Henri Nouwan

God is beyond," beyond our heart and mind, beyond our feelings and thoughts,
beyond our expectations and desires, and beyond all the events and experiences
that make up our life. Still he is in the center of all of it. Here we touch the
heart of prayer since here it becomes manifest that in prayer the distinction
between God's presence and God's absence no longer distinguishes. In prayer,
God's presence is never separated from his absence and God's absence is never
separated from his presence. His presence is so much beyond the human experience
of being together that it quite easily is perceived as absence. His absence, on
the other hand, is often so deeply felt that it leads to a new sense of
presence. This is powerfully expressed in Psalm 22:1-5:

My God, my God, why have you deserted me?
How far from saving me, the words I groan!
I call all day, my God, but you never answer,
all night long I call and cannot rest.

Yet, Holy One, you who make your home in the praises of Israel,
in you our fathers put their trust,
they trusted and you rescued them;
they called to you for help and they were saved,
they never trusted you in vain.

This prayer not only is the expression of the experience of the people of
Israel, but also the culmination of the Christian experience. When Jesus spoke
these words on the cross, total aloneness and full acceptance touched each
other. In that moment of complete emptiness all was fulfilled. In that hour of
darkness new light was seen. While death was witnessed, life was affirmed.
*Where God's absence was most loudly expressed, his presence was most profoundly
revealed.* When God himself in his humanity became part of our most painful
experience of God's absence, he became most present to us. It is in this mystery
that we enter when we pray.

Henri Nouwen