are children of God. Christ is willing to be with us in this time of privacy, and intimacy, to allow us to be a gatherer of the fruit for eternal life. To enjoy this repast of a feast with others in the sharing of their lives, and the laughing or sorrow that is with others in community is a part of the life of prayer. We practice this kind of prayer with others, and recollect it. Do this with others and when with ourselves alone, remembering that we are always in the presence of Christ. The largeness of prayer life comes to us as we expand towards an ascension with the Lord so that we may know that he is the Savior of the world. This is the act of hastening to our heavenly home, a time to run the race of life and not tarry. Though others have gone before us, and we join them, and that they have labored, and we enter into their labor as Christ tells us in John, being with them is part of the gift God offers us in the redemption of Christ, his son. Matthew 11:27 “All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” The disciples found the Lord in Capernaum, where they went looking for him (after the loaves and fishes were distributed to the multitude who had gathered to see him). In prayer we eat of the bread of life from week to week, celebrating and preparing each day for the gathering that is the memorial and sacrifice of Sunday. In our celebration of prayer, practiced in whatever mood we may be in, or (CAPTION) The “White Synagogue”, built at Capernaum in the late 4th century upon the remains of the “Synagogue of Jesus”. Matthew refers to Capernaum as Jesus’ “own city”. Jesus made Capernaum his home after leaving Nazareth, and performed many miracles there. Photo: Anonymous