life as we are converted, transfigured and made new.

Through prayer, heavenly wisdom is planted in the field of our hearts. We experience communion with the Trinitarian God. We become, in the words of the Apostle Peter "partakers of the divine nature." (2 Peter 1:4) That participation will only be fully complete when we are with Him in the fullness of His embrace, in Resurrected Bodies in a New Heaven and a New Earth, but it begins now, in the grace of this present moment.

Christian prayer does not always bring consolation, at least at the affective or emotional level. However, it does always bring an increase in this communion. It is there where we find every answer, by living in God. In prayer we learn to crawl into the wounded side of the Savior and find our home next to His Sacred Heart.

At the Wednesday General Audience of February 8, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI shared some thoughts on these words Jesus uttered from the Cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

"Today I want to reflect with you on the cry of Jesus from the Cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" This cry comes after a three-hour period when there was darkness over the whole land."

"Darkness is an ambivalent symbol in the Bible - while it is frequently a sign of the power of evil, it can also serve to express a mysterious divine presence. Just as Moses was covered in the dark cloud when God appeared to him on the mountain, so Jesus on Calvary is wrapped in darkness."

"Even though the Father appears to be absent, in a mysterious way his loving gaze is focused upon the Son's loving sacrifice on the Cross. It is important to realize that Jesus' cry of anguish is not an expression of despair."

"On the contrary, this opening verse of Psalm twenty-two conveys the entire content of the psalm, it expresses the confidence of the people of Israel that despite all the adversity they are experiencing, God remains present among them, he hears and answers his people's cry."

In the light of prayer, even pain can become the material for our personal transformation and enable us to open ourselves more to the fullness of life. Even when darkness seems to cover our own land, when the Father seems to be absent, prayer reveals His loving gaze. He always hears.

The God who is Love hungers for the communion of sons and daughters - and we hunger for communion with Him - because He made us this way. Nothing else will satisfy. The early Church Father Origen once wrote: "Every spiritual being is, by nature, a temple of God, created to receive into itself the glory of God."

We will live the way we love and we will love the way we pray. A spiritual writer of the 20th century, Henri Nouwen, understood the intimacy of prayer and the call to live in God. He wrote these words in his work entitled "Lifesigns":

"Jesus, in whom the fullness of God dwells, has become our home by making his home in us he allows us to make our home in him. By entering into the intimacy of our innermost self he offers us the opportunity to enter into his own intimacy with God. By choosing us as his preferred dwelling place, he invites us to choose him as our preferred dwelling place.

"This is the mystery of the incarnation. Here we come to see what discipline in the spiritual life means. It means a gradual process of coming home to where we belong and listening there to the voice which desires our attention. Home is the place where that first love dwells and speaks gently to us. Prayer is the most concrete way to make our home in God."

Another teacher of prayer of the last century was the Trappist Monk, Fr. Louis. He is known to most as Thomas Merton. He once commented on his many writings in these words, "Whatever I may have written, I think it all can be reduced in the end to this one root truth: that God calls human persons to union with Himself and with one another in Christ, in the Church which is His Mystical Body.

"It is also a witness to the fact that there is and must be, in the church, a contemplative life which has no other function than to realize these mysterious things, and return to God all the thanks and praise that human hearts can give Him."

As I grow older, things are becoming simpler. Left behind with the years was some of my propensity to complicate things. I seem to hunger for more and more prayer. Through prayerful surrender to the loving plans of God in our own lives we go deeper into this communion.

We see His loving gaze. In this communion with God, fear dissipates and everything is bathed in love.  After all, when all is stripped away, there is only God, and God is Love. The beloved disciple John put it so clearly, "God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him." (1 John 4:16)

In His Sacred Humanity the Lord Jesus prayed for each of us.  "May they be one, as you Father are in me and I am in you." (John 17) The words of this prayer reveal the purpose and final goal of human existence; we are all called to love as God loves - to love with God's Love. This occurs through prayer.

Prayer leads us into an ever deepening, intimate, loving relationship with God, and, in Him, into a new relationship with all men and women and creation itself. Contemplatives comprehend, or rather, are comprehended by, this experience of communion. They literally fall in love with God.

As we prepare for the Great Lent, the forty days of concentrated prayer, penance, fasting and almsgiving, we have an opportunity to learn to pray again. To be drawn into a deeper place in the communion of God's love. We will provide materials which will help in the Lenten Journey.

All Christians are called to prayer. Only prayer can satisfy the hunger of our souls. It also changes us. It strips away only what impedes love. Those who pray can then become lanterns of love for others seeking the way through the darkness of their own lives.  Lent is a time to learn to pray, to love, and to live our Lives more fully in Communion with God.