Note: On Fridays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
There’s a famous scene from 1987’s Barfly, starring Faye Dunaway (Wanda) and Mickey Rourke (Henry) that takes place as the pair meet in a bar:
Wanda: I can’t stand people. I hate them.
Henry: Oh yeah?
Wanda: You hate them?
Henry: No, but I seem to feel better when they’re not around.
You have to wonder if the fully human part of Jesus didn’t feel that way at times: the crowds who wanted so much of him, those he healed who couldn’t honor the simplest requests not to talk about his miracles, the apo
stles who were sometimes dense and at other times jockeying for position. We know he loved them all in the way parents love their children. And yet, he seems to have craved time alone to pray, as Luke 5:15-16 tells us after Jesus sends the healed leper to the priest, and work of what he’s done spreads. Perhaps in some ways, like Henry, he felt better from time to time when the others weren’t around.
We honor the commandments and follow Christ’s teaching when we gather in community to pray and sing and celebrate and mourn, or to provide the needy with food and clothing and shelter and encouragement and love. We share in Cursillo group reunions and other prayer groups what our closest moments to Christ were, what we’re studying in the Bible or other spiritual resources, and what we’re doing to evangelize or serve. But for some of us, the hardest, most difficult times are those when we talk with God with no one else around, in a quiet, deserted place. It’s often our last priority.
It can be a bit intimidating to stop doing and start listening. But if we are brave enough to sit quietly with the Lord, we too may find that we can feel great when all our attention is focused on Him.
