The Altar is not an Alibi!

By Arian Galdini

Prayer does not begin when a person utters sacred words.

It begins when he accepts that he can no longer hide behind them.

This distinction is heavy, because prayer is one of the greatest places of mercy.

It does not belong only to the pure, or to the strong, or to the person who has already put his life in order before entering the presence of God.

The sinner can pray.

The fallen can pray.

The one who has done wrong can pray.

The person who no longer knows where to go can pray.

Precisely there, prayer takes on its greatness, it is the place where the impure person is not condemned to remain impure.

But prayer is not a shelter for remaining the same.

If a person enters prayer only to receive calm over the injustice he refuses to release, he has not sought return.

He has sought cover.

If the person who holds power, the leader, the politician, enters prayer only to receive light upon his own name, without accepting the darkness of his own conduct, he has not sought God.

He has sought witnesses.

Here the altar and the alibi part ways.

The altar is the place where a person surrenders self-justification.

The alibi is the means by which a person tries to continue without changing.

The altar strips him bare. The alibi covers him.

The altar leads the person toward truth.

The alibi keeps him in the same place, with a gentler language.

A person does not have only sins.

He also has subtle ways of protecting them from their name.

He knows how to call them weakness, need, circumstance, fate, duty, balance, responsibility, politics, peace, prudence.

He knows how to make himself more bearable before himself.

He knows how to look for words that lighten the weight of what he refuses to release.

That is why the altar is frightening, there, a person does not lose only his pride before God.

He also loses the vocabulary with which he has defended his pride.

In the Gospel, the demons recognize the authority of Jesus.

They plead, they tremble, they ask not to be punished before the appointed time.

But they do not repent.

Recognition of the holy is not yet return.

Fear of punishment is not yet love for the good.

A being may tremble before divine authority and still refuse to give up the darkness it carries.

In the Qur’an, Iblis addresses God and asks for time.

He does not ask for forgiveness in order to return.

He does not ask for another heart.

He does not ask for purification.

He asks for time.

And here the distinction becomes merciless, a request is not always repentance.

The devil asks for time.

The sinner asks for mercy.

The repentant person accepts being changed.

This is not a sentence meant to judge people from the outside.

It is a knife that cuts inside every person.

Inside the one who does not have power.

And inside the one who does.

Because the danger of false prayer is not that the sinner dares to pray.

That would destroy the very meaning of mercy.

The danger begins when prayer is used in order not to repent, when the sacred word becomes decoration over a heart that refuses to return, when a person takes the language of humility while keeping the instinct of domination.

When an ordinary person prays, the drama unfolds in the secrecy of his conscience.

When a person who holds power, a leader, a politician, prays publicly, his prayer also touches the Republic.

Because power does not carry only its own fate.

It carries the law, the citizen, the weak, the opponent, the public word, the institution, the common wealth, the fear it spreads or the freedom it allows.

That is why the question is not whether the person who holds power, the leader or the politician, has the right to pray.

He does.

The question is what he surrenders when he prays.

If he comes out of prayer and returns to the same hand upon the same injustice, the kneeling was appearance, not return.

If he comes out of it more capable of speaking about morality, but not more ready to submit to justice, prayer has not yet touched the place where his power becomes dangerous.

If he comes out with a calmer face, but with the same hunger for control, then the altar has been used as an alibi.

A person rises from prayer, and before him there is no longer the hall.

There is the decision he will make tomorrow.

There is the letter he will sign.

There is the truth he will allow or obstruct.

There is the weak person he will hear or pass over as a nuisance.

There is the opponent he will treat as an enemy or as a human being.

There is the law he will honor only when it serves him, or to which he will submit even when it limits him.

There it becomes visible whether it was altar or alibi.

The altar does not ask power how beautifully it bowed.

It asks what it will release when it rises.

The Republic is not purified by ceremonies.

It is not healed because power, the officeholder, the leader, the politician, mentions God.

It does not become more just because strong people appear for a few moments with humble words.

Public prayer, if it is true, must leave a mark on the way power behaves toward truth.

After prayer, justice must be less obstructed.

Speech must be less afraid.

The citizen must be less small.

The law must be less a tool and more a limit.

If none of this moves, then prayer has not yet entered the Republic.

It has remained in the photograph, in the protocol, in the voice, in the solemnity that makes power appear, for a moment, gentler without making it more just.

Prayer must not become perfume over a wound that refuses healing.

It must not become a white garment over a hand that continues to take unjustly.

It must not become the way power borrows from holiness a glow it has not earned through repentance.

Faith is not an ornament of public life.

It is a judgment upon it.

Not the judgment of one person by another, because a person often judges with resentment, interest, blindness.

But the judgment of a person by the truth he says he honors.

And truth does not serve power, the officeholder, the leader, or the politician as stage light.

Truth approaches him as fire.

It does not ask what role a person plays in public.

It asks what he must release from himself so that he does not remain enslaved to what holds him captive.

At the heart of the Christian faith does not stand the person who uses God to strengthen his own name.

There stands the person who loses his pride before truth.

Jesus does not bless hypocrisy because it speaks in religious language.

He sees the person who beats his breast and asks for mercy, not the one who wants to appear cleansed before people without returning before God.

In the Islamic tradition as well, repentance is not a dry word.

It requires return, the renunciation of evil, righteous action, a change of road.

Mercy is not a license to continue in darkness.

It is a call to come out of it.

That is why true prayer does not give power decoration.

It asks for surrender.

It does not give sin sacred language.

It asks for return.

It does not give the Republic ceremony.

It asks for justice.

Public prayer is so heavy precisely because it can be beautiful.

It can be necessary.

It can be a place where different people remember that freedom does not begin from force, but from humility.

But it can also become dangerous if it turns into a stage where power seeks light without repentance, morality without justice, blessing without return.

Prayer is not dangerous when the sinner enters it in order to return.

It becomes dangerous when power enters it in order to remain the same.

A society that understands this does not mock prayer.

It does not exclude the sinner from mercy.

It does not close the road to God for any person.

But it does not accept sacred language as a cover for refusing to change.

It does not accept a humble word becoming the emblem of an arrogant life.

It does not accept God being mentioned as the witness of a power that refuses to be witnessed by truth.

In the end, the question is not who was in the hall.

The question is who came out more humble.

Who came out more ready to release injustice.

Who came out more afraid of his own lie.

Who came out more careful with the weak person.

Who came out less eager to use God as a shield for his own name.

The altar does not save a person from truth.

It brings him to it.

Only the alibi lets him return unchanged.

Arian Galdini