By: Victor M. Parachin The Priest
“For the past 15 years, I’ve been attempting to figure out how to pray. I’ve searched for every Praying For Dummies book published, but many aren’t much help. Everyone, from the great spiritual writers to my grandmother, has suggestions on how to pray. Ultimately, it’s up to each of us to determine which prayer style works best.”
That honest assessment about prayer was recently offered by a pastor. He is correct in saying that we are responsible for strengthening our prayer life; no one can do this for us. Prayer is never a one-size-fits-all approach. It’s up to us to shape it, structure it and sustain it. Rightly done, prayer is a highly personal approach resulting in a richer and more vibrant spirituality.
British clergyman William Law (1686-1761) noted: “He who has learned to pray has learned the greatest secret of a holy and happy life.” Here are seven ways to deepen your prayer life.
1) Pray in a way that feels natural for you. In her book, God Alone Is Enough, spiritual writer Claudia Mair Burney offers this worthy reminder: “People don’t all pray in the same way, just as not every plant in the garden needs the same amount of moisture. What works for one doesn’t necessarily work for another. We need to try on a few prayer styles to see what fits.” Customize your prayer life. If you like to write, keep a prayer journal. If you’re a person who enjoys reading, read from a prayer book.
If you’re a person who enjoys walking, pray while you walk. If you have a long commute to work, use that time for prayer. That is what Toronto resident David, does. “It takes me an hour to get to work using the bus and subway. I used to bring books and magazines to read for the trip downtown every day. Then I realized that this was an ideal prayer time, so five days a week for nearly an hour at a time, I make use of those 60 minutes for prayer.”
2) Pray like Jesus. In The Lord’s Prayer, Jesus included this sentence: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Mt 6:10). Also, during Jesus’ time of deep distress, He asked that His time of trouble be removed, but added these important words: “Yet not my will but yours be done” (Lk 22:42). Pray like Jesus did by placing your life in God’s hands with the confidence that “God works for the good of those who love him” (Rom 8:28).
The fact is that we cannot always know what is best for us and that what appears to be a burden can become a blessing. A fascinating example comes from a man who was asked to put together a list of things he was grateful for. Though he was a person with many admirable achievements and accomplishments, his gratitude list was as remarkable as it was unusual. This was his “gratitude” list:
• His first job as a high school janitor upon graduating from college.
• Being laid off from a job due to a bad economy.
• A diagnosis of melanoma.
• All the people who did not believe in him.
While that list does not appear in any way to qualify as a “gratitude list,” he explained that each one of those “burdens” were actually blessings in disguise. Here’s why:
• Working as a janitor led him to his future wife, the daughter of a fellow janitor.
• Being laid off forced him to jump-start his career as a book illustrator.
• His cancer diagnosis prompted him to organize events promoting melanoma awareness.
• All those negative, cynical and critical people fueled his determination to succeed.
The lesson in that man’s approach is a powerful example of “your will be done.”
3) Pray without words. This is called meditation, and it is highly recommended by the Psalm writers. Some examples include: Psalm 46:10 — Be still and know that I am God; Psalm 4:4 — Search your hearts and be silent. Psalm 143:5 — I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done.
Meditation was also recommended by St. John of the Cross: “Learn to abide with attention in loving waiting upon God in the state of quiet.” In his book, The Jesuit Guide To Almost Everything: A Spirituality For Real Life, James Martin, S.J., says “being silent is one of the best ways to listen to God, not because God is not speaking to you during our noisy day, but because silence makes it easier to listen to your heart and listen very carefully when your friend (God) is trying to make a point. . . . If your environment (inside and outside) is too noisy, it might be hard to hear what God, your friend, is trying to say.”
4) Prioritize prayer. Set aside time, preferably daily, when you will sit quietly and pray. This can be a battle. The battle of prayer, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, is inseparable from the necessary “spiritual battle” to act habitually according to the Spirit of Christ: we pray as we live, because we live as we pray.
The principal difficulty is: “I don’t have the time.” Prayer is considered an occupation incompatible with all the other things we have to do. The remedy: make the time for personal prayer.
5) Pray spontaneously. Whenever you see a need, offer a prayer. Don’t hesitate, because prayer delayed is almost always prayer denied. According to St. Augustine, such spontaneous prayer characterized early Christian communities. He noted: “We are told how the monks of Egypt prayed very frequently but very briefly. Their prayer was sudden and ejaculatory so that the intense application so necessary in prayer should not vanish or lose it’s keenness by a slow performance.”
One who seized an opportunity to pray spontaneously is a woman named Carol who was working as a waitress all Thanksgiving Day at a 24-hour truck stop. That day one of her customers was a solo driver. When she brought his plate of food to the table, she noticed that the man was weeping quietly. “I wanted to be helpful so I returned to his table and asked, ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ ” The man responded with an “I don’t think so,” explaining that his wife was asking for a divorce. “I wish I could talk to her about it in person, but I’m on the road for three more whole days.”
Knowing that those three days would be excruciating for the man, Carol said, “I want you to write your name and your wife’s name on this piece of paper.” Placing her order pad and pen down on the table in front of him, she said, “I am going to pray for the two of you.” He wrote the names down and Carol reassured him of her prayers. She didn’t see him again for an entire year but, 12 months later, on Thanksgiving Day again, he was back sitting in her station. “Thank you for your prayers. My wife and I worked things out. In fact, we recently had our first baby,” he said with a smile.
6) Pray briefly. Jesus teaches that one model for prayer is brevity. In His parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Lk 18:9-17), it’s clear that the Pharisee’s prayer is far too long-winded and pompous. It’s also clear that the other individual in the story — the reviled tax collector — is the one whose prayer is effective by both its sincerity and its brevity — God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Commenting on that seven-word prayer Jesus said: “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God.”
And, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus specifically taught: “And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words” (Mt 6:7-8). Recalling these teachings of Jesus about prayer, St. Augustine later wrote: “It was our Lord who put an end to long-windedness, that you would not approach God in too many words, as though you wanted to teach God by your many words. Piety, not verbosity, is in order when you pray.” Simple, brief prayers such as these are appropriate to offer throughout the day: God, help me. God, strengthen me. God, guide me. God, grant me wisdom, patience, love, insight, etc.
7) Pray when you don’t feel like it. Thomas Merton observed: “True love and prayer are learned in the moment when prayer has become impossible and the heart has turned to stone.” Don’t permit discouragement, despair or dismay to keep you from prayer. When you just don’t feel like praying tell yourself, “I will do it anyway!” and then proceed to do so. Writing on his blog, one man said:
“Sometimes even I don’t feel like praying — and I’m a pastor. It’s normal. Human beings are very fickle. One day you feel like you can take on the world; the next day you feel like you don’t want to be in the world. When I don’t feel like praying, here’s what I do: I pray anyway. And I find that, just like a lot of things in life, once you start doing something, the feeling will follow. First motion; then emotion. The main thing is to settle in your head that you absolutely need to pray. It’s not an option.”
Finally, let your whole life be a living prayer. St. Frances de Sales advised: “Aspire to God with short but frequent outpourings of the heart; admire his bounty; invoke his aid … give Him your whole soul a thousand times a day.”
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