What flows from prayer

The best real estate in many ancient towns and cities is usually occupied by a huge cathedral.

What a waste of space, the unbeliever thinks.

But it is no waste of space, quite the contrary, as today’s first reading (Ezekiel 47:1-2, 8-9, 12) illustrates in the symbolism of the stream flowing from the temple.

Wherever the river flows,
every sort of living creature that can multiply
shall live,
and there shall be abundant fish,
for wherever this water comes
the sea shall be made fresh.

Along both banks of the river,
fruit trees of every kind shall grow;
their leaves shall not fade, nor their fruit fail.
Every month they shall bear fresh fruit,
for they shall be watered
by the flow from the sanctuary.
Their fruit shall serve for food,
and their leaves for medicine.

What happens in the temple, doesn’t stay in the temple.

What happens in the temple – prayer, worship, and the experience of God’s presence – flows out into the world, bringing life to all things.

So too in our own churches, from the greatest cathedrals to the smallest chapel, what happens in these sacred spaces – places carved out of our physical environment and reserved for our relationship with God – flows and brings life into all the areas of our existence.

This happens not only with sacred spaces, but also with sacred times - the times we carve out of our busy schedules for prayer: what happens there flows out into the rest of our day and brings life everywhere.

Sometimes we think we’re too busy to pray, when the reverse is true: we are too busy NOT to pray, for the blessings of prayer can make the rest of our time more fruitful.

Of course, we need to respect the sacredness of our prayer time as well as the sacredness of our worship space. Too often our prayer and our experience of God’s presence must battle against all kinds of noise and clutter. Our Lord’s words in the Gospel (John 2:13-22) speak to this:

Take these out of here,
and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.

Again, what is said about the temple and the house of God applies not only to our places of worship, but also to ourselves and to our prayer lives, as St. Paul says in today’s second reading (1 Corinthians 3:9c-11, 16-17):

Do you not know that you are the temple of God,
and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

In the midst of our busy lives, we must zealously guard time and space for prayer, for from there flows the power of the spirit of God, bringing life and peace into the howling desert of our world.