Wasting Time with God

“Mental prayer,” St. Teresa of Avila writes, “is nothing else than a close sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us” (The Book of Her Life, ch. 8, par. 5).

When we make time frequently to be alone with anyone we love, the time will not always be filled with noticeable activity.  We come to enjoy simply being with them without much concern as to what we might be doing.  You may be familiar with the humorous remark that rightly observes how we are human beings, not human doers.  There is an art in learning to be who we are and to enjoy the being of another.  With those whom we love, we quite naturally enjoy being in their presence, and when they are away, their absence is clearly noted. 

It is interesting how our time alone with the Supreme Being can become infected by a type of “activism.”  When it seems that nothing is happening in prayer, we might consider it a waste of time.  It is endearing to hear St. Therese of Lisieux reflect on her own time in prayer as being alone with “Jesus (Who) was sleeping as usual in my little boat” (Story of Soul, ch. 8). This seeming lack of activity did not concern her in the least.  In fact, she received it as a good sign of the authentic intimacy of their relationship, “Jesus is so fatigued with always having to take the initiative and to attend to others that He hastens to take advantage of the repose I offer to Him . . . instead of being troubled about it this only gives me extreme pleasure.” 

In the authentic intimacy of this frequent time alone with Our Lord, Jesus wasn’t the only one sleeping.  She reflects also on how “I should be desolate for having slept during my hours of prayer . . . well, I am not desolate.  I remember that little children are as pleasing to their parents when they sleep as well as when they are wide awake.” 

A key in all of this lies in the frequency of our time alone with Jesus.  When our contact with someone we love is not frequent, it might be strange and even disturbing for them to simply fall asleep. Such inactivity could seem like wasted time.  On the other hand, with those loved ones we are blessed to be alone with frequently, having them fall asleep is quite natural. In fact, it can be a pleasant sign that we are well familiar with one another.  Perhaps that is why Therese laments over “how rarely souls allow Him to sleep peacefully within them.”     

We certainly would not consider it wasted time for a mother to spend all day with her often sleeping infant.  That frequent time spent alone enables a mother to come to know that little person in a way others will not. When the child cries, the mother will know whether it is a cry of hunger, weariness, or general fussiness. To those who have not spent that kind of time with this infant, the cries can all sound the same. In fact, the cry of this infant might not be distinguishable from the cry of any other infant. A mother knows the cry of her child and from all the time spent together alone with them, she will know what is being communicated with each cry.

To know God as the person He really is, requires frequent time alone with Him.  Without actual time spent with God, there is a danger that we will never come to know Him as the Person He really is.  We might imagine we know what God is thinking, rather than come to learn over time the subtleties with which He communicates with us. We may presume that God is much angrier than He is.  We could miss how He is grieving over us. We just might utterly fail to grasp His manner of loving us unless we make the effort that is needed to “be still and know that I am God!” (Ps. 46:11). To truly know God as the person He is takes time.

The shear amount of time that St. Jerome spent alone with God is striking.  Around the year 390 AD, he set out on the task to translate the entire Bible into Latin.  At the time, Latin was the common language throughout Western Europe.  He first translated the Bible from the Greek and then went on to correct the Old Testament against the Hebrew original.  There are so many words in the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament and Greek text of the New Testament that could have different meanings in Latin.  In striving to make the proper translation, it took twenty-one years of frequent time alone with God.  

That time was not wasted.  It led St. Jerome to the conviction that “ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.”  And for the next thousand years, what became known as The Latin Vulgate (Vulgate means “in the common tongue”) was the version of the Bible used by everyone in Western Europe in their own time alone with God.

Are we taking time frequently to be alone with Him Who we know loves us?  Have we learned the beauty of what can happen when we learn to waste time with God?

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