Lamezia Terme – Relationship, dialogue, staying with the Beloved, breathing. These are some of the key words with which Don Ricardo Reyes Castillo explains the meaning of prayer in the book “What is prayer”, accompanied by illustrations edited by Sister Eleonora Calvo of the Order Opus Matris Verbi Dei (Servants of the Word). Words and images shared with the public of Lamezia in the meeting held in the parish hall of the church of S. Giuseppe Artigiano, in the context of the novena in preparation for the patronal feast of the parish.
In front of an audience coming from various parishes in the city, including numerous young people, the author, answering questions from the journalist Saveria Maria Gigliotti, director of the diocesan social communications office, defined prayer as “not a formula, but a dialogue. Prayer is entering into a relationship with God who is a relationship, a perfect relationship that leads to unity. Only by entering into a relationship with God, who is Relationship by nature, can I relate to others.” Prayer, therefore, “not as something rigid, but as a breath that gives us life. And we know that you can’t live without breathing. Praying is getting closer to Christ, who is the first to get closer to us as he did with the disciples of Emmaus who were in a hurry and did not recognize him. Prayer leads us to repeat their same question: stay with us, Lord. We live a complicated life, full of contradictions, but the greatest grace is the awareness of being with the Lord, remaining with Him. Formulas can be a tool of help, but prayer is dialogue with the Lord, being with Him.” If among the most difficult issues in prayer there is the possibility of not receiving what is asked for, Don Ricardo invites us to change the “format” and to think of prayer not as a “question/answer” but “as a relationship with God, putting aside the our expectations that often hurt us. God did not come to take away the cross from us, but to give meaning to what had no meaning before. Christ made the Cross the place of encounter with the love of God.” In the conversation with the public, there is also space for the story of a personal page in the life of Don Ricardo who, a few years ago, in a moment of crisis, chose to live for some time in a community of drug addicts in Lourdes, “an experience that it allowed me to return to myself, to feel free. With the little ones I found myself, I experienced the love of Christ. The strength of our faith is also this: having the possibility of always starting again.”
Recalling one of the images used by Don Ricardo in the book, for Bishop Serafino Parisi “the encounter with God can take place on the mountain, at the end of a complicated climb, but it can also take place in the abyss of our life. The climb is tiring, but the descent can be much more tiring, when we sink into the depths of our existence. The greatness of prayer is in the certainty that the Lord awaits you right there: in the abyss of life, in the abyss of your limit. Only by becoming aware of our limits can we open up and discover a God who is close. Prayer is the discovery of our limits and we can meet God precisely in our limits if we question our delusions of omnipotence, our claim to self-sufficiency”. For the bishop of the diocese of Lamezia, prayer is also “the cry of a father or mother who has lost their child and who, from the abyss of desolation, shouts as Jesus shouted from the Cross: my God, my God, why do I you abandoned. That too is prayer.” From the prelate, the warning addressed in particular to young people on the “great drama of our time, in which man claims autonomy and self-sufficiency from God. When we decide to put God out of our lives, we bring in other idols and become slaves to other idols . Prayer is an experience of liberation, because we present ourselves to the Lord as we are. And the Lord is already there waiting for us, he always anticipates us.” Parisi defines prayer as “a mouth-to-mouth kiss with God because He gives us his breath if we are happy to receive it, make it ours and live from the very life of God.”
The meeting was opened by the parish priest Don Fabio Stanizzo who recalled how the meeting with Don Ricardo is part of the journey in preparation for the feast of St. Joseph the Craftsman, who chose prayer as a common thread, a theme indicated by Pope Francis in view of the now imminent Jubilee of 2025. An initiative that also represents a training moment for the young people of the parish community already in the preparation phase for the summer of 2024.
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