Grace, Interrupting

This morning, as I was trying to pray my morning office, the phone rang. This was unusual, as people don’t often call me that early. I interrupted my prayers, in case it was my mother, but saw an unknown D.C. number. I returned to my prayers, but the phone kept ringing, and ringing, and ringing.

It turned out to be a young woman in search of aid, as she was facing eviction. (We’re seeing a lot of that, this week and last.) Here I had been trying to pray, and Christ was ringing the phone instead.

There is a great temptation to see prayer as an end in itself, as the means by which we seek the God who is seeking us. In fact, prayer teaches us to respond to God, not only in the liturgy or in times apart, but in the rest of our lives, in the thousand tiny interruptions of people seeking aid, counsel, support, or someone to listen, just to hear them.

There was once a Metropolitan of Moscow (like an archbishop) who was trying to study, after a long day spent hearing petitions, resolving cases, teaching the Gospel. As he sat at his desk at home, an old woman approached his door and rang the bell. The Metropolitan burst out, “O Christ, is it You again?”

Yes, and always.