The true language of prayer

Traveling to Rome is a blessed spiritual experience.

Blessed are your eyes, because they see: and your ears, because they listen. Matthew 13:16

Once, many years ago, I was trafficking along an alley in Rome, when a lady who seemed to be about 500 years old stared at me, smiled and said softly: "What is it?"

I didn't know what it meant, so I stopped, thinking that maybe he needed assistance.

"What's up?" she repeated very gently. "No Italian," I said smiling but feeling stupid. Her face was so careful and prompt, however, that I started to spread thoughts, in my language, and I bet that we stayed in that alley for 20 minutes while explaining my confused love life, boring work and desolate prospects.

All the while he looked at me with the sweetest care, as if I were his son. I finally finished, feeling foolish that I got rid of myself, and she reached out and patted me on the face and tenderly said, "Shut up."

This broke the holy moment, and we go down for years. For a long time I thought he had given me a blessing of some kind, offered some subtle prayer in his language, until a friend recently told me what is there? means "What's the problem?" and shut up means "you're crazy."

But perhaps I am a little wiser now that I am ancient, because I believe with all my heart that an extraordinary blessing has given me that warm day in the alley near Via Caterina. He listened, paid attention, was completely present as I opened a door in myself. Is it not an enormously powerful and disturbing form of prayer, to be listened with all your might? Isn't it one of the greatest gifts we can give each other?

Dear Lord, for our eyes and ears that sometimes open to the surprising gift of your music, thank you.