Perhaps it was St. Therese of Lisieux who gave the simplest and most profound answer to the question: What is Prayer?
“For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven; it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.”
It is quite humbling also to recall the words of Cardinal Basil Hume who once said: “It is seldom one hears priests talking about prayer. I would doubt that any Catholic would say the same thing about priests and money.”
And it was Pope Francis in his first homily in the Sistine Chapel before the College of Cardinals who had just elected him, quoting the French novelist Leon Bloy: “The one who does not pray to the Lord, prays to the devil.”
Prayer, I would venture to say, is the one of the first things we learn as children. I still remember the summer day, nearly 50 years ago when my mother taught me how to pray the “Our Father.”
I’ve always found it so strange, the request our Lord’s disciple made, “Lord teach us to pray.” Surely these were religious Jews who were taught to pray as children. Did they not know how to pray? Perhaps, hidden within their plea was: “Lord, teach us how to pray like you.”
Why is prayer so difficult? A nice night on the town costs money. Vacations cost money. Even watching TV costs money. Prayer is free. Why don’t we indulge? Oh, yeah, I forget, it’s not free; it doesn’t cost money, but it takes time, and in our culture, “time is money.”
Once there was a priest who having a “vocational crisis;” he went to a counselor who asked him: “Do you take time each day to pray?” He responded harshly, “I have too many things to do. The parish can’t function without me.” “Well,” his counselor replies, “they are going to get about six months to try.”
Funny story. Once I recall one early morning when I was praying quietly in the chapel. A woman came up, tapped me on the shoulder and said, “I’m glad I found you and that you weren’t busy.”
Experience has taught me that the most significant reason why Christians do not pray as much as they would like is because they have never developed a real passion for prayer which means they haven’t developed a real passion for God.
It is not by accident that Jesus teaches about prayer in today’s Gospel using the metaphor of friendship.
And finally, there have been times in my life when people have said to me that they don’t pray because God never answers them. To which I am often tempted to say that if they treated their friends the way they treat God, their friends would not say anything to them either.
In the world of friendships, we don’t develop much of a relationship if we do all the talking. Yes, prayer is a conversation with God, but that includes listening as well as speaking.
Remember, with God we are in the presence of a true friend, and we can be completely ourselves. Just think of how few people in our lives would stand for that!
Sitting in silent prayer, yes, sometimes, our hurts, our pains, our sins, and our failures will surface, and initially, those moments are not all that pleasant, but it is then that much healing can take place.
When we place the totality of our lives, the good, the bad, and the ugly, in the presence of God, the message that we will hear most often is that God loves us just the way we are, and God wants to help us make the very most of the brief time we have here on this earth.
You see, prayer is your most important conversation of the day. Take it to God before you take it to anyone else.