Being a Pray-er, Becoming a Prayer

This is based on my talk at the Women's Evening of Reflection at St. Vincent Ferrer, Delray Beach, on April 17, 2018. The Shell Prayer itself is a separate Blog entry.

Greeting

When you read the title of this retreat, your reaction might well have been “Huh? What are they talking about? How can a person be a prayer? How would I become a prayer?

The power of prayer is transformative. When we pray, we develop our relationship with God. When we pray, we become closer to God. As we become closer to God, God changes our lives. Think about it. If you want a “beach body,” you go to the gym, you work out – some would say “religiously.” If you want a “heaven soul”, you need to work out (yes, religiously) and develop your spiritual life.

But what happens when we add “PRAY” to our list? Aren’t we just adding more tasks to our day? Well, if I were suggesting that you put aside hours a day to become a contemplative, you’d probably boo me out of the room (and I’d probably deserve it). But what I am suggesting is integrating prayer into your daily tasks. Time alone with God, concentrating on nothing but prayer, is extremely valuable and necessary. Yet you can’t live that 24/7. If you want to live out the biblical exhortation “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), you have to integrate prayer into your daily life. You have to become a pray-er; become a prayer.

To pray without ceasing, we need to put prayer front and center in every moment of our life. It means praying in a variety of places, in a variety of ways, in a variety of time spurts. Your prayer can be a few words; your prayer can be any of those prayers you memorized long ago; your prayer can be a prayer from your heart, in your own words, written by you, or spoken by you in the moment.

Prayer is conversation with God. (You might hear me say that multiple times tonight, or any time you hear me talking about prayer.) Prayer is conversation with God. You don’t need something written by someone else when you talk with your friends, and you don’t need something written by someone else to talk to God.

Being a Prayer

Being a pray-er. Becoming a prayer. When you give over all your spare moments to thoughts of God, when you begin to pray without ceasing, the more and more you become a pray-er – well, before you know it, your life changes, you move closer to God, you “represent” God to others. You move beyond simply praying to living prayer – to being a prayer.

I was on retreat for Holy Week up at Our Lady of Florida Retreat House. Looking through their bookstore, and later their library, I was struck by how many books there are about prayer. There are books of prayer, designed to be read one page a day; books containing either full or abbreviated versions of the Daily Office said by priests; books on the Mass; books on praying with the Bible; books on the rosary. There was one book, 127 pages of teeny tiny type called “Difficulties in Mental Prayer”. I really did want to read that, but the difficulties in reading that tiny print sent me scurrying back to the shelf for an easier read.

Another book I picked up was “Six Ways to Pray from Six Great Saints”. I really did like that book; you’ll see it on the list of books “For Your Further Reading Pleasure”. The very short chapter titles, each a description of one of the Saints, was enough to intrigue me. We have a tendency to think of Saints as people who were perfect, who lived lives we could never possibly live up to, who were good, saintly people all their lives. Well, that’s true for some, but not all. Here are the chapter titles:

Francis of Assisi – The Wounded Herald

Clare of Assisi – The Anchored Soul

Ignatius of Loyola – The Sensual Christian

Therese of Lisieux – The Woman Warrior

Teresa of Avila – The Spiritual Mother

John of the Cross – The Empty Vessel

And I do want to share a bit of poetry from St. John of the Cross:

All things ceased, I went out from myself,

Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies

That’s our goal in prayer; to leave our cares with the Lord, and accept His strength and grace to aid us in our endeavors.

The third book I picked up was “All You Really Need To Know About Prayer You Can Learn From The Poor”. I want to share one short faith story from that book that shows the power of prayer, the power of God. It was told by a priest, Father Burchell McPherson (now Bishop of the Diocese of Montego Bay) who was then toiling at a poor mission in Jamaica.

One of the main social outreach programs of the mission was to feed the poor. Every Friday, they distributed free food – not much, just a few pounds of rice, but to the 150 or so people who lined up for it every week, it meant the difference between hunger and starvation. One particular Friday, there was no rice to be had; no rice in the shops; no rice at the food bank. On Thursday, his staff asked him what they were to do on Friday. Father told them they would pray with the people as usual, have Mass with them as usual, and tell them that there was no rice. And Thursday night, he prayed. He told God there was no rice; that God’s children would go hungry; and that parents would go back to their children with no food. “I know you are with us and will do something” he prayed, even though he had no idea what God might have in mind.

Friday, he said Mass for the people. He told them there was no rice. Then he preached about the miracle of the loaves and fishes. “Those people were hungry, too, and look what Jesus did for them. I don’t know exactly what the Lord is going to do for us here today, but it is the same Jesus, and he still cares about hungry people. I know something will happen.”

And the Lord did do something. As Father was still saying Mass, he saw from his place at the altar the truck from the food bank pull up to the kitchens, and unload bag after bag of rice, enough for everyone. There had been no rice, and then, an unexpected shipment had suddenly arrived.

God answers our prayers. That day in Jamaica, He answered directly, with the one thing the people needed the most. That unexpected food delivery may not have the drama of manna from heaven in the Old Testament, but that did not make it less needed, nor less appreciated.

God answers our prayers; he gives us what we need. What we want is not always part of His plan for us; what we think we need is not always what we do need.

As we develop our relationship with God through prayer, meditation, and the sacraments, we seek to align our will to His will for us. We need to not demand that God conform to our wants, but we need to ask God to conform us to His will for us.

And we need to pray in a way that touches us personally, and in a way that is comfortable for us, personally. Prayer is, at its simplest definition, conversation with God. Sometimes that conversation is general, as in the communal prayers we share when we celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. But if we want to get close to God, we also need to develop our one-on-one conversation skills with Him.

(This then leads to the entry on Meditative Prayer)