The Healing Journey

October 11, 2024

“Prayer is a surge of the heart, it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.”
— St. Therese of Lisieux

During her decades as a spiritual director, Sr. Pauline RSM often encountered people who were suffering from loss. A wife whose husband died, parents whose child had died, a child whose parent had died. It is a universal suffering that everyone will endure.

Many of them were angry with God and blamed him for what happened, and that, she says, is a perfectly natural response. However, she urged them to cry out to God in their agony, saying this is actually a form of prayer — “a poverty prayer.”

“Start where you’re at. Sometimes you just have to cry out to the Lord and tell him where you’re at. It’s the prayer of the moment,” she said. “Tell him: ‘Lord I offer you this struggle, it’s the only thing I’ve got right now.’ When you feel you have nothing else to offer him, let that feeling of emptiness be your prayer of the moment.”

She, herself, when in distress or pain, says, “Lord, I wish to offer what I’m going through right now as my prayer. It’s a poverty prayer. This is all I’ve got today.’”

This is a way to get in touch with the reality you are experiencing by asking God to be part of it. There is nothing that you can’t offer to God, she says, even your anger.

“We often think that prayer should be nice and holy and on our knees, but sometimes it is the feeling inside of us. We may not think of our anger as a prayer, but that’s where we’re at and if we offer it to the Lord, he will take it and bless it and transform it.”

Very often on our healing journey, we will be mad about what is going on in our lives, especially if we’re convinced that God isn’t fixing it. So call out to him in your poverty and let him know that it’s not pretty, but you want him to take it as an offering.

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There is nothing that can’t be a prayer when we offer it to God. Feelings are even more personal than words.