Pray Always!
A few nights ago a young man approached me as I was locking the church. He had a simple request, “Father, can you let me pray inside for a few minutes?” The young men did not realize that his request presented me with a challenge. Though I had been working for the Lord all day I had not spent any time with him alone. So when the young man comes, and as I am closing the church requests I open it for him again, I thought I was prayed out. But I was wrong. I took the men’s request as an invitation from the Lord himself and went back inside and prayed alone with Him who is always Alone, waiting for me to visit him.
St. Therese of the Child Jesus said 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.” When she says that prayer life is simple, I don’t think she means easy. At times we forget that a life of prayer is a discipline that needs to be nourished. Most of us struggle in nurturing healthy prayer habits. We all have many priorities in life. We seemed to be busy at all times. Prayer, for some, might seem as just doing nothing. In reality, prayer is hard. It requires us to really engage in mind, body and spirit. We have many struggles in prayer. The catechism mentions prayer as a battle. This battle is mostly with ourselves. It is true that “we pray as we live, because we live as we pray” (CCC 2725). We often find excuses and objections to prayer. But before we examine our objection to pray, we must understand what prayer IS NOT.
First, prayer is not a psychological exercise. We do not need any extraordinarily mental effort. If we have to think about how to pray, we have already put too much effort. Instead of thinking about how to pray, we just need to pray.
Second, prayer is not a moment of mental concentration. There is no need for us to empty our minds of the struggles of everyday life. We should not be searching for reasons or moments of mental clarity. One can pray with a clear mind or with a mind full of worries. One can pray while doing other actions or while we worry about many things. There is no right or wrong state of mind in which we can speak with God. As a matter of fact, I think the Lord appreciates it more when we are “out of our minds.”
Third, prayer is not a ritualistic attitude. We cannot think that prayer must be memorizable or repeat words like robots. When we pray the Rosary, our thoughts should not be worried about whether we did, or did not complete the whole decade, as if the Blessed Virgin Mary was checking our bead count, and grading our speed. Prayer is like writing a letter to a loved one; not like typing a document.
Many Christians see prayer as something incompatible with life. Thus, our objections to prayer seem to imply that prayer is really incompatible with our daily existence. For example, some people say they cannot pray because “there is not time.” As if one had to move to an alternate realm of the universe where time and space do not exist. Thus, prayer seems to require some knowledge in Quantum Physics, since most of us cannot stop the clock to pray. Saint Paul says that one must “pray always” (1 Tes. 5:17). Any time is a good time to pray, any hour, any minute. As many hours or as many minutes as we find between the duties that God bestows in our lives.
Sometimes we do not pray because we don’t “feel” it. I am not sure what feeling in that context means. This objection often comes when we take prayer as an aspirin. We pray when we feel good or when we feel bad. As if taking the right dose of prayer would suffice to alleviate the ailments of the soul. Prayer is not about us, it is about God. It is not about how we feel, but about how our relationship with the Lord is growing. Prayer must not be focused on the pettiness of our existence, but its focus is the Absolute Beauty that is God Himself. Prayer is not an escape from reality. It is, as St. Therese said, “a simple look turned toward heaven.”
Ash Wednesday is February 25th. The Church invites us once again to enter into 40 days of Prayer, Penance and Almsgiving. Prayer should always lead us to penance and almsgiving. There is no true penance without prayer and no true almsgivings without offering it to the Lord. This year, I invite you to promise the Lord you will spend more time with him during this Lenten season. Let all the other sacrifices spring from a true desire to spend time with the Lord.
JCA