Prayer is everything

 

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux once wrote that, “prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy”.

Saint John Damascene wrote that, “Prayer is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God”.

St Augustine adds that “prayer is the encounter of God’s thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him”.

Prayer is a lot of things.

Aside from the Eucharist, there’s no more examined aspect of our faith than that of prayer.  Saints and mystics have proposed countless methods, liturgies, verbiage, postures, and songs to help us delve deeper into the act of prayer.  There’s enough literature devoted to learning how to pray to fill a cathedral-sized library twelve times over.

So why does my personal prayer life seem inadequate to me lately?  I feel my prayer life is so bad I took it to the confessional tonight.  I confessed that my prayer life, and consequently my relationship with God is not what I believe it should be.  Sure, I pray my Rosary every day, but do I pray it, or simply go through the motions?  I go to Mass every Sunday and on holy days of obligation, but a lot of times I’m too distracted to fully participate in the liturgy.  I confessed that I felt my prayer life was better when I was motivated to write my daily reflections in my blog, but that I wasn’t motivated to write as of late and I had no good reasons for my laziness.  I feel that the priest, in personae Christi (acting in the person of Christ), came up with a novel idea (no pun intended) for my penance.  He said, “You feel your relationship with Christ is strengthened through writing your reflections, so your penance is to do just that!  Write your reflections every day for 7 days, even if you don’t feel like it.  And start with admitting that your prayer life is suffering.  Some of your readers may be going through the same thing.  By helping yourself, you’re helping them.”  Wow.  So here goes…….

I think where I am in my prayer life can depend on many factors:

The state of my soul.  As I get older and closer to my final judgement, this weighs very heavily on my mind.

My holy longings.  I reflect a lot on not just my own soul, but what can I do to bring others—especially family and close friends—closer to Christ.

My tendencies toward distraction.  Lately, I have the attention span of a gnat.  The slightest noise or movement in my peripheral vision makes me completely forget what I am trying to concentrate on.

My emotions.  There’s a lot of things going on not just in my own little circle of life in the home, but in the world that make me sad, mad, and frustrated.  It seems there’s more suffering than is necessary, in my opinion.

My intellect.  Sometimes, even though I consider myself a faithful and hopeful Catholic, I can find myself questioning the logic of the existence of God.

My will.  This may be the toughest obstacle to my prayer life.  I sometimes think, “What’s the point, if You’re not going to listen and give me what I pray for?”

But in the grand scheme of things prayer isn’t a set of metrics or a spoken incantation of sorts– it’s a calling.  Paul’s letter to the Romans tells us that “We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans” (Romans 8:26).

These “wordless groans” prompt our souls at every second of our lives and, consequently, demand a response on our part.

How we react is deemed prayer.

The Catholic Church teaches that there are certain steps that we are called to by the Spirit in order to travel into a deeper, more meaningful prayer life.

Vocal prayer

When we are young, we’re taught to pray by speaking to God using our oral words.  We memorize prayers, recite them, and converse with our Lord in silent or audible conversation.  We can also sing, recite the rosary or pray the Liturgy of the Hours in this method of prayer.  In fact, the greatest of all prayers, the Holy Mass, is celebrated vocally and would fit into this category as well.

Vocal prayer is where we start.

Meditative prayer

Meditative prayer takes vocal prayer one step further and unites the words with the imagination of the one praying.  When we read scripture and place ourselves in the scenes as if we were there is an example of meditative prayer.  Lectio divina, where one reads a few verses from Scripture and ponders them in silence is meditative prayer.  In this method, the Spirit not only prompts us to respond, but invites us to participate in the life of faith. Through Christ, through whom all prayer is devoted, we learn how to imitate Him.

Meditative prayer is the second step toward gaining a deeper prayer life.

Contemplative Prayer

Contemplative prayer takes the fundamentals of vocal prayer, the knowledge gained from meditative prayer, and unites them with a metaphysical understanding of God’s all-encompassing power, knowledge, strength and love.  By the grace of wisdom, a contemplative can peer into the world and see not only the beauty of created nature, but the heavens that dwell therein.  Through contemplation, the whole world is illuminated by the Spirit.  One sees things as God sees them, and responds to them as God responds – with a divine outpouring of love.

Active Prayer

Active prayer takes what is learned from vocal, meditative, and/or contemplative prayer and applies it into the world through charity.  Love becomes manifest in our actions be they as small as a smile or as big as taking final vows to enter the religious life.  Giving of our time, talent and treasure is how we show the world that we are Catholic.  It is what gives our faith life (James 2:17).  

Again, as part of my contrition, I confess that I’m weak in this form of prayer.  Could I give more in the collection plate?  Yes.  Could I volunteer for one or more of the social programs my church provides to the community?  Absolutely.  Are there areas where my particular talents for discernment, training, and follow through could be of service to the parish?  Possibly.

Prayer, then, is more than the mere sum of our methods and traits.

It is the vast array of dialogue we have with others, ourselves and our Lord.

It is the desire to act, as well as the subsequent actions (or inactions) that follow.

It’s our interaction with nature.

It’s a simple, or complex, thought.

It is the understanding of learned knowledge and the wisdom to know what to do with said intelligence.

It is the asking for and receiving of grace.

It’s the strength and power to press on when life is difficult.

It’s the elation of joy when we hear good news.

In short, prayer isn’t just one thing.

Prayer is everything.