Category: Prayer

Last week’s Gospel featured the Lord insisting that prayer was “the one thing necessary.” This week, we see the disciples’ request that the Lord teach them on prayer. In answer, the Lord gives three basic teachings or prescriptions for prayer.

Let’s look at these three prescriptions.

I. Pattern of Prayer – The Gospel opens as follows: Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.” He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us, and do not subject us to the final test.”

We must be careful to understand that in giving us the “Our Father,” the Lord Jesus is not simply providing us with words to say. More than this, He is giving us a pattern for prayer; He is “teaching us to pray.” He does this in response to the disciples, who did not ask to be given words to say, but to be taught how to pray.

Thus, while the words of the Our Father are precious, it is also important to look at the underlying structure implicit in the prayer so as to learn “how to pray.” By these words, Jesus is illustrating what ought to be going on in us interiorly, in our mind and heart, as we pray.

There are five basic disciplines taught in the Our Father, and they form a kind of pattern or structure for prayer. I use here the Mattean version of the prayer only because it is more familiar to most people, but all the basic elements are the same regardless of the version.

1. RELATE – Our Father who art in heaven – Here begins true spirituality: Relate to the Father! Relate to him with familial intimacy, affection, reverence, and love. We are not merely praying to the “the deity” or “the Godhead.” We are praying to our Father, who loves us, who provides for us, and who sent his only Son to die for us and save us. When Jesus lives His life in us and His Spirit dwells in us, we begin to experience God as our Abba, our Father.

As developed in other New Testament texts, the deeper Christian word Abba underlies the prayer. Abba is the family word for the more generic and formal word “father.” When my own father was alive, I did not call him “Father”; I called him “Dad.” This is really what the word Abba is getting at. It indicates family ties, intimacy, close bonds. Why the word Abba is not used here in the Our Father is uncertain. St. Paul develops the theme here: For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” (Rom 8:15) and here: And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” (Gal 4:6)

Ask God for the gift to experience Him as Abba. At the heart of our worship and prayer is a deep and personal experience of God’s love and fatherly care for us. The first discipline or practice of the Spiritual life is to relate to God as to a father who loves us, and to experience Him as Abba.

2. REJOICE – hallowed by thy name – The praise and love of God is the essential discipline and element of our spiritual lives. He is the giver of every good and perfect gift and to Him our praise is due. Praise and thanksgiving make us people of hope and joy. It is for this that we were made. God created us, so that we … might live for his praise and glory (Eph 1:12).

Our prayer life should feature much joyful praise. Take a psalm of praise and pray it joyfully. Take the Gloria of the Mass and pray it with gusto! Rejoice in God, praise His name. Give glory to Him who rides above the clouds.

There may be times when, due to some sadness or difficulty, we do not feel like praising God. Praise the Lord anyway! Scripture says, I will bless the LORD at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth (Psalm 34:1). Praise is to be a regular discipline of prayer, rooted even more in the will than in feelings. God is worthy our praise.

Ultimately, praise is a refreshing way to pray, because we were made to praise God, and when we do what we were made to do, we experience a kind of satisfaction and a sense of fulfillment. The second element and discipline of the spiritual life is a life of vigorous praise: Rejoice!

3. RECEIVE – thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven – At the heart of this petition is an openness to God’s will, to His instruction, to His plan for us and for this world. When Jesus lives in us, we hunger for God’s Word and strive to know His will and have it operative in our life.

A basic component and discipline of prayer and the spiritual life is receiving the Word and instruction of God, so that His will might be manifest to us and we can obey. We ought to pray the Scriptures (lectio divina). We ought to study the faith through the Catechism or other means. These are ways that we become open to God’s will, that His Kingdom might be manifest in our lives.

The third element and discipline of prayer and the spiritual life is an openness to God’s teachings through the Church and Scriptures: Receive!

4. REQUEST – Give us today our daily bread – Intercessory prayer is at the heart of the Christian life. Allow “bread” to be a symbol of all our needs. Our greatest need, of course, is to be fed by God, and thus bread also points to the faithful reception of the Eucharist.

Intercessory prayer is the prayer of asking for God’s help in every need. Take every opportunity to pray for others. When watching the news or reading the newspaper, pray the news. Much of the news contains people for whom we should pray: victims of crime, disaster, or war; the jobless; the homeless; and the afflicted. Many are locked in sin, bad behavior, corruption, confusion, and bad priorities. Many are away from the sacraments and no longer seek their Eucharistic bread, who is Christ. Pray, pray, pray.

There are also good things we hear of, and we should be grateful and ask that solutions be lasting. This intercessory prayer flows from our love for and solidarity with others. We see the world with the compassion of Christ and pray. The fourth element and discipline of prayer and the spiritual life is to intercede for ourselves and others.

5. REPENT – and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. – Sin is understood on two levels here: (1) sin (lowercase) refers to our personal sins, also referred to as our trespasses, and (2) Sin (upper case) refers to the whole climate of sin, the structures of sin that reinforce and underlie our own sins (referred to here as “evil”).

An essential element of our spiritual life is that we come to recognize the sins and the deep drives of sins in our own life so that we can beg deliverance from them as well as mercy.

It is also true that we live in a sin-soaked world, where the powers and principalities of evil have great influence. We cannot fail to recognize this and pray that its power will be curbed.

Then, too, we must also pray for the grace to show mercy to others, for it often happens that sin escalates through resentments and the desire for retribution rooted in unforgiving attitudes. We must pray to be delivered from these so as to be able to break the cycle of violence and revenge that keeps sin multiplying.

But in the end we must pray for the Lord’s grace and mercy to end evil in our own lives and in the whole world. The fifth element and discipline of prayer and the spiritual life is to repent of evil.

So this, then, is a structure for our prayer and spiritual life, contained in the Our Father. Jesus teaches us to pray and gives us a basic structure for prayer. Some may use this as an actual structure for daily prayer; if they are going to spend twenty-five minutes praying, they spend about five minutes on each aspect. Others may use this structure as an overall reference for their spiritual life in general, trying to reflect these aspects and disciplines well in their overall prayer life.

Thus the first teaching of the Lord is to give us a pattern for prayer. We now go on to the next prescription.

II. The Persistence of Prayer – Jesus goes on to say, Suppose one of you has a friend to whom he goes at midnight and says, “Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived at my house from a journey and I have nothing to offer him,” and he says in reply from within, “Do not bother me; the door has already been locked and my children and I are already in bed. I cannot get up to give you anything.” I tell you, if he does not get up to give the visitor the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence. And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

Jesus tells a similar parable in Luke 18, of an unjust judge and a persistent widow. At the end of the parable, the judge gives her justice because of her demanding persistence.

The upshot of both of these parables is that if even a grouchy neighbor and an unjust judge will respond to persistence, how much more will God the Father (who is neither unjust nor grouchy) respond to those who call out to Him day and night?

The teaching that we persist in prayer is something of a mystery. God is not deaf. He is not forgetful. He is not stubborn. Yet He teaches in many places that we are to persevere, even pestering Him, in our prayer.

Why He teaches this cannot be for His sake; it must be for ours. Perhaps He seeks to help us clarify what we really want. Maybe He wants to strengthen our faith. Perhaps He wants to instill in us appreciation for the finally answered prayer. Whatever it may be, the exact reason is a mystery. But persistent prayer is taught and insisted upon by Jesus, here and elsewhere.

Some may wonder why our prayers are not always effective. Some of the usual explanations from Scripture are:

1. Our faith is not strong enough. Jesus said, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer” (Matthew 21:22). And the Book of James says, But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord (James 1:6-7). There is also the sad case of Nazareth, where the Lord could work few miracles so much did their lack of faith disturb him (Matt 13:58).
2. We ask for improper things or we ask with wrong motives. The Book of James says, When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures (James 4:3).
3. Unrepented sin sets up a barrier between us and God so that our prayer is blocked. Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor His ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities (sins) have separated you from God; your sins have hidden his face from you so that He will not hear (Isaiah 59:1-2).
4. We have not been generous with the requests and needs of others. If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered (Proverbs 21:13).
5. God cannot trust us with blessings, for we are not conformed to His word or trustworthy with lesser things. If you remain in me and my word remains in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be given to you (John 15:7). So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own? (Lk 16:11-12)

Now all these explanations are fine, but even if not a single one of them applies to us, God often delays anyway.

One day a man prayed to God and asked, “How long is a million years to you?” And He replied, “About a minute.”  The man then asked, “How much is a million dollars to you?” And God replied, “About a penny.” The man then asked, “May I have a penny?” And God said, “In a minute.”

God’s “delay” and our need to persist and persevere in prayer are mysterious aspects of God’s providence, but they are taught; there is no doubt about that.

Pray, Pray, Pray! The insistence on persistence is taught to us all, not just to the sinful and the weak in faith. Realize that this is part of what is required of the Christian. Prayer is about more than “calling and hauling” or “naming and claiming.” It is also about persevering, about persisting. St. Monica prayed for thirty years, it would seem, for Augustine to accept the Faith. Some of us have prayed even longer for loved ones. In the end, God seems to require persistence for some things, and we dare not give up or become discouraged. We just have to keep praying: Pray, pray, pray!

Note that the two of the three images for persistent prayer (asking, seeking, and knocking) given by Jesus involve an ongoing action. Asking can be done only once, but it can be repeated. Seeking implies an ongoing, even lengthy, search. Knocking is a repeated rapping at the door. One does not usually knock by rapping once, but with several rapid and repeated raps. And when there is no answer, the pattern is repeated a few times. The second prescription for prayer is to persist, to persevere.

III. The Point of Prayer – Jesus then concludes, What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?

The rhythm of the Lord’s analogy seems a bit odd here. If an earthly father knows how to “give good gifts” to his son, then we would expect Jesus to say that the Heavenly Father also knows how to give “good gifts” to those who ask. But Jesus does not say this. Rather, He says that the Father gives “the Holy Spirit.”

Why is this? Because it is the highest gift, and contains all others. To receive the Holy Spirit is to receive the love of God, the Glory of God, the life of God, and the Wisdom of God. It is to receive God Himself, who comes to live in us as in a temple. And with this gift comes every other gift and consolation, for by the Holy Spirit we begin to think and see more as God does. We attain to His priorities and desire what He desires. We see sins and worldly attachments begin to go away. And thus the world loses its hold on us and can no longer vex us.

Jesus says elsewhere, Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well (Matt 6:33). Yes, to receive the gift of God the Holy Spirit is to receive all other things as well, for nothing more can disturb us. One day, St. Thomas Aquinas sensed that the Lord asking him what he would like. St. Thomas replied, Nil nisi te, Domine (Nothing except you, O Lord). For those who love God and have progressed in prayer, that really is all that is wanted. God can give cars, new jobs, and financial blessings—and for some, such things are needed. But why not aim for the highest and best gift as well? Ask for the Gift of the Holy Spirit: Nil nisi te Domine!

Ultimately, the point of all prayer is deep communion with the Lord. This is our high calling: to be in communion with the Lord here and one day fully in the glory of Heaven. Don’t miss the ultimate point of prayer.

Sweet hour of prayer! sweet hour of prayer!
Thy wings shall my petition bear
To Him whose truth and faithfulness
Engage the waiting soul to bless.
And since He bids me seek His face,
Believe His Word and trust His grace,
I’ll cast on Him my every care,
And wait for thee, sweet hour of prayer!

Most who seek the Lord in prayer experience times of dryness and difficulty, times in which it seems to us that the Lord hides His face. We pray; we call out; we seek Him; but He doesn’t seem to answer; it almost seems as if He hides from us.

A well-known atheist was once asked what he would say to God if he were to discover upon his death that God exists. He replied simply, “I would ask, ‘Why did you hide?’” Many of us who do believe might respond, “He doesn’t hide! All creation shouts His presence, shouts, ‘I was designed!’” But most believers can sympathize to some extent and say that while we have once experienced God’s presence profoundly, there are also times in which we yearn for but cannot find Him, times in which He seems to hide from us.

So, then, it remains a legitimate concern, even among believers, that at times God mysteriously hides His face. Indeed the Psalms, inspired by God Himself, state clearly, Why do you sleep, O Lord? Awake, do not reject us forever. Why do You hide Your face and forget our affliction and our oppression? For our soul has sunk down into the dust; Our body cleaves to the earth (Ps 44:23-25).

Yes, the conundrum of God hiding His face, and the despair we experience because of it, are constant themes in the spiritual life.  Many saints, including St. Teresa of Avila and Blessed (soon-to-be-Saint) Teresa of Calcutta, have discussed long periods (even years) of dryness in prayer. It is typical of their spiritual experience.

What are we to make of this? How can we understand it?  Permit me to propose my own feeble answers. I am not a saint, just a fellow sinner still walking this earth. But I do walk with over twenty people in spiritual direction for them, and I myself have a spiritual director. I, too, ponder this deep problem. I refer you first to St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, St. Catherine of Siena, and St. Therese of Lisieux.

I have only this advantage: I live along with you in the 21^st century. Having read the saints, I can tell you that the difficulties, dryness, and distance in prayer are not new; they are common. They occur no less in our time than in theirs. Let me therefore, in humility, present you with my own thoughts on the matter of dry prayer. They are certainly drawn from the lives of the saints, but at the end of the day they are merely my own ideas.

I present the difficulties of prayer in the five subheadings below. I do not argue that the answer are complete, only that they are the result of pondering experiences from my life and from the lives of many spiritual “directees” (more than 40 over the years) who have frequented my rectory over the past 25 years.

At the outset, I want to prescind from the question of mortal sin. It goes without saying that those who are in unrepentant mortal sin are going to have difficulty beholding the face of God (if able to do so at all), due to a severely darkened intellect and a hardened heart. Scripture itself says, Behold, the LORD’S hand is not so short That it cannot save; Nor is His ear so dull That it cannot hear. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear (Is 59:1-2).

Therefore, the first step in deeper prayer is to strive to be free of mortal sin, particularly that of an unrepentant nature. There are some who struggle with frequent occurrences of what is it least objectively mortal sin, but in their humility they cry out to God and confess frequently. This is far less dangerous than those who are dismissive of the Scriptures and the teaching of the Church, who pridefully call good what God calls sin. They claim to hear God, but it is really a demon they hear, one who deceives them by masquerading as an angel of light.

In this post, I do not propose to address those who are in obstinate mortal sin. Rather, the explanations here for dryness in prayer are addressed to those who are either largely free of mortal sin, or at least a repentant of it and frequent in confessing it.

With these disclaimers in mind, let’s consider five possible understandings of dryness and difficulty in prayer.

I. Normal – There is nothing unusual about experiencing dryness, difficulty, and distraction in prayer. Here, the word “normal” is used to mean that it is a common Christian experience. Every saint who has ever written about prayer has discussed it. Even the great mystics—who often experienced deep, unitive prayer—experienced, even in the midst of such profound encounters, that God seemed distant or even wholly absent.

Why this happens will be discussed more in some of the points to follow. But, to be sure, it is caught up in the mystery of God’s providence for us.

For the purpose of this first point, simply note that if you are experiencing dryness, distance, or difficulty in prayer, you are in good company. The greatest saints, far more holy than you and I, experienced the same thing. It is part of God’s mysterious providence for us. Acceptance, which is not the same as approval (in the sense of liking something), is essential for us.

God has his reasons for permitting this, even if those reasons are not immediately obvious to us. This is especially true for those of us who live in the commercial world, where the customer is always right and marketing seeks to be attractive, creative, and appealing at the most immediate and fleshly level of instant gratification. We expect next-day delivery or even immediate download of all that we desire. But God prefers crockpots to microwaves. Some of His gifts require lengthy preparation and a sturdy foundation. Further, many of his greatest blessings require paradoxical struggles. To continue the cooking imagery: you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.

Here, simply note that difficulty, dryness, and distance in prayer are quite normal among those who seek God.

II. Needed – One of the great questions in our life is whether we seek the consolation of God or the God of consolation. Dryness, difficulty, and distance in prayer are ways of testing us. For indeed, if it is merely the consolations of God that inspire us to pray, one way to disclose this is to remove those very consolations. If prayer were all joy, and deep, satisfying union, it might be that the root of our prayer was merely wanting to experience those joys and pleasures on our terms. As St. Augustine points out in his Confessions, too easily do the beautiful gifts of God become ends in themselves rather than something that draws us to God, who made them (Conf. Lib. 7, 10, 18; 10, 27).

Our hearts are very complex; quite quickly we become content with the gifts rather than the giver. Thus, difficulty in prayer is needed in order to help us purify our desires, rooting them in desire for God Himself rather than merely in the consolations and gifts He can give us.

One of the most constant and unvarying mandates given by saints and spiritual directors down through the ages has been that we must persevere in prayer, consolations or not! Difficulty, dryness, and distance are need to help us to purify our desires.

III. Nature – Part of the explanation of our difficulty in prayer is merely our own human (fallen) nature. We tend to be enthralled by something when it is new, but quickly bored once it becomes “old” to us. Tragically, this is at the root of many marital struggles. A man marries a beautiful bride, but once he has uncovered the mystery of her, he grows bored. Unless his love for her is rooted more deeply than merely her body, he grows complacent and bored.

This happens in other relationships as well, including our relationship with God. Finding Him newly, we thrill in the glory of His truth revealed, but our zeal fades when the message repeats and the “spicy new foods” become the more basic “meat and potatoes” of doctrine and daily prayer.

Frankly, our natures are fallen. Though we thrill at what is new, we yawn at what is repeated and time-tested.” Marketers shout, “New and improved!” They do not crow, “Old and time-tested!” They know our fallen nature.

Given our nature, we need to ask the Lord to help us overcome this difficulty in prayer. The honest truth is that what wins the day is the basic meat and potatoes of prayer, scripture, sacraments, and holy fellowship (cf Acts 2:42). Spicy foods are tasty, but they often produce heartburn and indigestion. Bland foods may be less immediately desirable, but they ultimately nourish us and provide what we need. We must ask the Lord to help us overcome our fallen nature. We must ask the Lord to deliver us from a kind of “attention deficit disorder.” We cannot bear lengthy conversations; we want only brief sound bites. Our fallen condition seeks mere entertainment rather than true enlightenment. We want relief more than healing.

IV. Not alone – Personal prayer is not the only aspect of our spiritual lives. Other aspects are communal prayer, the reception of the sacraments, the reading of Scripture, and holy fellowship. (cf acts 2:42).  When at times you find that your private prayer has become dry, you should look more widely to other aspects of your spiritual life.

It has been my own experience that when personal prayer grows dry, other aspects of my spiritual life light up. For example, I may find the breviary and the reading of Scriptures to be particularly inspirational. Or perhaps, I may find liturgy to be lively and moving. Perhaps I will find my capacity to find Christ in others, in what they say and offer to me, to be particularly powerful.

God speaks to us in many ways, not merely in our private or personal prayer. Look for God in creation, in the people whom you encounter, and in the events of your day. Listen for Him in the Scriptures and in the holy liturgy. Even when your personal prayer is in a state of difficulty, perhaps you will find that the sound of a particular song or the glory of the Mass will move you.

Look to the Lord and all the ways that He reveals Himself. Sometimes He is quiet during our personal prayer so that we will seek Him in other places: the liturgy or the celebration of the sacraments. Too easily, we insist on a personal relationship with the Lord in prayer. He is there, but He also insists we find Him communally in in the wider Church that is His Body.

V. Numbness is a feeling – Most people describe numbness (i.e., dryness) as a lack of feeling. But numbness actually is a feeling itself.

Consider the times you may have experienced a limb fall asleep. On one level, there seems to be no feeling in it or ability to move it. But on another, deeper level, there is a feeling, even a sort of pain that accompanies a limb that is going numb.

The numbness of our spiritual feelings may cause us to feel spiritually dead. But if we go a bit deeper, numbness speaks a kind of a pain of longing. All the great saints spoke of this as the dark side of contemplative prayer. So beautiful is the prayer of union, that its absence produces a kind of pain, a longing that hurts, but in a way, it “hurts so good.” It reminds us of the beauty of the prayer of union, just as thirst reminds us of the glory and beauty of water.

Absence often makes the heart grow fonder.

Yes, numbness is a feeling. And God permits it in order that our longings might grow ever deeper. Who appreciates a glass of water more, a man who is been in the desert for days or a man who has just had four beers? The answer is obvious. Aridity produces an intensity of longing that will not be satisfied until water is supplied. Too easily, abundance can draw us to contempt for spiritual gifts.  Therefore, God permits aridity in order to intensify our longing and to give us greater satisfaction in the water, when it is supplied.

These, then, are my own poor reflections on the difficulty, dryness, and distance that sometimes come with prayer. I speak from experience as both a spiritual director and a spiritual “directee.” Consult the saints first. If they tell you something different, then they are right and I am wrong. But if my words can help in any way, here they are.

This song speaks to spiritual difficulties and asking for God’s help: