Building a Life of Prayer
by Father Francis Martin, S.S.D.
The most precious thing that we Christians have, because the Holy Spirit lives in us, is the capacity to communicate with God. This is what we're going to do forever. When God made us, He had in His mind an eternity with Himself. When He made us, He wanted us to be with Him, to talk with Him, to interact with Him, to communicate with Him, to know Him and love Him and adore Him, to be in awe of Him and worship Him forever. God knows that this is our happiness. He knows that in knowing Him and adoring Him, that in loving Him and in finding our joy in Him, that we will reach the fulfillment of everything we were ever made to be.
This communication with God is called prayer. It is different than thinking about God. It is different than talking about God. I can think about someone, I can talk about someone and still never really know that person. When we pray we are not thinking about God or talking about God, but actually communicating with God.
Prayer is a gift from the Holy Spirit. We don't make prayer. From the tiniest steps we take to enter into some communication with God, to the greatest union with God that the saints have known in this world, every step of that is the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. God wants to communicate with us. He wants us to know the plan that He has for our lives. And more than this, He wants us to know Him—to really know Him, to know His Son Jesus Christ, and to find our joy in knowing the reality and the majesty of Jesus Christ our Savior. This is why we pray.
Did you ever think what a privilege it is to pray? Suppose you were having trouble with your tax forms and you thought, "I'll just give the President a call and explain myself." Well, you probably wouldn't get through. But any time you want to turn to God and talk to Him, you can. Do you realize what a privilege that is, that we can talk to God, that we can have access to God, that we can really be in communication with the maker of the whole universe, the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
The reason why we can pray is because Jesus poured out his blood for us. As the letter to the Hebrews says, we have access to God because of the blood of Jesus Christ:
We can have access to God. What does this mean? It means that because of the blood of Jesus Christ, when I talk to God I know I'm talking to someone and I know I'm in communication with Him. I know there is someone there. I know that I'm just not thinking God, I know that I'm in touch with God and I know that this is the fruit of the death and resurrection of my Lord Jesus Christ. Otherwise, there would no access to God. I would live alienated from God. I would have nothing but my own resources to live by. I would be like some man in a hut with no windows and no doors, all alone in this dark place, and once in awhile I would hear a tap or a sound outside and say, "maybe that's God," and that is all I would know. But because of the death of Jesus Christ the Son of God, the walls of this darkened hut are broken down and I can have access to God. I can speak with God.
When God made us, He made us with a capacity to know Him and to have Him dwell in us. That is why God made us, but what has happened? At the very dawn of human history, man rebelled against God and that whole capacity that we have for God was clouded over, was covered over. It lay dormant. There was no way that it could be activated. God in His mercy did not leave us in this condition but promised to send us a Redeemer. And so, the Son of God, the very Word of God, became flesh and took upon himself the whole human condition.
St. Paul tells us that the death Christ died he died to sin, and the life he lives he lives to God, so that we, too, should count ourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus (see Romans 6). The blood of Christ has cleansed our conscience so that we could live a life free from dead works and able to serve the living God. This is what prayer is—it is a capacity to communicate with God brought about by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and given to us when the Holy Spirit dwells in us. From that moment on, that capacity we had for God is freed up once again so we can really enter into communion with God.
But as we all know, prayer is a struggle. The struggle actually begins when the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in our minds. Sometimes we think, "Oh, if the Spirit comes, then everything will be so smooth and easy, and since I experience struggle, I guess that hasn't happened to me yet." But in Romans 8, as St. Paul describes our life in the Holy Spirit, the gift of having the Holy Spirit be the very principal of our activity, what does he start to talk about—struggle! Dead men have no struggles. When we're dead in our sins we have no struggle. Oh, we worry about the bills, we worry about our health, we worry about our jobs and relationships, but we have no real struggle. Struggle happens with life. When the Spirit of God begins to dwell in our minds, now we have a struggle. Because as the Spirit dwells in our minds, the rest of our personality is still dominated by the things that made for darkness, and therefore prayer is a struggle. Prayer is work. Now Jesus, who knew this, encouraged us to persevere in prayer over and over again in images that are so strong, so daring, that nobody else would have ever dared to talk like this. But our Lord wanted us to know, more than anything else, how much God, His Father, wants us to pray.
Jesus Teaches Us how to Pray — Abba!
One of the most remarkable parables of Jesus on prayer is recorded in Luke 18:1–8:
What a daring image this is! Jesus is urging us: "be like that woman and just keep bothering God." Who else would have ever said that but the Son of God Himself!
In Luke 11, there is another striking teaching of Jesus on the importance of prayer. The disciples had come to Jesus and asked him, "teach us how to pray." And so he told them, "now when you pray, say Abba." You say "Abba Father, may your name be held holy, may your kingdom come, give us today the bread that we need. Forgive us as we forgive others, save us from the evil one." This is the way to pray. Now when Jesus took this opportunity to teach us to pray, he wasn't saying, "these are some words that you can say when you want to pray." He doesn't care about the number of words we use. Jesus is saying, "this is the way your heart should be when you pray. These are the priorities that ought to be in your mind when you pray." When you pray, you look at Almighty God as Abba, Dad. Jesus was teaching his disciples that when we pray the first thing we do is to relate to God as Dad.
Years ago I lived in Jerusalem for a time, and I can still remember the day when I was in a grocery store one day and heard a little boy who was lost cry out, "Abba, Abba, where are you?" His father leaned over the counter and said, "Here I am, what's the problem?" I thought to myself, here is this Aramaic word Abba, which a child says to his own father, and is preserved in modern Hebrew in the same way. Now the disciples heard children back in their day use that same word all the time. So when Jesus said, "now when you pray I want you to say Abba," that was a revolution. No one had ever talked about God that way before. This is how Jesus himself talked to the God. We find his own prayer that way in Mark's gospel in the Agony in the Garden when he was overcome and he said, "Abba, I can't go on." Mark is very careful to write that Jesus said Abba. St. Paul says that our ability to talk to God in this way is the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives—that the Holy Spirit bears witness to our spirit that we are children of God and moves us to cry out, "Abba, Father" (see Galatians 4:6).
So Jesus has told us that when we start to pray this is the way we relate to God. Do you understand? This means that by the work of the Holy Spirit we are to have a divine affection for God. In fact, as faith takes root in our life and we really begin to love God, all our emotions begin to line up. All our life starts to get in order, because we have begun to relate to God as He really is, to love Him and to trust Him. We begin to treasure His will so that whenever God says anything to us we can say to Him, "it's enough, Almighty God, that you want this, it's enough that you don't want this. That's all I need to know, I love You, I trust You." This is the way that God wants us to relate to Him. It comes about as the Holy Spirit works in us a deep change so that we really love God.
Every human being is called to have a divine affection for God, to love God. You sometimes hear people out in the streets say, "are you saved?" That's a great question, but does anyone ever ask, "do you love God?" Wouldn't that be great if we spoke to one another this way. "Hey, do you love God?" and have somebody answer, "you bet I do. I really love God." This is not something that we do, it is a work of God, it is a work of the Spirit of God in us. We can really know that we love God and this is why we want His name to be held holy, this is why we want His kingdom to come.
When Jesus finished teaching his disciples about prayer, he told them another parable:
And so the Lord says, when you pray, never quit. Now we know that is hard, don't we? We talk about penance, asceticism, discipline, and we forget that the basic discipline is to stay in communication with God. There is so much laziness, pride, distractions, and worldly desires in us. And all these things serve to distract us, to push us from prayer, because prayer is that attitude of total submission to God: I love you God, and I just want to be Your servant. Our first ministry is to the Lord. First, we must wait on the Lord. The Lord must be satisfied. To persevere in this attitude is the foundation for all true prayer.
Nowadays, we Christians are in a crisis. The gospel is not being preached with assurance and so people are not paying attention to it. If we add up all the Christians in the world, we are one-fourth of the world's population. But to how many of us is that just a social denomination? Does it really mean we know Jesus? Does it really mean that like Paul all I want is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection? To share in His sufferings and be conformed to his death so that I can arrive at resurrection from the dead? This is what it is to be a Christian. Or have we made a mistake? Do we think that a Christian is a moral man, a good citizen, somebody who keeps all the laws, who does the right thing? Of course, this is a part of a good Christian life, but the heart of being a good Christian is to know that you have been saved by Jesus Christ. That is the heart of it, and out of this awareness we are to live every day, to know the Lord and to communicate with the Lord, to interact with the Lord, to worship God, to minister to Him, to make sure that the Lord is satisfied.
But today, there is very little in our culture that would help us think this way. It's a big job for us to think of God. Oh if we hurt, if one of the kids is in trouble, if we might loose a job—then we think of God. But do we think of God all day? Are we aware of God? Do we seek God? It's a big deal. How many people, even when they talk about praying mean going through a certain ceremony but not being in contact with the living God? When we leave our prayer, if somebody asks, "were you in contact with God," we should be able to say "yes" or "no," but not "I think so, I guess so; I feel pretty good, so I guess so." How little of our heritage we have entered into when we have to say, "I guess so." What I am talking about is God's will for your life—whoever you are—that you will know God even in this life. You will know Jesus Christ. You will love Him. You will know when He speaks to you. You will know the power of the Spirit of God within you, moving you to prayer, moving you to power, moving you to have authority over you life.
Putting Prayer into Practice
How does this begin? It begins by turning from our sins and turning to God. The Lord calls us, "leave off your sin, come to get to know me, because I think thoughts of peace and I'm ready to bless you in a way that goes beyond anything you can imagine. But you must come, you must learn to relate to me, to submit to me, to give your life to me and learn what it is to serve me. It is for this that I made you," says the Lord. Prayer then is constant, conscious interaction with Jesus Christ. It is to know that you are touched by the Lord. Prayer is a gift. It is a work of the Holy Spirit in us and it should be the foundation for our whole life. This means that we have to set aside time every day to do nothing but be with the Lord.
People tell me, "well, I pray when I drive." Or, "well, I think of God a lot; I say little prayers all day." This is all very good, but imagine, you who are married, what it would mean if you said, "well, I talk to my husband every once in awhile, I say goodbye when he leaves, hello when he comes back"—but you never really sit down and talk. Well, you know you really would not be communicating, would you? Prayer is communication with God and it has to be the backbone of our whole life—a living knowledge of the Lord. Prayer is not something that is reserved for just a few people. It's our heritage. Now, to be serious about prayer means we have to start by setting aside time and finding a place to pray.
The first thing we have to do is find a time. That's usually the rub—time. We say, "but I'm so busy." Doing what? Our society has conspired to steal from us the most precious thing in our life. The best time to pray is in the morning. So the secret to a good prayer life is to go to bed on time. Now that sounds pretty elementary, but it is really true. I can remember when I was in Jerusalem and very, very busy, and I began to notice I was cutting back on my prayer time, and I said, "well this has got to stop." So I tried to get away from all of those late meetings by saying things like "I've got a cold, I've got to go home." Everyone would say, "no, no, just wait a bit and we'll be finished soon." Finally I began to say, "look I've got to go home, so I can get up, so I can pray," and then everyone replied, "oh, no problem, just leave." Then I thought, well why didn't I just tell the truth in the first place? Why didn't I just tell everybody, "look that's enough, I've got to go home because I've got to get up and pray?"
Morning is the best time for prayer, before we get into the responsibilities of our day. If it is possible, pray in the morning, but if it isn't look for another time, but be regular about it. I can tell you the worse time to pray—just before you go to bed. Some people say, "I pray just as I'm going off to sleep." Well, you don't pray as you're going off to sleep—you go off to sleep, right? It's amazing, isn't it, how we can fool ourselves!
So you've got to find the time, and the place to pray. Now you're going to need support even for that. So it's good to tell your wife, or your husband, or your friends, "I'm going to pray everyday from x o'clock to x o'clock," and then give them permission to ask if you follow through. You have to promise them ahead of time that you won't get mad at them when they ask you.
Now when you start to pray you start with a reasonable amount of time. Something you can really handle. It's like learning how to jog. If tomorrow you say, "I'm going to get into shape and jog," then go out and jog eight miles. Well, you might drop of a heart attack before you finish, but if you start that way, you'll probably never jog again. So if you say, "I'm going to pray an hour and a half everyday," you just won't do it. Oh, you might do it tomorrow if it's a day off, but come Monday you won't. It's better to start off with 15 or 20 minutes of prayer and learn to be hungry for God, and learn from God the wisdom to order your life. I know some men who work in high-pressure corporate jobs and many of them thought they could never take the time to pray every day. But they began with 15 or 20 minutes of prayer. Over time, many of these men now pray an hour a day. They do all of the work they used to do, in fact they do it better. They even have time to evangelize other men, and they've learned wisdom from the Lord.
As far as what we do in prayer, it is essential that we have conscious interaction with Jesus Christ. Some people say, "well, I pray by reading the breviary," or "I say the rosary." This is marvelous, but does it involve conscious interaction with the Lord? This has got to be the foundation of real prayer. When it is there, then the breviary and the rosary, and, of course, the Mass, can all be moments of real prayer. But if we do these things without living conscious faith, then what is it—is it really prayer, being with the Lord, or just a ritual we perform each day? The same goes with reading the Bible when we pray. This is great, there is a time for this when we pray, but we just don't read all of the time while we pray. If your best friend was standing before you and wanted to talk, would you say, "wait I just got a letter from you let me read it, I'll talk to you later." You don't do that! But you see how confused our thinking can be as we approach prayer—that we really just don't believe that God truly wants to communicate with us.
Once we approach our prayer life from the conviction that God wants to speak to us, then we can address more specifically the different parts of how we relate to God in prayer. Now there are basically four things that need to take place as we relate to God each day. First of all, we need to praise God, adore Him, and thank Him for all the mighty works He has done to redeem us through our Lord Jesus Christ. Praise is essential for prayer. Without praise, we remain stuck on an earthly plane, thinking largely about our own problems and needs. When we praise God, we begin to enter His world and His thoughts and desires for us. If you want you can talk out loud to God—this helps. God doesn't need it but we do. Sometimes to praise the Lord out loud, to talk out loud to God, it's amazing when you hear yourself say it yourself. "Lord, I love you and I give you my whole life." And there's nobody around but the Lord. As we praise God and enter His world, we begin to see more clearly the ways that we sin and fall short of God's plan for our lives. Thus, the second part of a good prayer life is repentance—examining our conscience and repenting to the Lord for our sins. The fruit of this rhythm of praise and repentance is that we begin to experience a peace in being in the Lord's presence. We are then ready to enter into the third part of a good prayer life—listening to the Lord, asking Him questions. Here is where reading of the Bible, especially the Gospels and Letters of the New Testament comes into the picture. Read the Scriptures with an active mind, knowing that God is speaking to you through the Word you read. Ask questions of the Lord to explain the things you don't understand. Listen and write down what comes to your mind. Compare these reflections with the faith of the Church. Out of this active listening, we begin to receive revelation about the great mysteries of our faith—why the Son of God entered our world, why he died for us, his desire to pour out the Holy Spirit into our hearts and change our lives. Finally, the fourth part of prayer is to present to the Lord our needs—interceding for family and friends, the Church and the world, and our own specific needs.
The fruit of a living prayer life is that each of us would really know personally that God is our Father. God has no grandchildren. He wants all of His people to know Him and relate to Him personally as "Abba." God wants to be in direct contact with every one of His children, so that each of them hear from Him themselves. This is exactly why Jesus taught us to pray by calling on God as "Abba." We do need teachers and spiritual fathers and mothers in the Church to help us live in the fullness of God's light and love. But if we don't know God for ourselves, then we are missing out on the heart of our own inheritance as Christians.
Prayer is communication with God. When we pray we are truly in the very presence of the God and Father "who knows what you need before you ask Him" (Matt 6:8). Prayer is lifting our hearts and minds to Almighty God, entering into His Kingdom, and receiving His blessings and power. Let us then follow the call of the Lord Jesus who has told us, "Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you… If you, with all your sins, know how to give your children what is good, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to anyone who asks Him" (Matt 7:7–11).
Practical Tips for Prayer
Before You Pray:
When You Pray: