Once upon a time ...

Rayner Torkington, in the first of a new series on prayer recollects the childhood stories that can teach us so much about the images of prayer.
MY FAVOURITE PRIMARY SCHOOL teacher was Miss Hallum. She wasn't young or beautiful, she was old and fat... not because she was full of food but because she Was full of stories, at least that's what I thought in my little head.
Ask her any question you like and she would answer, "Once upon a time...," and a wonderful story would unfold that would keep the whole class spellbound.
I'm afraid she wouldn't have got on too well with the national curriculum and I don't suppose it would have got on too well with her.
In fact now that science has been introduced into primary schools I'm afraid her favourite folk stories would have to be pensioned off, and so would she for filling the children's minds with nonsense.
"Why is the sea so salty?", shouted Peter, who'd swallowed half the Irish Sea on the school's annual day out at Blackpool.
"Well", said Miss Hallum, "Once upon a time"... and she was off on one of her wonderful stories, this time of the golden vessel that, once filled, would pour out its contents forever with whatever you chose to fill it.
"The story took place long long ago when salt was more precious than gold. On his way back from the salt mines far beyond the distant seas Prince Penniless was shipwrecked and drowned.
"As he fell into the sea the golden vessel was caught and held upside down between two rocks that hold it to this day. And to this day the sea is still salted by the golden vessel of the unfortunate Prince Penniless."
The story had hardly finished when One little girl mystified us all, including Miss Hallum by suddenly shouting out, "That's just like Jesus." I remember seeing Miss Hallam having a heart-to-heart with the child during playtime.
Many years later when I'd grown older and fatter and Miss Hallum hadn't changed at all, I heard her telling what happened when she spoke to that child in the playground. "Jesus", she said "was like the golden vessel, so full of love that He can pour it out on everyone for ever and ever and even longer."
Miss Hallum said she'd never heard a simpler explanation of the most important mystery of our faith, nor for that matter had I, despite all the theology I was cramming into my head at the time.
The most important moment in St John's gospel, the most profound gospel of all, is the moment when the soldier pierced Our Lord's side with his spear to see blood and then water pour out from His 'heart'.
The blood was a sign that His earthly life had ended, the water was a sign that he was now filled full to overflowing with a new other-wordily life and love that would be poured out to eternity, upon all who would receive it.
For St John, Jesus was the Golden Vessel containing God's inner life, and love was poured out upon all the moment His earthly life ended.
The first Christians were dominated by the great event of the Resurrection, by the fact that Jesus was not dead at all but alive full of the new life and love that was continually available to them whenever they wishes to receive it.
The sacred vessel from which they drank at their Eucharistic meals was the continual reminder of the Risen One and of the new life that He had poured out on all the moment He entered into His Father's glory.
Salvation, sanctification, transformation, call it what you will, is what happens to a person who is filled with this living water being poured out now by the Sacred Vessel of life who alone can give savour to the whole world if that world will only receive it.
In Miss HaUum's fairytale the sea had no option but to be savoured forever by the salt poured out by the golden vessel of Prince Penniless.
But in the true story of God's own Sacred Vessel only those who choose will receive it.
From the very beginning one word has been used in the Christian tradition to describe how a person freely chooses to open themselves to receive this continual outpouring.
It is the word Prayer. All we need to do is to open our hearts in prayer to receive the living waters of eternal life.
Eternal life is here and now this is the message of St John and we can receive and experience it through an ever deepening prayer life that opens us out of the only life and love that can change us permanently for the better.
This is why St Teresa of Avila said quite plainly, "There is only one way to holiness, to perfection and that is to pray. If anyone points in a different direction then they are deceiving you."
The only people who will absolutely never deceive us are the saints, whether they were canonised or not, because they know better than anyone else that they only became the men and women they were because of another, other-worldly love that they received through prayer.
When cardinals and bishops, priests and religious, married people and single people begin to learn this lesson all over again then the renewal the Church is in desperate need of will be well under way and not before time!