When we keep up a regular habit of prayerful attention to God, we can help others have access to Him
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
When the Scriptures present the episode of Jacob’s Ladder (Genesis 28), it’s one of many examples of foreshadowing: Something happens in ancient Israel that points ahead to Jesus. One of the beautiful things about the Bible is that when this happens, it often points to an important truth for our own life of discipleship.
Here’s what happens: Jacob falls asleep. During the night he sees “a stairway (ladder) rested on the ground, with its top reaching to the heavens; and God’s messengers (angels) were going up and down on it.” Jacob is amazed, and rightly so! He builds a shrine there to remind himself and tell others: One has access to God in this place.
What happens to Jacob is essential to understanding something that Jesus says in John 1. After surprising Nathaniel by revealing that He knew what he was doing before the two of them met, Jesus says: “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will see the sky opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” Jesus is saying that He, Himself, is a living Jacob’s Ladder: One has access to God through Him, wherever He is!
What does that have to do with our lives?
Many people know the Benedictine motto: “ora et labora,” “pray and work.” If we pray, both our prayer and our work can become a Jacob’s Ladder for us and for others: God can be met through each of us.
If we don’t pray, then we’re fooling ourselves to think that our lives can be a Jacob’s Ladder for anyone. This point is addressed by the Catechism of the Catholic Church when it says: “Prayer is the life of the new heart. It ought to animate us at every moment … But we cannot pray ‘at all times’ if we do not pray at specific times, consciously willing it. These are the special times of Christian prayer, both in intensity and duration” (CCC 2697).
In other words, we can let every time and place become a “Jacob’s Ladder.” And, in fact, that’s part of God’s plan for our lives! As St. Paul says, the goal is for God to become all in all (1 Corinthians 15:28).
But we can’t get to that goal unless we have a regular discipline of prayer: regular times and regular places where we pray. Without that habit we become what Pope Leo called “intermittent Christians who occasionally act upon some religious feeling or participate in sporadic events.” And that’s not enough — not for ourselves, and not for the world’s needs.
If, instead, we keep up a regular habit of prayerful attention to God, we will find that every action, every interaction and every conversation can become a place where we have access to God and we help others have access to God. Then we can share Jacob’s amazement: “Truly, God is in this place!”
Jacob’s experience foreshadows a truth, Jesus’ life fulfills that truth, and our lives are meant to follow the pattern of that same truth. Instead of being “intermittent Christians,” let’s become Jacob’s Ladder Christians.
