"Prayer: A Three-Fold Life-Changing Experience"
Today's Mass Readings
For how many of us is prayer more like our own monologue than true dialogue with God? I know this is often the case in my own life. And sometimes this is ok. Sometimes it is sufficient to just pour out our soul to God. He is there to listen. God wants us to speak to Him. But this is not all that prayer is. Lent is a season of prayer. All liturgical seasons, by definition, are seasons of prayer. But Lent is a special season, because, like Advent, Lent is a spiritual pilgrimage. In Advent our pilgrimage is to the Nativity, to Jesus' birth. In Lent, our pilgrimage is to the Resurrection, to Easter. But Lent is a pilgrimage at a whole other level as well. More than any other season, Lent is a time of transformation. The practice of physical pilgrimages has a long history in Christianity. Physical pilgrimages, unlike tourism or vacations, are intended to transform the pilgrim. You return from a pilgrimage a changed person because of a holy encounter, and because of the spiritual practices which transformed you throughout the pilgrimage. Lent is intended to be a similar experience, even if you never leave your hometown. We return home from Lent via the resurrection of Jesus in the joyful Easter season. The goal is to be a transformed people.
Prayer is essential for this interior transformation. There are many forms of prayers, but in today's reading from Matthew's Gospel, Jesus proposes a specific form of prayer, the Our Father. Some might see repeating the Our Father as the sort of vain repetition that Jesus seems to condemn verses 7-8 of our passage in today's reading. However, what Jesus is condemning is not the repetition of phrases--recal that Jesus Himself repeated the same phrase to the Father 3 times in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:44). Rather, Jesus is cautioning against trying to manipulate God through vain repetitive prayer.
The Our Father is a powerful prayer, which we pray at every Eucharist. It also forms an important part of the very structure of praying the rosary. I want to encourage you to pray the Our Father throughout the day. Sometimes it helps to focus upon different portions of the prayer. Focusing especially upon the "thy will be done" can be especially powerfu.
But so far we've only discussed what we say to God. The other important part of prayer is listening to what God has to say to us. For many of us tis can be more difficult. Perhaps there are times where we should spend more time in silence listening to God than speaking to God. Some of us, especially if we are taking care of young children, or are working very hard and long hours, might find it difficult to find the kind of solitude we need in order to do this well. That's ok. We can also pray (and listen) by practicing the presence of God. If we are open to being aware of God's presence in our lives, especially in the midst of turmoil and the business and rush of the everyday, we can perceive God speaking to us through events and people. Let us practice this attentiveness to God, while we wash dishes, change diapers, take out the trash, clean up messes, and during any other moments we can.
One final way to listen to God is by reading, praying over, and meditating on Scripture. The Bible is part of God's very Word to us. When we read Scripture, we are encountering God, we are encountering Jesus, the Word of God. God can speak to us through Scripture. When we pray the Our Father, we speak to God. When we read the Bible, God speaks to us. Let us continue then to read Scripture, be they the daily Mass readings, or just picking up our Bibles and reading. This is how prayer becomes a two-way street. We speak to God and God speaks to us.
Prayer, however, is so much more than this. As we see from today's first reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, God says: "[My word] shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it" (55:11). We need to speak to God, but we also need to listen to God speaking to us. And when God speaks to, through Scripture, through events and people, or in the secret recesses of our heart, God's word to us does not return empty, but achieves its end by transforming us. This is how prayer becomes a three-fold life-changing experience. Throughout this day, and during this entire Lenten season, let us really set aside time to pray, and let us practice the presence of God even amidst our busy lives.
- Jeff Morrow