The Inner Room

Lectio: (Mt 6:8-10)

When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you. In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

My Lord commands me when I pray to go into my inner room and shut the door, where I can pray to my Father "who is in secret," and "sees what is done in secret." What room is more interior, more "secret," than the room of my heart, where I am silent (unlike the hypocrites and the gentiles) and where "I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you" (Jn 14:20). Where else is it that the Son speaks of in saying: "And my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him"(Jn 14:23)? Where else but the heart could be a proper abode for the Father and the Son? For the presence of the Father and the Son and their Love (the Spirit) is the Kingdom; and "the Kingdom of God is within you"(Lk 17:21). Where else is my body truly a "temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you"(1 Cor 6:19), when the Spirit Himself is Love? Therefore, to truly pray as the Son of Man, I must retreat into the inner room of my very heart. For is this not what Christ Himself did when He prayed to the Father? He who saw the Father face-to-face and was Himself the new temple of the presence of God? For "The Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head"(Mt 8:20), no room of his own except that in which He rested with the Father on the mountain. Therefore, I must leave behind the "synagogues" and the "streets" and commune with the Father, Son, and Spirit in the temple within me.

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam