With Open Hands (1972)
Context: To pray means to open your hands before God. It means slowly relaxing the tension which squeezes your hands together and accepting your existence with an increasing readiness, not as a possession to defend, but as a gift to receive. Above all, prayer is a way of life which allows you to find a stillness in the midst of the world where you open your hands to God’s promises and find hope for yourself, your neighbor and your world. In prayer, you encounter God not only in the small voice and the soft breeze, but also in the midst of the turmoil of the world, in the distress and joy of your neighbor and in the loneliness of your own heart.
“I don't just pray for God to open doors, I also pray for God to close doors.”
“Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts when God pries your fingers open.”
Source: Sacred Heart High School Students Interview Bishop Kihneman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL9mdS05f_4 (February 17, 2021)
“Prayed for so oft, the dawn of fight is come.
No more entreat the gods: with sword in hand
Seize on our fates; and Caesar in your deeds
This day is great or little.”
Nil opus est uotis, iam fatum accersite ferro.
in manibus uestris, quantus sit Caesar, habetis.
Book VII, line 252 (tr. E. Ridley).
Pharsalia
