Suffering With Joy

God, the Master Gardener

July 8, 2010

The prayers from the Extraordinary Form of the Roman rite are so rich that praying them is like attending an endless banquet.  You never run out of food for thought. This past Sunday’s collect from Mass has stayed with me all week.  Of course, it is the prayer at the end of each hour of the Divine Office, so I have prayed it often these past few days, but even if it were not put before me every day, I would still be haunted by it because of the images it evokes.

O God of all power and might, to Whom all that is best doth belong, graft in our hearts the love of Thy name, and grant us an increase of religion: that Thou mayest foster what is good, and with tender zeal guard what Thou hast fostered.

O God of all power and might…

Let us not ever forget that no one is greater or more powerful than God. Of ourselves we can do nothing but through the power He allows us – a really humbling thought for the creature to contemplate, especially when we get pretty full of ourselves, which can happen so easily if we spend too much time pursuing our own interests rather than His.

To Whom all that is best doth belong…

God was pleased because Abel gave Him the first fruits of his labor – the very best.  There are many places in the Bible where the first of everything is offered to God.  While picking asparagus beans for the first time I noticed that the first fruits of the plants were abundant and healthy and the harvest tapered off a bit after that.  God deserves our best of everything: worship, daily duties in union with Him, our joys and sufferings, all that we do in this life.  Interesting though, that if we are slipshod in our relationship with God He is not the one who suffers.  We do. So if the best belongs to Him, we might as well give it to Him in the first place because it all belongs to Him anyway.  Out of His belongings He gives Himself to us, especially His Son, Jesus, the best, Who redeemed us and is the cause of our hope in a life that someday will be completely free of our temporal limitations.

Graft in our hearts the love of Thy name…

I’ve never grafted anything, but I know how it works.  Fruit trees and roses are often grafted onto sturdy root stock that combines the best of the roots and the best of the fruits or flowers.  We don’t, of ourselves and left to ourselves, love His name, which is Jesus.  But when God grafts His grace into our hearts that grace comes to fruition in a love for Jesus Who told us to ask the Father for anything in His name.

One of the greatest aspects of love is the surrender of self to the loved one, giving the loved one power over the self.  In a sense, the all-powerful God gives us power over Himself through the name of Jesus when we freely accept His grafting, also becoming docile to His will.

…and grant us an increase of religion…

The virtue of religion, seldom spoken of these days, but a profound necessity for sanctity, means showing reverence for God and love of neighbor by attentive, loving worship and  by performing the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. When we ask God for an increase of religion we are asking something very big: to open ourselves to a more perfect reverence for God and neighbor. This idea can take us down so many paths a book could be written on this subject alone so I will leave it to you to ponder it as I continue to do.

…that Thou mayest foster what is good, and with tender zeal guard what Thou hast fostered.

Gardeners foster what is good in the garden.  God, the Master Gardner, will give us all the necessary graces to become holy and pleasing to Him.  All we have to do is co-operate with His will. I love the “tender zeal” and “guard” part of this prayer.  A gardener must have tender zeal or the plants will die.  He must carefully prune and weed.  He must water and fertilize, but in the right amounts.  He can never wake up in the morning and decide that the garden doesn’t need looking after that day.

Tenderness implies love and caring.  It implies guarding and protecting when danger threatens.  In our daily life, Satan tries many ways to spoil the garden of our soul.  In this prayer we ask God to guard us from the bad seeds, worms, beetles (yup, I had to get them in here), mold and other destructive elements the devil uses to cause stunted growth and destruction of the virtue and grace God is fostering in us.

This prayer so perfectly shows a right relationship between God and us. If we pray this way often, we can safeguard ourselves from the deadly sin of pride and grow into the perfect fruit God intends for us to be, fit for the new earth and heaven to come.

Tags: spirituality