In the context of our secularized society, the notion of praying may seem antiquated. Indeed, since the 1960s, our nation has slowly moved away from religious practice and education, which can largely be attributed to our public education system, which mocks and belittles Christianity. It is therefore encouraging that the youngest generation appears to be returning to religion, in particular, young men.
One of the changes that priests have mentioned in homilies is that even among practicing Christians, there is a tendency to compartmentalize God. We invoke Him on Sundays, and then He recedes into the background of our lives. When that happens, the first casualty is prayer: we just don’t seem to make time for it. If we do, we find that left unchecked, our prayers can become rote, almost automated. Our tendency today is to view prayer in a pragmatic, transactional manner. The prayer is said quickly and to the point, as though dictating a business memorandum.
That type of prayer is most often petitionary, wherein we itemize our perceived needs and wishes. It tends to be focused, and there is a utilitarian feel to it—we want a promotion or the quick healing of an annoying illness. If we are the meticulous kind of person, we may even include an expiration date that neatly packages it for delivery to our Lord.
We think we can be excused for this prosaic approach because we are assured that “whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.” (Matthew 21:22) And, St. James informs us that “the prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects.” (James 5:6) Our internal monologue asserts that we know the terms of prayer, so we are vexed when the process appears to fail us.
Our impatience is the product of an imperfect mastery of delayed gratification. We seem to use the same attention span for prayers as we do an Internet search. Absent from the process is an understanding that time, which is so critical to us, is immaterial to the Lord. There are times when the apparent absence of a response may be a subtle message that we inadvertently overlook. I.e., not now is not never.
Another way in which we misjudge prayer is our fervent, if misinformed, belief that we know what is best for ourselves. While we believe that “your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8), due to the twin pillars of human failing—arrogance and hubris—we are convinced that we know what that is. Ironically, it is when we leverage a kind of agnosticism about what we think will bring us happiness or resolve a challenging problem that our prayer becomes holy and pure.
That approach involves a critical act of the will, to silence our inner voice, that ego-driven, predictably self-serving script that we routinely play and, we can be assured, God is accustomed to. When you silence that voice, you are also transitioning the prayer from our mundane temporal-spatial world into the spiritual realm, where our prayers truly belong.
This is a more spiritually focused way of praying, which encourages us to change the content from the grocery store list to perhaps asking God’s grace to strengthen our faith, to wash away our fears, or to increase our trust in His son, Jesus.
In addition, we are always spiritually enriched by asking our Lord to help us avoid venial sins, those “starter sins” which obliquely encourage further and more serious infractions. We may think we know our weaknesses for various temptations, but we can be confident that Satan knows them better.
These spiritually grounded prayers are what might be called “process prayers,” because they reflect our current place on the continuum of our flaws and foibles, and given our nature, they do not have a completion date. Like all Christians, we are a work in progress, and as we map our advancement on that continuum, we can give thanks to the Lord, as well as any saints whose intercessions we have requested.
What we find with the passage of time is that our daily prayers have become a faithful spiritual companion, a balm that assuages our fallen nature and moves us incrementally closer to God. As we sense those subtle changes in our soul, we also experience the amelioration of the “whips and scorns” that have always burdened us.
It is almost as though we have developed a spiritual armor that protects our weak mortal nature and provides a strength that is as resilient as it is mysterious. This level of prayer is what several medieval mystics experienced, in particular St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, whom she mentored. It is a blessing available to anyone who prays with humility, and it reliably blossoms into a deeper faith, with a rare kind of hope that is a spiritual beacon on our earthly pilgrimage.
Philip E. Mella