You can hear the audio here.
Our
Lord went out into the wilderness and there He prayed. Why? Why does God need to pray? Our Lord prays because He is also man and as man, as a human
being, He is never more human than when He spends time, in prayer, with
God. He also goes to pray because
as God the Son He wants to spend time with His Father.
It
is said that a couple that doesn't spend quality time together will drift apart
and undermine their relationship.
There needs to be communication between spouses, the members of a family
or of a community or people lose connection, they drift and stop loving one
another. No human being is truly
alive, truly human if they are alone.
The poet said it well:
"No man is an island, entire unto himself."
Yet
like our Lord, without time away from those persons and things that drain us,
without time given restore our strength and inner peace, we run dry and can
give no more. Our Lord needed to
be in the wilderness in prayer so that He could recharge His batteries, so to
speak. He needed the solitude, the
silence of the night, so that He could hear what Scripture calls "the
still, small voice" of God.
Our
Lord also goes out into the wilderness to give example to His disciples and to
us. He is showing us that prayer
is more important even that rest and sleep. He is showing us that our relationship with our Father in
heaven really is vital to us and without that contact in prayer we cannot
fulfil our earthly mission; we cannot be truly alive.
So
impressed are His disciples by our Lord's prayer and His commitment to it that
they will ask Him to teach them to pray.
So He taught them the Our Father not as the only prayer they should say
but as a model for prayer. When we
pray it is ultimately to the Father that we pray even if the prayer we say is
to our Lord or the Holy Spirit, to our Lady or one of the saints. Our prayer should be simple and direct,
acknowledging that all good things come from God. It should be an act of trust and submission to His Holy
Will. It should seek only what is
needed for today and entrust everything else into His hands. It should be said in repentance for sin
and forgiveness for others. It
should ask that we not be tested or tempted and trust that He will save us.
Yet
the Church's definition of prayer says that prayer is the "lifting of the
heart and mind to God." For
years I thought that a mean and minimalist definition. Now I realise that it is the essence of
prayer. Whatever enables us to
sincerely lift our heart and mind to God is prayer. If walking in the garden, or in a park or in the countryside
helps you to lift heart and mind to God then it is prayer. If painting yourself blue and standing
on your head helps you lift your heart and mind to God then it is prayer though
I recommend that you do not do it in public and perhaps you should talk to a
professional...
Note
that the Church's definition says nothing about the words we should use. The words in our prayers that we learn
teach us how to think about God correctly and they give us models for our
prayer but it is the heart and mind fixed on God that is the prayer not the
words. If there was one
thing the Franciscan tradition would add to the Church's definition is that
prayer is lifting the heart and mind to God in faith and love.
St John Vianney, the Cure of Ars, tells
of a farm labourer in his parish who would call into the church to pray before
his day's work . Sometimes he
would be so deep in prayer his tools would still be at the church door that
evening. St John asked him one day
"How do you pray?" The
man shrugged and said, "He just looks at me and I just looks at
Him." That simple labouring
man, who probably could not read or write, was near the heights of prayer. He understood that prayer is lifting
heart and mind to God in faith and love.
He is not that exceptional among those who love God.
If
you read the lives of the saints, or better still their writings, again and
again you will hear the same story: they sought the Lord in prayer and they
found Him. He had been with them
all along but He waits until we have proven our faith and love before He
reveals Himself. Why does God need
proof? He doesn't. We need to prove it to ourselves. We need to make the sacrifice of going
out into the wilderness, that is, of getting rid of all the unnecessary things,
the noises, the distractions that keep us from lifting our hearts and minds to
God. The great Cardinal Sarah in
his book, the Power of Silence, talks about how today we are subject to a
dictatorship of noise so much so that we cannot really hear not only God's
voice but our own.
In
prayer we discover God and in discovering God we discover our true self. In making space for God we are actually
making space for one who loves us and made us for Himself that we might know
Him and be with Him forever. In
neglecting to pray we are not neglecting a mere optional extra. In neglecting to pray we are neglecting
to be truly human, to be truly Christian, to truly follow Christ. In neglecting to pray we are starving
our soul of what we most need: contact with God.
I
urge you make time to pray. Make
time to lift up your heart and mind to God even if you feel a fool. Lift up your heart and mind to
God by whatever means you can. If
you are like the sinner in the temple who could only ask for mercy you will find
that He is full of mercy. If
you are weighed down with worries He will ease that weight. No one has ever sincerely sought the
Lord in prayer and come away unheard, unchanged, unblessed. Persevere in prayer and keep praying
until your last breath and you will finish your prayer in heaven.
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