Explore "The Solitude of Prayer" by Jorge Mario Bergoglio on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
AFTER UTTERING HIS FIRST PRAYER, Adam set out on the road of exile. He traveled far from paradise, but he did so in the hope that he might, by God's mercy, one day return to it. The exile of Adam is relived in the history of the Babylonian exile, which is interpreted with tragic overtones by the author of the letter to the Hebrews. That letter gives poignant expression to the Israelites' nostalgia for their abandoned homeland; it recounts the sacrifices the people made to remain faithful to their memory: "They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for the people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one" (Heb 11: 13-16). For remaining true to their memory, these exiles "were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented-of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground" (Heb 11: 35-38).
In its pilgrimage, our flesh feels nostalgia for the homeland, and it voices its longing deliberately and explicitly in prayer, in the presence of the glorious Lord, the Lord of that homeland we yearn for. Meanwhile, our flesh is caught between feelings and numbness, between grace and sin, between deference and rebellion. It feels the oppression of exile and dreads the long road it must walk; it struggles valiantly to defend its hope. The day that our nostalgia dies, our flesh will cease to pray. Seeking release from exile and from wandering in a strange land, it will make this world its homeland. It will tire of seeking after God. On that day the greatest gift that can be given to us is the one that was given to Elijah when an angel roused him from his sleep-inducing depression and told him: "Get up and eat, for otherwise you won't be able to continue on your journey" (1 Kings 19: 7).