by Fr. Henri Nouwen
Just because prayer is so personal and arises from the center of our life, it is to be shared with others. Just because prayer is the most precious expression of being human, it needs the constant support and protection of the community to grow and flower. Just because prayer is our highest vocation needing careful attention and faithful perseverance, we cannot allow it to be a private affair. Just because prayer asks for a patient waiting in expectation, it should never become the most individualistic expression of the most individualistic emotion, but should always remain embedded in the life of the community of which we are a part.
Prayer as a hopeful and joyful waiting for God is a really unhuman or superhuman task unless we realize that we do not have to wait alone. In the community of faith we can find the climate and the support to sustain and deepen our prayer, and we are enabled to constantly look forward beyond our immediate and often narrowing needs. The community of faith offers the protective boundaries within which we can listen to our deepest longings, not to indulge in morbid introspection, but to find our God to whom they point. In the community of faith we can listen to our feelings of loneliness, to our desires for an embrace for a kiss, to our sexual urges, to our cravings for sympathy, compassion, or just a good word; also to our search for insight and to our hope of companionship and friendship. In the community of faith we can listen to all these longings and find the courage, not to avoid them or cover them up, but to confront them in order to discern God’s presence in their midst. There we can affirm each other in our waiting and also in the realization that in the center of our waiting the first intimacy with God is found. There we can be patiently together and let the suffering of each day convert our illusions into the prayer of a contrite people. The community of faith is indeed the climate and source of all prayer (Couples for Christ is indeed one such community of faith. In CFC we have a household group wherein we can share together our deepest longings and desires we usually could not in a bigger assembly).
Prayer is first of all the realization of God's presence in the midst of God's people and therefore, the realization of the community itself.
Our community is often a very intangible reality made up of people, living as well as dead, present as well as absent, close as well as distant, old as well as young. But without some form of community individual prayer cannot be born or developed. Communal and individual prayer belong together as two [hands joined together as in praying]. Without community, individual prayer easily degenerates into egocentric and eccentric behavior. Without individual prayer, the prayer of the community quickly becomes a meaningless routine. Individual and community prayer cannot be separated [from each other].
