Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
In today's reflection, we're going to continue our series of counsels for a holy and a healthy spirituality. Our first two counsels dealt with charity and humility. Our third counsel is prayer.
A holy and a healthy spirituality makes us men and women of prayer. A life of prayer is a life worth living
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St. Luke shares with us in his gospel the parable of the persistent widow saying that Jesus “told his disciples this parable about their need to pray always and not lose heart.” Luke 18:1.
St. Paul says that we are to pray at all times in the Spirit, Ephesians 6:18. That we are to be constant in prayer, Romans 12:12. And that we should pray without ceasing, 1 Thessalonians 5:17.
Very simply, prayer is the raising of our minds and our hearts to God. It could be for various reasons: to worship Him, to praise Him, to thank Him, to petition Him, to ask Him for forgiveness.
And in this life, prayer does have a corporeal, material aspect to it as well since we're both body and soul. So how we pray, whether we're kneeling or standing or sitting, our gestures, our words, the decorum of our liturgies.
But the essential to prayer is our interior connection with the Lord. The saying which you may have heard, that the externals reveal the internal. That saying is partially true, but it's not always true.
Our Lord's critique of the Pharisees in the Gospels illustrates this pretty well. The Pharisees had beautiful externals. They were very prayerful and pious in people's eyes, but often their hearts were not right with God.
As the Catechism at number 2562 says, “It is the heart that prays. If our heart is far from God, the words of prayer are in vain,” unquote.
So good and pious and beautiful externals in dress or in liturgy or with sacred art or with sacred music, those things can be edifying and helpful, but sometimes they can also mask a spirituality that lacks the spirit of God, and that lacks the heart of the Savior.
In our Christian life, we need right doctrine, so true teaching, right behavior, so living as the Church calls us to live, and right relationships. And prayer is my relationship with the Lord. It's the sharing of my life with the one who loves me the most and who loves me unconditionally and infinitely, meaning without measure.
Right doctrine, right behavior, right relationships, all those have to blend or tie together. Prayer is that right relationship.
You can think of prayer as your face time or your heart time with God. And just like any relationship, our relationship with the Lord requires time and effort and attention.
Relationships and strong connections with others are not something that's automatic. They need to be nurtured and cultivated, otherwise they disappear or wither away. It's the same with our relationship with the Lord. It needs time and effort.
So prayer is not primarily transactional. You give me this, God, and I'll give you that, or you do this for me and I promise I'll do that, or I promise I won't do that anymore. No, prayer is essentially relational, not simply transactional.
We can and should ask the Lord for good things, but we shouldn't treat Him like He's just a spiritual ATM. We don't really appreciate it when others talk to us or reach out to us just because they want something from us. Well, God isn't satisfied with that kind of relationship either.
He desires from us what we desire from others, and ultimately, that desire is love.
I tend to tell people, one, that consistency is key in our prayer life, so consistency each day, setting aside time for the Lord, reaching out to Him also during the day. And two, I like to say that the first rule of prayer is that you pray as you can, not as you can't, meaning that we are called to be persons of prayer according to our state of life and according to our personal makeup as well, too.
So don't think that you're called right now to the prayer life of a Benedictine monk or Carmelite sister if you've got a family to support and young children to tend to. It's just not realistic. And God wants our prayer life to reflect our real life in that sense, not some imaginary or idealistic life that we are not called to or just not able to live.
Sometimes as friars, we can be very zealous in encouraging others to have a prayer life that's as extensive and as intense and as pervasive as the life that we as friars are called to live. And in our zeal, we can push people too far in what we expect or hope for from them.
It's true that we all need to be challenged, but we as friars can sometimes forget that lay people are not friars. God will make us holy. He will sanctify us in the state of life that we are called to live.
So be attentive and be careful when hearing or reading about the lives of the saints and their prayer lives and their spiritual disciplines and thinking that you need to be doing everything that St. so-and-so did. It's not necessarily the case.
We should, however, repeat to the Lord the petition of one of His disciples who once said to Jesus, he said, “Lord, teach us to pray,” Luke 18:1.
Catechism at number 2559 states that prayer is a gift from God and we need to ask the Lord for the gift of prayer, but the ability to pray as He would like us to pray.
The experiences of prayer vary. Sometimes we receive great consolations in prayer. Sometimes we receive lights or insights about matters of faith or other things. Sometimes the Lord speaks to us or puts a good thought in our mind or puts something on our heart.
Sometimes prayer is like walking through or being stuck in a desert with dryness and without much encouragement. Sometimes prayer is quiet and peaceful.
Sometimes in prayer we see what the Lord is trying to work on in our life or how He's present in our life.
Sometimes in prayer our thoughts and our minds are very distracted or they just can't grasp onto anything and we're simply being asked to do what the Lord once told the psalmist when He said, “Be still and know that I am God,” Psalm 46:10.
Sometimes prayer is just a groan or a sigh and sometimes prayer is very simply a struggle because it's a relationship and relationships can be rocky and difficult and they can cause a struggle and that's okay.
Prayer is not a one-way street or a one-way relationship though. It's not just me talking all the time and hoping that God is listening. So we need to work on discerning how the Lord speaks to us, be it in our prayer life or how He speaks to us in other ways and at other times during the day.
The experiences of prayer vary, but the goal of prayer is basically one. My goal is to align and unite my mind, my heart, and my will with the will and the heart of God.
The goal of prayer is communion and union with God that we abide in Him and that He abide in us, as Jesus says in John 15:4-5.
As far as the daily prayer routine goes, the general advice that I give to spiritual directees for those who are able to is to do a minimum of 20 to 30 minutes of meditation each day, so Lectio Divina or another form of Christian meditation or contemplation, 10 to 15 minutes of spiritual reading each day, morning and evening offering prayers. So, something like the prayers that we pray as FIs or other prayers of your choosing, our morning and evening prayers for us take about five minutes for each period of time.
Also, daily rosary, at least one of the mysteries each day, and a brief examination of conscience at the end of the day.
Some people also pray some of the Liturgy of the Hours, others are able to go to Mass during the week for adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.
During the week, again, you pray as you can, not as you can't, and as the Lord leads you and encourages you.
If you don't feel that you have time to pray, you know what you do? Tell that to the Lord and ask Him to give you time to pray. I can't imagine Him not answering that request, but He'll answer it in His own way and probably in His own time as well.
So in our next reflection, we'll look at St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, and what she has to share with us regarding prayer.
For now, let's just ask Our Lady for the grace to be persons of prayer according to her heart and according to the heart of her Son.
Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.