Christianity is a Spirituality of Imperfection
"Matthew’s Gospel reminds us that to serve Christ the King is to serve the least of our sisters and brothers. But Jesus is not merely suggesting that we be charitable. Jesus is asking us to abandon our love of self and to embrace our own weakness and vulnerability. Jesus is saying we cannot enter into the universe of God without relinquishing everything that binds us to the false security of our own imagined self-sufficiency. God demands absolute allegiance. Jesus is asking us to give ourselves entirely over to him every day of our lives. And this we find terrifying."
-From Sunrise of the Soul
To neglect prayer is to neglect God. Prayer helps us flee from the storm of inner thoughts and the noise that engulfs modern life. Our prayer life needs to move from being mechanical and extrinsic to being mystical and intrinsic. Prayer is the natural expression of the friendship that exists between myself and God, a friendship initiated in love by God.
Love grows from that deep-rooted pain within the universe where God is present, and ever-willing to embrace us and bless us. The mystery of God is buried in solidarity with those who suffer. In the midst of suffering, divine compassion is revealed as a loyal companion that transforms pain into praise, discomfort into consolation.
Christianity is a spirituality of imperfection. It is the folly of the Cross of Christ, the paradoxical realization that in dying we rise to new life. St. Paul understood this when he wrote: “It is when I am weak that I am strong” When we are in a place of woundedness or weakness we see more clearly our insufficiency, our incompleteness, and see more clearly our need for God.