“Prayer: The Heart of Our Relationship with God” by Colleen O’Sullivan

“Prayer: The Heart of Our Relationship with God” by Colleen O’Sullivan

Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary

The Lord’s Prayer, James Tissot, c. 1886-1894, Brooklyn Museum, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

 

Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.”  He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name, your Kingdom come.  Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins, for we forgive everyone in debt to us and do not subject us to the final test.”  (Luke 11:1-4) 

Piety

“God speaks in the silence of the heart. Listening is the beginning of prayer.”
       - Saint Teresa of Calcutta

Study

We often learn by observing.  On many occasions, the disciples had seen Jesus go apart to a quiet place to pray.  They knew that whatever Jesus was doing when he left them was his source of strength and direction.  They had also heard from John’s followers that John the Baptist had taught them how to pray.  Now Jesus’ close friends wanted to follow Jesus’ example.  They wanted the specifics of what he did when he left them to be by himself.  So, Jesus gave them guidelines for praying. 

Jesus said the first thing to keep in mind is Whom we are addressing, the One who created each and every one of us.  Maybe we call God Father. Perhaps we prefer Mother.  The important thing, however, is that God is our Creator.  And if God created everything and everyone, we are all brothers and sisters without regard to the place of birth, skin color, or even religion.  If we are sincere in regarding God as the One who created us in God’s image, it would be difficult for prejudice or racism to be present in genuine prayer.  We are all one family made in God’s image.  Jesus reminds us to praise the One who made us, to regard God’s name as holy and above every other name in the universe.

Jesus then speaks of the Kingdom of God being in our midst and our hearts, but, at the same time, not yet fully realized.  We only have to turn on the news or look about us to see the truth in that.  So, Jesus tells us to continue to pray for God’s Kingdom to come.  

When we pray, we often find ourselves making requests of God, as though God were some great Amazon.com in the sky, existing for nothing more than to fulfill our wishes.  Jesus says, keep it simple and only pray for what we need to make it through the day. That’s a whole lot different from reciting a list of what we want to have.  Just enough, Lord will be more than sufficient.  While we ask for “more,” some of our brothers and sisters are homeless and hungry and don’t have even what they need.

Jesus advises the disciples to pray for forgiveness in the same measure that we forgive others.  That, to me, more than anything else, is the sticking point in what Jesus’ says.  How forgiving are we of our brothers and sisters no matter how they have hurt us? 

Finally, Jesus tells his friends to pray that they don’t get taken in by any of the various siren songs echoing all around us lest we find ourselves shipwrecked and washed up on some shore other than God’s.  The ultimate test is whether we live by the world’s values or God’s.

By the very person we remember today, Our Lady of the Rosary, we are reminded that there are many, many ways available to us to pray.  The precise origin of the Rosary is not known.  The Desert Fathers used knotted cords in prayer back in the 3^rd and 4^th centuries.  Whether they were praying an early form of the Rosary is unknown.  St. Dominic, founder of the Dominican order in 1215, is credited with spreading the practice of praying the Rosary through his preaching, but precisely when and where the Rosary came into being as a type of prayer remains a mystery.   The repetition of the prayers of the Rosary leads us to peaceful contemplation of the mysteries of Jesus’ life as found in Scripture.

Action

Thousands of books have been written on the subject of prayer, and only a fraction of what could be said about prayer can be addressed in any Daily Tripod.  We know that Jesus considered prayer the starting point for all else that he did.  He gave the disciples and us guidelines for praying in today’s Gospel reading.  Talking to God and listening for God’s response, which can come in many forms other than words, are the basics of prayer.  Our Catholic tradition is rich in variety.  We can pray through Lectio Divina, through meditation, and contemplation.  We can pray the Ignatian Daily Examen or the Liturgy of the Hours.  We can pray the Our Father or the Hail Mary. 

Overall, the important thing is that we pray.  A relationship with God is like having a relationship with anyone else.  There’s a back and forth.  One person speaks, and the other listens and vice versa.  Sometimes there can be a companionable silence, in which we sit quietly in the attentive presence of our Lord.

When you pray today, it might be interesting to ask yourself how much of your prayer time is filled with your words and how much of it is spent listening to what God has to say to you.