What’s Your Story When it Comes to Prayer?

You can’t go zero to sixty in a car in less than about five seconds. In case you don’t drive often, five seconds is very fast. Sports car stuff...

The average car? About 10-12 seconds.

Speed takes time to develop. Then, when momentum takes over, the car is moving at a brisk pace and watch out- before you know it, you’re speeding and see the blue lights in your rear-view mirror. Uh oh.

When it comes to prayer, most of this metaphor applies. We need time to build up momentum. Once we get going, thankfully, it’s no turning back and our prayer lives are really humming. As for the police, forget that part.

St. John of the Cross once said that you don’t become spiritually mature until you are at least 40 years old. As someone on the north side of 40, I read this with a smile. The older you are, the more wisdom you can attain.

I go to church all of the time. Several times a week. I hear my pastor and priests and deacons tell the congregation that we should add prayer to our tool belt of resources. I’ve never heard anyone disagree with this.  Makes sense right?

The problem, and it’s a big one, is that most of us don’t actually know how to pray. This is on two levels. On the surface level, everyone knows how to pray. You simply talk to God. No barriers, just communicate. St. Therese of Lisieux described it this way, “For me, 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.” 

If you were comparing prayer to working out, this level is like the ability to go to the gym. Nearly everyone can go to the gym and do some stretches and enjoy some movement.

“For me, 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.”
— St. Therese of Lisieux

On a deeper level, most of us don’t know how to pray regularly, daily and thus building spiritual momentum with God. This is in some ways, much harder.  Going back to the gym metaphor, this is like going to the gym daily- much harder.

This is the level that most of us struggle with. And back to the title of this post, this is the level that is critical for each of us to evaluate.  If we don’t do this, we might never be able to get to the deeper levels of intimacy with God.

What’s your story when it comes to prayer? 

Have you had one positive experience of praying? Where were you? What did it feel like? What was the after-effect?  When you think of that time of prayer, does it put a smile on your face?

On the flip side, have you had a “bad” experience of prayer? What was that like? Why did that frustrate you? How do you think that that particular experience of prayer has stayed with you?

I’ve been teaching people to pray for years. I find this step in the spiritual journey to be vitally important. Unless we pause and take stock of our prayer with God, we won’t grow closer to God. This is harder than it seems as many of us have had a desert-like journey when it comes to prayer. 

• Many of us feel like we don’t know how to pray.

• Many of us have never felt the presence of God.

• Many of us have never heard the voice of God.

• Many of us have never savored the healing touch of God.

And as a result, we stop praying. 

My message during Advent (and beyond): try prayer again. Try to get alone, away from the noise, and have a heart to heart with God. Try journaling (again) for the first time. Try going into a church and praying before the Blessed Sacrament when no one else is around. If you try, you will. If you don’t try, you won’t.

Then, do it tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. Before you know it, you will be having a quality prayer time with the Lord each day. This is where the good stuff happens. This is where God transforms us. This is where we become humble and put God first.

Simple right? I think so. Try it today. I think you’ll be glad you did.

Tell God What’s On Your Mind

We sat in the car, driving along route 22 in Pennsylvania. It had been a long week and I wasn’t sure if my son had had a particularly good one. With a new school  and having to make new friends, I wondered how everything was going.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” I said.

And the rest just flowed. We talked about new friends and old, about navigating a new school building and about what kids were like. The conversation didn’t last long but it was just what the doctor ordered. The father-son “pulse check” was complete.

This is a strategy we can also use in prayer.

By starting our prayer time with a personal inventory, a sort of check-in, we are laying it all out there for the Lord. Sometimes we feel a certain way and that bleeds into our devotional time. I find that telling God what’s on our mind is just as valuable. 

The end-of-day Ignatian examen is a genius way to complete the day. Let’s not ignore the power of the start of our day and the many things on our minds at that time of the day.

When you take stock of your thoughts, you accomplish three things:

  1. You become aware. By sharing your thoughts with God, you are then more mindful of what’s bothering you, what preoccupies you and what is lingering in your head.

  2. You become grateful. We are so fortunate to have a God who wants to know us personally. He wants us to share what we are thinking and feeling. This produces gratefulness. We are not alone.

  3. You learn to surrender. Sometimes, our thoughts are quite strong. At other times, we can just let them go and move on. In either case, we learn to offer up to the Lord what we carry into prayer.

After all, what we are thinking is often what we are feeling.

As an example, I might say, “God I’m thinking about the day ahead and I have some anxiety...” Or, how about, “Lord I’m thinking of my mom’s friend who is very sick.” Both examples are on my heart (feelings) but also on my mind (thoughts).

The Bible isn’t absent on this point. Romans 12:2 speaks of this feeling-thought dynamic:

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

The process of renewing our thoughts takes practice. Many of us, I’m speaking from experience, can let thought patterns develop over decades. These are hard to change. What I’ve found, with years of practice, is that a daily sharing with God of what I’m thinking is the best remedy for unhealthy thoughts.

I realized in my late thirties that I had a very primitive view of God. He was the professor grading my life with a red pen. I could never measure up to His high standard. This thought pattern took years to unearth. Thankfully, it only took a few years to reshape.

Saint Teresa of Avila also speaks to this. She says, “It isn’t good to let our thoughts disturb us or worry us at all.”  St. Thomas More contributes this advice, “Occupy your minds with good thoughts, or the enemy will fill them with bad ones. Unoccupied, they cannot be.”

Our thoughts matter to God. Why not begin each day’s devotions with a sharing of them with the Lord?

Three Ways to Get More out of Church Feasts

​This week has been chock-full of feast days, from the Sacred Heart to Saints Peter and Paul. Much of the time, these feasts come and go without much reflection on our part. Save for a decent homily (which is  hardly a guarantee), it can be easy to lose sight of each feast.

My recommendation is to utilize the following three (and boy, are these simple!) steps when the Church provides a feast day:​

IMG_0753.JPG
  1. Do some online research. Whether it’s over at SpiritualDirection.com or a basic Google search, there is plenty of material to bring you up to speed on a particular feast. Don’t overdo it but give yourself five minutes to brush up on your saint or feast.
  2. Utilize art. On the Feast of the Sacred Heart, I was able to find some beautiful modern images that really spoke to me. If you are a visual learner, this step will be particularly helpful. You might download the image to your phone wallpaper or share it with others on Facebook.
  3. Ask the particular saint to pray for you. This isn’t saint-worship. Rather, it’s similar to asking a holy aunt or uncle to pray for you. Their holiness can move mountains. Why wouldn’t we ask a saint to do the same? 

There is so much richness to the Church’s liturgical calendar. With just a bit of intentionality, your faith can be augmented by the calendar.