Deepening My Prayer Knowledge

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The more I learn about the Catholic faith the more I realize how much there is to know. Case in point is prayer. I’m a cradle Catholic, so I’ve been praying pretty much since I could talk – my mother insisted that every meal start with grace, and of course I learned early the Hail Mary and the Our Father.

Until a couple of years ago, such rote prayers were all I knew. Then I started reading about different kinds of spirituality, like Ignatian, which suggests that you place yourself in a Gospel story and experience it with all your senses; and the monastic lectio divina, in which you focus on a specific word or phrase from Scripture to let it “speak” to you.

Then, last night, I starting reading what the Catechism of the Catholic Church has to say about prayer. This is such an important topic that the entire fourth part of the CCC is devoted to it. As explained in the first paragraph of Part IV, the Church professes the great mystery of faith in the Apostles’ Creed and celebrates the mystery of the faith in the sacramental liturgy “so that the life of the faithful may be conformed to Christ in the Holy Spirit to the glory of God the Father.” The faithful are to live the mystery of the faith in a personal relationship with God.

This relationship is prayer.

Our desire for prayer comes from God, as does everything dealing with our faith. CCC 2563 speaks of the heart as the place of encounter with God, the place “to which I withdraw” that only the Spirit of God can fathom. This expresses exactly how I feel when I sit silently in prayer, focusing only on God’s presence.

The CCC has an interesting explanation about the history of prayer, starting in the Garden of Eden after humankind’s fall from grace. Here is the image the CCC gives, taken from the Book of Genesis: a sorrowful God calling out to Adam and Eve, “Where are you? … What have you done?”

I frequently feel compelled to respond to those questions when I sit in prayer. Sometimes I struggle with my answer. Quite often I don’t want to let God know where I am, or admit what I have done. (Yes, he already knows, but having to actually acknowledge where I’m at psychologically or spiritually, or confess my actions, is not something I’m always willing to do.)

The CCC goes on to explain how Abraham exemplifies attentiveness to God’s will, which is essential to prayer. It points out that Abraham prayed more in his actions than in words: “A man of silence, he constructs an altar to the Lord at each stage of his journey” as he goes forth to Canaan.

By contrast, Moses had to be cajoled into serving the God who spoke to him from a burning bush, but then became an example “of contemplative prayer by which God’s servant remains faithful to his mission. Moses converses with God often and at length, climbing the mountain to hear and entreat him and coming down to the people to repeat the words of his God for their guidance.” (CCC 2576)

Next came David, whose prayer expresses joy and loving trust in God; who praises him, submits to his will and repents after sinning; and Elijah, who with all of the prophets drew strength and understanding from encounters with God.

The CCC, of course, left me with food for contemplation – the prophets’ prayer, it says, “is not flight from this unfaithful world, but rather attentiveness to The Word of God. At times their prayer is an argument or a complaint, but it is always an intercession that awaits and prepares for the intervention of the Savior God, the Lord of history.” (CCC 2584)

This brings me back to my own prayer, where I do withdraw from the world and attempt to be attentive to the Word. What I have learned is that the next step to take is to acknowledge God’s intervention in my life and accept where it leads me.

Marie Mischel is editor of the Intermountain Catholic.