THE ROMAN CENTURION

Jesus said: - "I will come". The centurion responded: - "No, don't"! (Matthew 8).

 Do we turn to God and say: "Don't make Yourself tangibly, perceptively present before me. It is enough for You to say a word and I will be healed. It is enough for You to say a word and things will happen. I do not need more for the moment"!. There are occasions when we should be aware that He cannot come to us because we are not there to receive Him. We want something from Him, not Him at all. Is that a relationship? Do we behave in that way with our friends? Do we aim at what friendship can give us or is the friend whom we love? Is this true with regard to the Lord?

Think of  the warmth, the depth and intensity of your prayer when it concerns someone you love or something  which matters to your life. Then your heart is open, all your inner self is recollected in the prayer. Does it mean that God matters to you? No, it does not. It simply means that the subject of your prayer matters to you. For when you have made your passionate, deep, intense prayer concerning the person you love or the situation that worries you, and you turn to the next item, which does not matter so much - if you suddenly grow cold, what has changed? Has God grown cold? Has He gone? No, it means that all the elation, all the intensity in your prayer was not born of God's presence, of your faith in Him, of your longing for Him, of your awareness of Him.

How can we feel surprised, then, that the absence of God affects us? It is we who make ourselves absent, it is we who grow cold the moment we are no longer concerned with God. (School of Prayer, Anthony Bloom, London 1974, p.5)

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