On the bus or at the office, there’s space to pray
How I pray now with Debbie Warrier: Francis Leong, Director, Perth Catholic Mission Office
As the Diocesan Director of Catholic Mission in Perth, visiting parishes, whether to attend daily morning Mass or during week-end parish mission appeals as a speaker, gives me a deep insight into how people pray as a Eucharistic community. Over the years, from my time amongst simple people of Faith in the refugee camps, rural villages and urban slums of Africa and now in the Catholic parish communities of Perth and Bunbury, each one of these communal experiences has offered me a unique and special insight into the mystery of God’s love working quietly and powerfully in our world.
For me, experiencing the ways in which others relate to God as a community has become an essential part of my work in helping lay people understand, appreciate and realise the gift of their missionary calling.
Very often, the parish mission appeal is seen as just another appeal for the financial support of a worthy cause to help the poor. But for someone who has experienced the gift of living and praying with the poor in the midst of their suffering, it is much more than that.
It’s an opportunity for the poor, the victims of poverty and violence in our world, to reach out to us, to touch us, to forgive us, to heal us. It is also an opportunity for us to be inspired and reminded of our own personal call to be missionary ourselves and so play our own unique part in God’s Mission here on Earth.
By experiencing and finding inspiration from how others pray as a community, engaging them through the personal story of my mission experience and inviting them to consider and respond to their own missionary calling, my work has become my prayer. Prayer for me isn’t something I say or recite or ritualise. Rather, prayer is a way of being, of being open to how others are. It is a way of relating to the Christ in each of them and of listening prophetically to what Christ is saying to me through them. Whilst the source for this way of praying is drawn from the experience of Eucharist with others, it does not remain there, private and separate from the world, but rather it flows out into my everyday life, engaging the world, encountering Christ in ordinary people amidst their joys and suffering, peace and brokenness, delusions and truths.
But praying in this way is not easy for me. Too often, when I take the time to reflect, I find my own agendas, my own prejudices drowning out what Christ is trying to say to me through the other.
I have found that listening prophetically or relating to Christ in the other, requires constant, vigilant practice. I have found that catching public transport is a great way to practise this way of praying. Some people are better at it than others. I’m not one of them. But, inspired and strengthened by my little daughter Miranda, who passed away a few years ago, I try each day this way of praying, this way of being. Somehow, it helps me feel closer to her and relieves the constant, unrelenting pain of her loss in my heart.