What is the most important thing in your opinion in religious life? What is essential, that which cannot be missing?
The intimate experience of God in the heart. That certainty of his existence, that sense of his presence at every moment while the everyday goes by. The purpose of religious life is to facilitate access to this inner experience. Of course, everyone lives it in their own particularity and approaches or moves away from it according to the path of their own spiritual development.
It is good to remember this, not to forget the ultimate meaning of what we do. Even more so in these times, in which, in addition to a continuous desacralization of human activities, a certain relativism of faith prevails, which I believe manifests a fundamental nihilism.
In a way, it is as if a “habit of disappointment” tended to settle in, a condescending way of looking, as if we knew how all things are and what can be expected of life. More than a routine in itself of events, it is a routine of the gaze, a vice in the way of seeing.
In your opinion, what is the closest thing to this experience of God in your heart?
The sentence. And this, understood not only in its particular liturgical and / or personal meaning, but also as a way of being and being in life, as a way of being the conscience pending of God, of his presence and manifestation while time passes.
We live unfolding our intention between the categories of space and time; however they are not absolute but are traversed by what we would call the quality of the eternal. This divine quality of events that is present as the background of existence, can be made perceptible to those who, with attention and love, seek the sacred in events.
What happens can be pleasant or unpleasant, it can give us happiness or sometimes a lot of pain; even many times it is incomprehensible, not assimilable. The behavior of others and even our own often leave us perplexed and frightened. However, the intelligence of redemption is also at work there.
Could you explain a bit more?
Hardly. It is something that can be sensed but not fully explained. I would tell you that everything is made for our redemption and transformation, that the destiny of individual and social man is good and perfect, although we cannot see it at times.
And how can one pray, how to reach that state of continuous prayer?
The prayer of Jesus is my way, the invocation of the Name, which tends to replace ramblings and desires and which little by little is focusing us on the only thing necessary. However, there are different ways of praying and approaching God. Each one is called to travel a certain path and that is for something, some particularity has that form to which the heart of each one leans that makes it necessary, suitable for each one.
In general, I would say that it helps not to spend yourself on secondary things, to focus on what is important. We must not forget certain truths, which we do not like to remember very much. We must remember that this life is transitory, that old age, illness and death exist and that only before them do we put things in the necessary perspective.
When you remember these things, you immediately turn to God and wonder about the meaning of life. That question, that excruciating concern is the first form of prayer that I have ever known and, at the same time, the first manifestation of God’s love, of his intimate and personal call.
