As Valentine’s Day draws near, I love the way Jesus, when he spoke of what our connection with him and with God is like, he spoke of love. He was expanding on and embodying what was at the heart of the Jewish Scriptures, our Old Testament. Regularly, Jews then and now recite the Shema: “Hear, O Israel, you shall love the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 6:4). Jesus pinpointed this as the core of our life with God. And after he was raised, and had served breakfast to the disciples, Jesus asked Peter, not “Do you admire me?” or “Will you obey me?” or “Will you debate about me?” but “Do you love me?” (John 21).

Prayer is, quite simply, love. There is a God, and you’re here. Surprised, delighted, and grateful for this, what could you do except pause and show God some love? I love Madeleine L’Engle’s lovely thought when she was waiting for the results of her husband’s biopsy. She was praying hard for “benign.” Someone told her that was a wasted prayer, as it already was malignant or benign. But she replied “Prayer is love, and love is never wasted.”

Loving God feels different from loving a friend, parent, spouse or child. Yet maybe not all that different… God isn’t visible; trying to see God is like peering into an uncertain darkness. But don’t all relationships have a similar sense of mystery? Those we love best elude us; we never quite have them solved or figured out.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer preached a wise sermon when he was just 27 on “mystery,” which for him (and us!) is about wonder, curiosity and delight. The spiritual life is about getting a glimpse of a marvel and then being humbled yet enchanted, delighting in what is inexhaustible, a sumptuous uncharted world to explore. Listen to this from his sermon:

“Mystery does not mean simply not knowing something. The greatest mystery is not the most distant star; on the contrary, the something closer comes to us and the better we know it, then the more mysterious it becomes for us. The greatest mystery to us is not the most distant person, but the one next to us. The mystery of other people isn’t reduced by getting to know more and more about them. Rather, in their closeness they become more and more mysterious. And the final depth of all mystery is when two people come so close to each other that they love each other. When two people know everything about each other, the mystery of the love between them becomes infinitely great. Knowledge about each other does not remove the mystery, but rather makes it more profound.”

So it is, as we near Valentine’s Day, with people, and so it is with God. Isn’t it helpful to think of prayer then as a mystery, and prayer as love? We’d do less and less asking for favors and more and more simply being still and together. More and more of our prayer would be adoration and gratitude, and offers to do favors for God. Recall Rabbi Abraham Heschel’s wisdom: “Prayer is not for the sake of something else. We pray in order to pray.” We pray to love and to be loved, and to hear God’s invitation to love others.

Remember that Advent prayer? “Here I am, Lord. Here you are. Here we are together.” And the goal of prayer, beyond becoming wise, humble, gentle and generous, is what Thomas Merton said to God in his praying: “Let this be my only consolation, that wherever I am, You, my Lord, are loved and praised.”