Part IV of “The Ten Wellsprings of Grace for an Evangelical Catholic Spirituality.”
In our last essay on Devotion to the Scriptures, we affirmed that God speaks to us in his Word. Now we affirm that we speak to him in prayer. This dialogue of word and prayer is the foundation of a relationship with God. Think of the best relationships in your life — they are marked by intimacy, friendship, joy, trust and love; you have shared your stories and your lives, and been there for one another in times of difficulty. These same qualities mark a friendship with God, and as in any good and lasting friendship, it is arrived at over time, through faithfulness to one another, come what may.
Prayer and our Relationship with God
Growing in our relationship with God works similarly to growing in our relationships with people. Our conversations and acts of love are what draw us closer to one another. Spend some time thinking about how the following three elements of a good relationship impact your relationship with God.
Transparency
The more transparent we become, the deeper the relationship. God may know all of our thoughts and feelings, but we have to be open and honest with him about what they are. God, who respects our freedom, will generally only heal us with our permission, and openness is the most important aspect of permission. Often, we only want to put on a “happy” face for God, but our honest revelation of angers, hurts, and fears are needed, even if they are directed against God. God can take it. He is infinitely bigger than all of our negative emotions against him combined. He wants us to be real with him because he wants to be intimate with us.
Trust
We generally only trust others when we have positive experiences of their good intentions. Often, we have subconscious or conscious ideas about God that get in the way of trusting him. In fact, our ideas about God can replace God himself. In order to move past our images and ideas of God and into a true relationship with God as God, we must allow God to reveal himself to us. Our experiences of God will help us move past our ideas and into a relationship. The accumulation of experiences of God takes a great deal of time.
Time
We cannot really know another person unless we have regular, sustained, quality time with them. In our culture, we tend to do things based on our feelings. We will not have regular times with God if we base our prayer time on how we feel. Taking time with God takes discipline. We also need to put our energy into the relationship. This means spending time daily when we are fresh. The morning has traditionally been considered the optimal time for this in many religions.
The Essence of Prayer
Perhaps you think of prayer as asking God for help or the memorized prayers you said as a child. These are prayers, but there are a lot of other types of prayer, as well. In simplest terms, prayer is simply paying attention to God as we would a close friend. It has been described by many as a conversation with God.
What Keeps us Away
What keeps us from prayer is often a complex combination of elements more than time. We just think we’re too busy. Sometimes we don’t recognize we’re making a choice about how to spend our time. Two broad categories of problems that keep us from prayer, often without our knowledge: ideas and emotions.
Ideas
If we think of God as Miracle Worker, how does he decide when to perform his miracles? Why doesn’t he save me from my bad grades? From my messy house? If we think of God as the Chess Player we might feel totally at the whim of a capricious God, or perhaps as though we have no input in our own life. If we think of God as Fault Finder, we might feel like God is waiting to “get” us if we mess up. These are false gods, not the God of the incarnation, who came to be with us in suffering, humility and love. False ideas about God are some of the hardest things to overcome in prayer.
Emotions
- Fear of vulnerability: Vulnerability is scary. We fear what will happen to us, what God may want of us, what surrendering to God in prayer will mean.
- Disappointment in life: We may never even have articulated it out loud, but sometimes we harbor deep within ourselves great pain about the way certain things have turned out, and we hold ourselves distant from God because of it.
- Frustrations: We feel like if God would only fix BLANK, then we would want to turn to him.
- Anger: Sometimes we’re angry at God because of something in our lives, and that anger stands between us and God, like a wall of separation. But we don’t think we can express our anger to God, so we just bottle it up.
Some Basics
Four Modes: ACTS
- Adoration — praising God
- Contrition — asking for forgiveness
- Thanksgiving — thanking God
- Supplication — asking for help
These modes of prayer permeate all of the types of prayer. One of the simplest ways to start praying is just to use this model. If you don’t spend time in regular prayer now, and you feel like ten minutes is about all you could handle for starters, just take a few minutes on each of these. If you need help knowing how to praise God, recite the “Gloria” or the “Holy, Holy” from Mass, or use one of the many praise Psalms in the Bible.
Common Types
- Liturgical prayer is essentially an interactive, memorized, communal prayer. Most Catholic liturgical prayers are sacramental, such as the Eucharistic celebration.
- Lectio Divina is prayerful reflection or meditation on the Scriptures. It is very easy to do, and many of the great Christian mystics, like St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, say it’s the best place to start. We agree! For some help getting started, check out our “Guide to Lectio Divina”.
- Contemplation is more passive and focuses more on just being in God’s presence than on using one’s mind to think about him. This form of prayer usually comes more easily after you have developed habits of quiet and of meditation.
- Charismatic prayer is something you find in every Christian tradition. Some traditions, like Assemblies of God, pray this way when they gather together to worship. Almost all Christian denominations, including the Catholic Church, have Charismatic groups, in which people exercise the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit. These giftsbinclude speaking in tongues, prophesying, receiving words of knowledge, healing, and others. Charismatic gatherings usually include lively praise and spontaneous group prayer.
Three Stages
The saints have consistently identified three stages of prayer in the life of the disciple.
- Mental Prayer is meditation upon the words or concepts of our prayer. Specifically, when the meditation is on the Sacred Text, it is called lectio divina. In mental prayer, a person might choose to meditate upon each phrase of the Our Father, expressing their various meditations in prayer to God. For example, while meditating upon the phrase, “Thy will be done,” a person might talk with God of her desire to be more fully conformed to his will. This is where they recommend people start out.
- Contemplative Prayer is generally seen by spiritual writers as a more advanced stage of prayer. John of the Cross suggests that the purpose of mental prayer is to train the mind, through repeated meditations, to “gaze” upon God in contemplation.
- Unitive Prayer is the highest form and final stage of prayer. The ultimate goal of all prayer is union with God.
How Do I Begin?
Have a conversation with God. Start with a few minutes if you feel unsure or intimidated or bored at the idea. You can use the ACTS method explained above. If you are ready for more, take a look at our Guide to Lectio Divina below. Memorized prayers are also invaluable. Frequently, we cannot find words to express ourselves to God. At such times a prayerful recitation of one of the Church’s prayers, such as an Our Father or the Rosay, can be one of the most effective ways of practicing conversational prayer.
Print a Lectio Divina Journaling Sheet.
Order a Lectio Divina Journal. We have two. Journey Into God has selected verses that follow a topical progression, and Light for My Path can be used with your own reading plan.