In the last issue I suggested that it can be difficult for some people to meet God through the formal religious ritual which is ours during our communal prayer. That is why I have suggested that we truly come to know the Divine Liturgy and make the prayers of the Liturgy our personal prayers. This, of course, means learning the true meaning of the prayers that we offer and making them our own personal prayers. We must learn that the formal ritual of the Church offers something much greater – it offers us an encounter in which the living Lord and us reach out to one another in   love, in care and in trust. (I don’t know if if you have ever felt this during the Divine Liturgy. The goal of the Liturgy is to put us in touch with our living God).

Besides formal religious moments, the prayer of encounter happens in other settings – for example, when friends gather and share life. When people simply gather and are attentive to one another in love and compassion, they experience the presence of God. But friendships can also be moments of disclosure of God’s love for them and of their reaching out to God. Wrapped in the human and limited experience of love is the ground of all love – God. Many-to-one prayer has to be cultivated in the same way as one-to-one prayer. We need to reflect on the meaning of the words and actions of the formal rituals. We have to learn how to be open   and ready to meet other people so that in less structured and more   informal ways we can reach out to God. We must ever remember that the only real way that we can have a relationship with God is by having true relationships with others.

We must remember that we reach out to God in many different ways. We do it by reaching out to others and also to join with others in communal prayer. God sees all humanity as one family. Therefore the more times we have a sense of being in community – in family – with others, the more opportunity we have to establish a true and genuine relationship with God.

Ask yourself, how do I have a relationship with God.?