The morning prayer sparkles. The body is dripping to honor the new day. The hand returns the covers, summoned to wait for the revolution of the day to find a use. Rejected, crumpled, they sag, overturned on the bed when the body stands in the splendor of the nascent day. Eternal moment that reproduces as long as life flows into the veins and provides this breath whose absence rhymes with death. The body sets out and marries the dark to slide on the mattress and let the feet touch the floor. Doesn't this soil vacillate? The habit causes the darkness of the room by denying its mystery to it. The hand finds the pants and the sweater that will dress the clumsy body to find the movement when it was used to the immobility of the night. Suddenly, space has defined and precise volumes to which it is better not to compete. The darkness watches not to lose its fortifications and hopes to regain some ground in its fight against day and against visual acuity which is slowly adapting to the lack of light.
The corridor continues. It allows you to move towards the greatest adventure of the day. A few steps, and the corridor ends. The bathroom. A little bit of light. Very little. You have to wake up, but don't wake anyone. This meeting returns every morning around the world, intimate, without any display. The body discovers the dawning day, it leaves the night and its ocean of unconsciousness to bathe in the new source.
The prayer room, at last. The small light that glides by reveals the triptych icon, a Virgin and Child, surrounded by the archangels Michael and Gabriel. A soft light like a Mediterranean sunset. Descending to my knees onto the prie-dieu reveals the moment of truth. My knees creak and cry out for mercy. The muscular effort required to lower myself onto the worn cushion placed on the wooden prie-dieu allows my limbs to become familiar with this new position. To sink in while maintaining the dignity required by prayer. To let my gaze wander over the composite altar. To contemplate the woody light of the lamp on the cracked icon. To see the face of Christ in this 19th-century painting and his finger discreetly pointing to his merciful heart. To recognize Andrei Rublev's Trinity. To think of Tarkovsky's genius and all the holy fools. To let my mind wander as in a novel by Antoine Blondin. Revisiting that poorly signed contract, the chaos of work and human relationships. Trying to ignore those creaking knees, begging for comfort. Forgetting that phone call, each word of which landed like a sledgehammer blow. Letting myself be overcome by a few notes of despair about life after yesterday's awful day, when weeks of work were reduced to nothing. Regretting this endless fatigue, yearning to be swept away by a vacation that never seems to arrive… How do so many thoughts swirl and turn in the human mind, which can't stop churning and coaxing its ideas, its concepts, this way of seeing the world, the days gone by, those yet to come? What bliss these senses are, these visual, tactile, auditory, gustatory, and olfactory impressions, returning to us and settling into our memory, where our spirit resides! What poetry!
The thoughts erase any pain from the knees or the osteoarthritis that sticks there like a shell to its rock. But, after the storm of memories and hopes, comes the time of hope and remembrance. It overflows memories and hopes by a hundred cubits, in depth, in length, in breadth, and in height. To tell the truth, it is very difficult to say how much it exceeds them, because there is nothing to compare them. The soul feels a wave of shock at the idea of this comparison. Nothing can be compared to hope and remembrance. It would be like comparing heaven to earth. That would not be appropriate. How can people who do not believe live like this, leaving out their souls? How can they cover them with so many artifices that they no longer resonate loudly enough to wake them? This is beyond comprehension.
Prayer sifts through initial thoughts. Those that resonate and descend into a bottomless cavern. Those that continue to echo even when we no longer hear them. Ideas from beyond the grave that alter daily life, influence it, and deepen it. In what time and space does life express itself? We believe it to be here, yet it is there. We think of it as distant, absorbed in theory, and yet practice wins out by embracing thoughts and actions. We are absent from ourselves. So often. So profoundly. Let us be still. And if we succeed, if we allow ourselves to be absorbed by this dawn that treads and groans, that gives birth to day and life, love arrives unexpectedly and envelops and weds us. This is the fruit of prayer. There is a moment brought about that awaits us despite ourselves. From that instant, each of us will never be the same person again. A moment from which there is no real return. The beauty of this close encounter, in which only love emerges victorious, orders the world. We would like to avoid it, because time is short, there is so much to do, seconds ricochet off one another, the world commands us, and we are victims of our decaying structure.
Sometimes too, when the thoughts dissipate, the waiting brings us to despair. The appointment is missed. A participant is kept waiting. Yet the mind demands it. We wait and we get impatient. We would come to look at the time. We stamp our feet. Until the moment we realize that it is not the right place, that we have made a mistake, that we have gone astray. From experience, we should know that if the appointment does not take place, it is never His fault, but ours. We did not make ourselves available. The only time in our lives when we must be absent to attend.
Never does the creature reveal itself so fully. All weaknesses on display. All fragilities exposed. Nothing protects anymore, for nothing could tarnish the moment. The day slips in and merges with the nightlight. The furtive shadows glide across the Virgin's face. The sword of Saint Michael gleams, ready to serve. The zertsilo of the Archangel Gabriel where Christ gazes, indicating the ever-present path to follow. All these thoughts, these emotions, these feelings nourish and are nourished, mindful of their importance. No order governs them. The immensity of what they reveal and the smallness of their container frighten, but also subjugate. All that has been said, all that will be said, all that has not been said, all that could have been said, concentrates and extracts itself, reduced to nothing. The prayer has only just begun. It announces itself. Eyes close. We enter tentatively into ourselves. There is a sanctuary there that unsettles us. Will we find what we come seeking? “Lord, in the silence of this dawning day, I come to ask you for peace, wisdom, and strength…” We must expect nothing in order to find each new thing there. Words, suddenly, falter. They no longer carry weight. Prayer begins. It extinguishes all that is not itself, silence. The depth of silence. The abyssal intensity of silence. The silence that completes all that is in its presence. The silence that reigns for its master: love. Then, prayer begins, when love unfolds and fills every vein, every organ, every fiber of our being to establish the Creator's precedence over the creature. Nothing else exists. The heart floods with joy. Nothing else can exist, for everything is incongruous compared to that moment, which is neither a feeling, nor an emotion, nor a thought. The universe diminishes and shortens. There is a moment that does not exist, but which will recur with the next surrender. There is a moment that gives life its full significance. There, at the heart of prayer, vibrates love, a jewel we all possess, but not by escaping, by surrendering. Nothing is acquired there, everything is offered. Little by little, by no longer accessing it, we have convinced ourselves that it did not exist or that it no longer existed. We thought that science was stronger than this new religion. We even ridiculed it, for it was not enough to forget it, we had to denigrate it. Yet, whoever allows themselves to be captured by it is transformed, metamorphosed. To refuse it is to die a slow death. To die to Him. Forever.
Prayer influences all life by restoring its simplicity, the marvelous.
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