7 July 1987
Paris, France

My dear Sisters,

I have not had time to read any scriptural commentary on the first reading of today's Mass, the episode of Jacob's mysterious wrestling with God. It is a mysterious episode, but I would venture to say that all of us here have had a similar experience. Which of us has not wrestled with God in prayer? Which of us has not wrestled with God when some great suffering or sorrow comes to us or to those whom we know and love, or some great tragedy happens in the world? Yes, all of us have wrestled with God. Every time we say to ourselves, 'Why did this happen?' we are wrestling with God.

When we wrestle with God, we want, like Jacob, to win, to overcome God, to be given a full explanation of events. And, as with Jacob, God refuses to make everything clear to us. You will have noticed in the reading that Jacob wanted to know the name of the person or the power he was wrestling with. And God refused to say who He was. Names were very important to the Israelite people. You will remember how, after God had created man, He gave him power to name the animals and the plants. In doing so, He was giving him power over creation. In refusing Jacob his request to know the name of the person he was wrestling with, God was telling him that he, Jacob, could not dominate God. Jacob could wrestle with God, and as a souvenir of the experience, he was given a wound in his hip.

Now the experience of prayer is a wrestling with God. When we pray, we try to enter into the mystery of God's wisdom, of His beauty, of His goodness, of His mercy, of His eternity, of His immensity, of His compassion. In prayer we wrestle with the great mystery that is God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And we emerge from prayer wounded by His love. The mystics of the Church speak very much of the experience of being wounded by God's love. We may not think of ourselves as great mystics, but the truth is that the more we come to know God, the more we come to love Him in Himself and in the poor, we will experience a sort of pain that comes from love. Think of any human person whom you loved greatly in life, and the memory of it causes a pain that has a certain sweetness about it. God is love, St. John tells us, and when we draw close to Him in prayer and in the accomplishment of His Will, He wounds us with His love, as He did Jacob.

St. Thomas Aquinas said on one occasion that prayer is an "unfolding of the desires of our hearts, so that God can fulfill them." Our hearts are full of desires; some of them are good, some are not, and some are a mixture of good and evil. In prayer we bring out from our hearts the desires that are there. We bring them into the light of God's truth and God's love. He purifies our desires in prayer and then fulfills them. However, we must first bring out from our hearts the desires that are present in them. God wrestles with us about these desires and we wrestle with Him. It can be strenuous and painful work, but in the end He fulfills our purified desires. We say, as Jesus said, "May Your Will, O Father, be done." (Lk 22:42).

Jacob said to God: "I will not let you go, unless you bless me." (Gn 32:28). And God said to Jacob: "Why do you ask My name? And God blessed him." (Gn 28:30). In those two phrases we find what our attitude in prayer should be. Humble perseverance, and acceptance that God is a mystery, but a mystery of wisdom and of love. Provided we are open to the Spirit, God will bless us and give us every good gift. He will wound us with His love. So, my dear Sisters, in the words of St. Vincent: