Prayer: Not What We Do, But Who We Are

For many years of my Catholic life, a friend and I have enjoyed an ongoing conversation of rote prayer vs. spontaneous prayer.

One of us takes a position in favor of spontaneous prayer, praying in the spirit or praying from the heart. As a former Baptist and happy Catholic for the last thirty-plus years, I’m totally at ease with this form of communication with God. On the other side of the conversation, I am there, waiting with my praise of rote or memorized, formulaic prayers. At times in my life, these have assembled at the perimeter of my prayers as beacons or markers, guiding me when I am less than sure.

At the end of the conversation, we usually retreat to the corner that offers a “both/and” approach.

I’m going back now in my memory to my grandmother’s home, which was a quiet, peaceful, serene, and uncluttered haven. It was in this environment that prayer was first set deep in my heart. I grew up in a family of praying Baptist women. The men were always at work, so it was modeled by the women. My grandmother was widowed at a fairly early age and never remarried. She was quite happy to go to Sunday school, church, prayer meetings, and work in the community. She had two grown daughters and grandchildren, and I am certain she spent a good portion of her time praying for all of us. She prayed from the heart, speaking to God as if he were in her living room balancing a cup of tea and having a heart-to-heart with her. And as if this were not inspiring enough, our church choir warbled away enjoining the congregation to “take it to the Lord in prayer.” What choice did I have but to pour my heart out to God?

My longest-lived friendship is with a woman who was my across-the-street neighbor. Her family was Catholic. Our mothers worked in the same office. She and I were in the same class in school. But we prayed so differently.

Once when I was visiting, she had a set of beads in her hand. What are those I asked. This? Oh, it’s a rosary, don’t you have one? A lengthy conversation ensued. I remember asking her to teach me the Hail Mary prayer. I felt as though I was learning another language, one which seemed foreign and clandestine. This was my introduction to rote prayer. Later in my life and in my conversion experience, this scene played out many times in my head and found its way to my RCIA prayer journal.

Later still I learned about novenas, chaplets, and finally began to understand that the Mass is a prayer, as well as our lives. On days I can focus, these seem clear as a bell, and other days when I feel more chaotic, they seem clear as mud. I was grateful when I discovered that part of the discipline of Catholicism is that my prayer life was not predicated solely on emotion or even on me and what I felt. Rather it rests on God and his generosity, in particular the gift of my very life and the faith that forms me as surely as bone and tissue do (another both/and). I attempt to recognize and embrace his other gifts as well. My very life and the gift of faith which I spend my life trying to recognize and embrace.

I am someone who very much embraces a “both/and” approach to prayer. Many a day I have found myself walking and talking to God as though he were my literal, physical traveling companion beside me physically every step of the way. I stop just short of turning to ask “what do you think, Lord.” Then there are the days when I find myself praying a memorized prayer from my RCIA days, the Hail Holy Queen, an early favorite is still a “go-to.”

These days, I hear people complain about either not knowing how to pray, not knowing what to say to God, not, not, not until they are tied up in knots. Well, we have a prayer for that too, “Our Lady Undoer of Knots,” which, by the way, is not a prayer for the hurried or the faint of heart.

If my thoughts form words, my words form prayers, my prayers inform my heart, and my heart directs my actions, then our lives can be seen as prayers in action. The adage “you better be careful what you ask for” certainly holds true.

When I pray, I put myself “out there,” opening up my thoughts, words, deeds, and my heart for him to see, and hopefully I accept divine direction sooner than later.

I have begun to close my eyes at various times during Mass. It’s not in an attempt to catch a little sleep, but to close my eyes and mind to any distractions relying on my sense of hearing, with both my ear and my heart, so I can truly listen and begin to apply God’s message to all of my life.

In his book, The Practice of the Presence of the Lord Brother Lawrence says, “We should establish ourselves in a sense of God’s presence, by continually conversing with him.”

Seeing life and all it contains as a potential prayer is a game-changer bringing home in a powerful way “be doers of the word, not hearers only.” James 1:22.

So, be it heartfelt or hard-won, perhaps prayer is not so much what we do as who we are.