Putting Ourselves in the Presence of God: The Unique Beauty and Power of Catholic Prayer
How do we leave the world behind and start to pray? We come to God as His sons and daughters. How do we remember to talk to Him as our Father?
The Lord’s Prayer begins with the words, “Our Father…”, so Jesus thought it was important that when we come before Him to pray that we first remember our relationship to God is a relationship of loving dependence. It is also a relationship with a father who is far greater than we are and who deserves our respect and even awe….”who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name…”
There are things that must be part of our prayer because God deserves our respect first of all. We must address Him as He wants to be addressed.
The Lord’s prayer is also used by many who are not Catholic. It reminds believers that we must not just say whatever comes to mind when we pray. We must discipline ourselves through the words we use so that we can properly communicate with God.
The best prayers are those which overcome our tendency to let our mind wander off into our own little world and insert our own vagrant thoughts into what God wants to hear from us. Catholic prayers focus on the things that are proper to say to a God who not only made us, but loves us.
Written by Laura Weston, widow of Deacon Michael Weston
IF YOU LIKE, READ ALONG WHILE YOU ARE LISTENING:
Through Jesus Christ we become adopted as sons and daughters of God. And when we cry, "Abba, Father," we are praying. We are praying to God.
The question then is, how do you pray? And, frankly, when I was in the diaconate program, that was something that just scared me to no end. How in the world am I going to know how to pray with people? I imagined that sometime somebody would come up to me and tell me about a death in the family, or that someone was sick and they would say, "Well, let's pray." And I would go, “What in the world am I going to say?”
I was fortunate; I went to Parkland Hospital. I faced those situations and had to address how to pray. One of the things that typifies Protestant prayer especially, is that it tends to be undirected. It tends to be: as you go on, you're praying about something, "Heavenly Father, Hallelujah!" What? "Amen!" "Hallelujah!" And it gets disjointed. And it tends to have a: "Oh yeah, I wanted to add this…"
Now, the corollary to that, the criticism of Catholic prayer is that it's too structured. All you're doing is mimicking words that you have all the time. That, they call it Catholic calisthenics, when you talk about Mass: because the priest says something - we all stand up; the priest says something - we all kneel. We get our exercise.
So where is the line in between and how do we effectively go, "Abba, Father!" to put ourselves into a situation to communicate with God? I don't know about your circumstance, but praying here is wonderful, praying the Mass is wonderful, but my life tends to be hectic. And it's difficult for me, many times, to stop in the middle of the day and pray, because the phone is going to ring twice.
One of the things that I do that I found very effective is: Belinda walks up to me and says, "Will you pray for my son?" "Oh absolutely, I will be more than happy. What do I need to pray for?" She tells me and you do all these things. And I say, "Okay, she's on my list." That's one of the reasons I like Darlene: "...and all of those I promised to pray for." She’s always saying that.
I'm at the point now, I figure, I am a deacon. It doesn't matter. Belinda says something like that, the next time you see me you're going to see me walking along doing the prayers. Do it immediately. When it is fresh in your mind, do it. "Pray for the repose of my parents." Whenever it pops into my mind, I'll just stop. Someone says something, I will think about something. Just do it!
The other characteristic is, okay the day is over. I've finished everything. The night is quieting down. I have time to pray. What do I do when I pray in that circumstance? I fall asleep. I lose track of where I am.
And the wonder to me of our Catholic faith is how many wonderful prayers that we have. The prayers that are set prayers give you the means to get before God. One of my favorite stories is this lady came up, I can only tell you no more than the fact that she was a lady and probably over 40. She came up and said, "I am so worried. I am in stress. I can't relax. Things are overwhelming and I have always loved to pray the rosary. But the problem I am having is when I pray the rosary, I get into the second decade and I fall asleep!” And I went, "Wow, isn't that amazing! The Blessed Mother loves you so much that within getting through two decades of the rosary, she takes away the burdens of your life and you fall asleep! All the stress is gone! Man, I'd love to be in your situation."
It's a matter of understanding what's going on. "Abba, Father." "Hail Mary..." She listens. She gives us what we need.
How do we pray? How do we go in and pray? The easiest thing is, "Oh my mind is just going to so many places. How do I get myself in a position..? Well, Jesus tells us.
"Our Father who art in heaven..." Because if you go through the Our Father slowly, and thinking about the words, all of the sudden, by the time you've reached the end you have found that, one, you've engaged in a whole bunch of prayer by the things that are in the Our Father, and two, you mind is set. "Ah! Now I can talk to You." The Hail Mary, the rosary does the same thing. It puts you in a mind. "My mind is so full of things going on! Oh!!! Sometimes I feel like half of the rosary is all my intentions. Oh yeah, I've got to add this..." And then I go through these things. And if I were saying things out loud, it probably takes me two or three minutes to go through all the things, and then, "and all those people for whom I have intended to pray, and who asked me to pray for them." I put that on the end, too.
And then I get into the rosary. And you know it is just repetitious. It's just boring as can be. Oh, but it is so wonderful! Such a wonderful experience.
The same thing. We have been praying over the years for an increase in vocations. We've been doing the Serran prayer. Look around the church. How many more seminarians do we have than when we started praying it nine years ago.
If you want to pray you feel this need. I mean there are so many things going on in my mind. Look at the back of your missalette. Out in your computer: “Catholic prayers.” They are there. They are set prayers. The St. Francis prayer. The prayer to St. Michael that we are praying. All these prayers are there.
But more than anything else, these prayers have great content. But they also put us into the position where we can go, "Abba, Father!" Because the prayer is a communication with God of who we are. He knows who we are, but He wants us to come to Him and bring ourselves in the very core of our being, and our thoughts and our worries and everything, and bring them to Him. So we need to prepare ourselves.
If you ever receive a blessing from me you will notice that, unless I am reading out of a book, it almost always ends with, "and through this bring... Belinda... and all the people that she knows, and all of us closer to your Son, Jesus Christ, and the promise of eternal life."
That's my set prayer. When I am blessing someone who is ill that will always be my prayer. And it will end with "May Almighty God bless you."
Because those things, the prayers that we have in the Catholic Church, the whole structure of the Communion of Saints, are all designed to get us to the position that when we say, "Abba, Father," He listens to us. And we know that our prayers are being heard and our prayers are being answered.
And so when we look at how do we pray, the Catholic Church has this marvelous tradition of over 2000 years of giving us the prayers to put us before God so God can hear us. We can give to God our very being and our communication and listen to Him and be guided by Him, and again, ultimately, though Our Lord Jesus Christ, His humanity, His divinity, His crucifixion, His resurrection, to be ever brought closer to Our Lord Jesus Christ so we can spend our eternal life with Him in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.
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