Topic: How can I pray better?
Source of this posting: Moderator response
Date originally posted: June 10, 2003
Moderator who originally posted this source: Father Phillip
Question:
I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about everything and trying to
pray, but found that I don't know how to pray any more. Do you have any
suggestions on how I can get back into being able to truly praying. I
missing being able to have that deep spiritual and meaingful bond and don't
really know how to get back into it.
Thanks for your help,
Kathryn
Answer:
Prayer is at the core of living as a Christian. That you know the importance of prayer and the joy of praying are clear evidences that you are a woman of faith!
Nothing I can say will be adequate, but I am pleased to offer some suggestions about ways you can enrich your prayer life.
A website which I find extremely helpful in my own life is run by the Jesuits of Ireland:
You might want to use this prayer-aid on a regular basis; I do and it makes a big difference!
The following, then, are just some suggestions that have come to me from brilliant and holy people throughout my life. I gladly pass them on to you…
“Pray as you can; not as you can’t.” This axiom has been repeated by many of the saints. I think it means that we ought to approach prayer without a whole bunch of presuppositions about what our prayer “ought” to be. Just because some prayer technique works for one person, doesn’t mean that it will, necessarily, work for you. You have to be willing to experiment with different methods of praying to find the one that works best for you at this point in your life. If you pray better sitting down; sit down. If you pray better outside, go outside. If you pray better in silence, pray in silence. If you pray better with music, crank it up.
Remember that prayer is a dynamic reality. Prayer is constantly changing and renewing us. So as a result of our praying, we change. Therefore, what “worked” in our prayer life in the past may or may not work today. We have to be willing to be led by the Spirit of God into whatever sort of prayer works best for us at this moment in our life experience.
God wants to be in communion with us. God wants to meet us way more than half way in prayer. God loves us more than we can even begin to imagine. God is passionately in love with us and will do whatever is necessary to allow us to be in relationship to God. All of that means that God wants our prayer to “work” – whatever that may involve.
At the same time God has created us in such a way that we are most fully alive when we are praying. The need and desire and ability to pray is “built in” to our very being. Prayer is, therefore, not some foreign, strange, odd practice that “the Church imposes” on us. Rather prayer is as much a part of who we really are as is breathing or eating or sleeping. And just as we need air and food and rest, we need to pray. So, the more we know ourselves, the more at ease we are with who God has created us to be – the more we will want to pray and the more we will be our truest selves when we are praying. Facades and pretenses about who we really are can keep us from praying.
In order to pray we have to be willing to carve out time. Everybody is busy, but prayer requires that we just do it – as Nike tells us. To pray we have to find both a time and a place which mean “PRAY NOW” to us. I have to pray when I first get up and I always go to the same place in my house to pray. I’m sort of Pavlovian in this way: This time of day and this chair mean: PRAY! Just like you probably schedule meetings and appointments in your day, schedule time for prayer each and every day.
To pray well, I have to set reasonable goals for myself. If I say I am going to pray 20 decades of the Rosary every single day plus keep a Holy Hour on my knees with my arms outstretched for an hour every day, I’m going to fail. I need to set as my “prayer goal” something that is reasonable and do-able. If 10 minutes is reasonable, if half an hour is do-able, then set that as your goal. When we set unreasonable goals for our prayer time, we are setting ourselves up for failure; we become disheartened. Give yourself a reasonable prayer goal and then pat yourself on the back when you accomplish it!
Use some of the great “tools” of prayer which the Church offers us. One of the best ways to pray is to go to daily Mass. Daily Mass is usually quiet, not crowded, and short; daily Mass is, then, a great way to feel that deep, close, meaningful communion with the Lord Jesus for which our hearts are yearning. Another of the great tools which the Church provides is the Rosary. Meditating on the various Mysteries; using Sacred Scripture as an entrance into the life of Jesus and Mary; allowing the rhythmic recitation of the prayers to filter out the distractions of the day – all of these things make the Rosary a great resource when we are trying to deepen out prayer life.
Take the Bible with you as you pray. Select a passage, for instance, from one of the Gospels – perhaps the story of the feeding of the Five Thousand or the Agony in the Garden. Read the passage very, very slowly. Ask God the Holy Spirit to lead you as your pray through the story and to give you the grace of hearing God’s voice as your read the passage. Then let your imagination lead you into the scene. Imagine what Jesus must have felt like; imagine what the by-standers may have been thinking; imagine what the disciples might have been feeling. This meditative way of praying is one way to enter more fully into the Scripture as the basis for your prayer.
Most of all, trust yourself and trust the Holy Spirit. The two of you are a great team, and together you’ll figure out the very best way for you to pray!