St. Botolph’s Parish, Dormition of the Righteous Anna, 25 July 2010
In the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. (Matthew 14.25)
Have you ever prayed for something, as though your whole life depended on it? Prayed for it with the fervour of a madman? Prayed so hard that it felt as though drops of blood were trickling from your face? Christ prayed that way in the garden of his Passion. Have you felt that fear, the terrible fear, surge through you – fear that God will not answer the one prayer that matters most? Maybe you are too sensible to pray like that. Maybe in an age of unbelief, you do not care enough about anything to let your life depend on it. But only let fate, only let the strangeness of life reach out and grasp your own: then you will pray. Even an atheist has been known to pray, when her child lies dying. When you risk losing your job, or home, or spouse – and yes, your own child – you set out far from the land. You leave the familiar shore. Night closes in, even in the middle of the day. If you face losing someone you love, the face of your loved one fades. It recedes into shadow, like the face of a ghost. You pray with your whole being, if you can. But, even then, your prayer becomes like a tattered cloth, waving in the wind. When you pray in desperation, the wind howls around your ears. Every doubt surges upward, through you. The voices that whisper: ‘God is not there. No one is there’. You may see the face of God, far away in the distance. But only take one step toward him. The winds howl, the voices wail, the doubt steps in. You set all your heart on one prayer: and your worst fear is – that, if God does not hear, there may be no God at all.
This is the real agony of prayer. You pray but everything is dead. Does God hear? Is he even there? If you ever prayed for anything as though life depended on it, you are not at all alone. If you ever struggled with doubt, you know the agony of prayer. Long ago, one poor woman prayed that prayer. She was the daughter of a priest. She knew the worst doubt: the terrible fear, surging up inside, that says: ‘if God does not answer, God is not there. Or worse, God hates me. He turns his face away’. How could she not doubt? Her whole life, this woman had lived without the one thing she wanted most: to have a child. Born of her body. A child to hold so close, she would never let it go. In the Middle East, it was not only the woman in her that longed for a child. It was life itself, society itself. A woman without a child might as well be dead. Like a man. When her poor husband went to bring offerings in the temple, those with children shoved him aside. ‘No place for you’. The priest told him: ‘Go away, God doesn’t want anything from your childless hands’. So why even live with his wife? He went into the hills. The poor woman, left there alone, prayed: a pointless prayer, like a tattered cloth waving in the wind. The winds, whistling inside her head: ‘Why has God left my body frail and sick and childless? Even my young body was never able to have a child’. That night, in her garden, a voice spoke to her. ‘What would you do if you had a child?’ ‘Hold her close’, she thought. ‘Never let her go’. But she said to the voice: ‘If God gave me a child now, let her be his, not mine. Let her be my prayer. Let her grow up in the temple. Let her know nothing else but God’.
The old woman had a baby girl. She brought her to the temple, handed her to the priest to grow up there. The old woman’s name was Anna, the wife of Joachim the shepherd. Her little girl, raised in the temple, was Mary, the Ever-Virgin Mother of God.
No easy prayer. It was a fervent supplication, that prayer of Anna for the impossible gift of a child. A prayer, like a tattered cloth waving in the wind. A prayer, not of easy faith; a prayer, born of doubt. Anna left her familiar shore. She set out far from the land. Anna, a poor old woman, who gave away what she had longed for all her life: her only child.
Because of a desperate prayer, a little girl grew up in the temple. Her own prayers were as natural as a child’s game, as easy as her breath. So, when the time came for God to be born, he chose the daughter of Anna to give him what only a woman could: a human body, a human nature. Because of one desperate prayer, Anna, barren wife of Joachim, became the grandmother of God.
As Anna set out far from the land, so does her grandson, our Lord Jesus Christ. Like his grandfather, Joachim, he goes up into the mountain to pray. Night falls. His disciples set out, far from the land. They leave the familiar shore. By now, it is the fourth watch of the night, the hour before daybreak when everything is dead and black. Suddenly, Christ is walking across the water. His face recedes into shadow, like a ghost. Like a tattered sail waving in the night wind, the mind of each disciple fills up with doubt. ‘How can it be he? How can he leave us here, surrounded by night, tossed in the wind? How can we reach him?’ With all his soul, Peter wants to walk out to him. He places one foot on the water and he too walks out, as if on dry ground. He sees the face of Christ off in the distance. But as soon as he sees the howling wind lashing the waves, every doubt surges upward in him. Voices inside his head whisper: ‘He is a ghost. He is not there. No one is there’. He starts to sink. ‘Why did you doubt?’ says Christ – and it is not the voice of anger. It is the voice of love. ‘Why did you doubt me? Why did the darkest hour of the night tempt you to believe that the dawn would never come? You seek one thing, as though your life depended on it. You reach out across a great divide. You fear that God is not there. But then – and only then – the hand of God delivers you’.
Brothers and Sisters in Christ: prayer is a voyage far from the land, far from any familiar shore. Prayer is an act of courage. Like a tattered sail in the wind, it can be full of doubt. Like the prayer of Saint Anna, it can be full of despair. One desperate prayer, born of so many years of longing in vain. But the desperate prayer of Anna gave birth to the easy prayers of her only child, that little girl raised in the temple, who grew up to become the Theotokos: her soul, a constant, perpetual prayer, the only life that she had ever known; her virgin body, the temple of the Living God. The desperate prayer of Peter, stepping out into the stormy waters of the night, enabled him to walk on water. Only the winds filled him with fear – and God dispelled those fears with one touch of his hand.
If you have ever prayed one prayer of fervent supplication, one prayer – as the Church puts it – with your whole soul and with your whole mind, expect to doubt. The wind may howl around you, as the night closes in. The waves may surge up inside you. The voice of all your doubts may whisper: ‘He is not there. No one is there’. That is precisely when he is there, more than ever. Anna did not conceive in her youth but only in the last years of her life; she did not keep her little girl to herself, as she once hoped, but gave her – to us. Christ did not walk on water in the bright light of day, when no one doubts his steps, but in the fourth watch of night: the darkest hour just before dawn.