The Pillars of Lent: Prayer

We are continuing our journey through the season of Lent. 

Lent: a time of renewal.  A time to take stock of our lives, a time to turn back to the Lord. The term “lent” itself, coming from the German, “lenz,” or “spring” attests to this fact. Like the meteorological season, Lent is about new life and rebirth. 

And it is also about turning away from sin. 

Sin separates us from God, ourselves (the people we are meant to be), and others. During this liturgical season, we focus on and practice the pillars of Lent—prayer, fasting, and almsgiving—as a way of cooperating with God’s grace and overcoming our sinfulness. Prayer helps us repair our wounded (or broken) relationships with God. Fasting helps us get control over our baser desires, and almsgiving enables us to reach out and make others a priority, enabling us to reconcile with them.
 
Practicing each can be a struggle…but each can also be an opportunity to recognize our need for God’s grace. I find this is the case for me when it comes to praying.  

I am as certain of God’s existence and His love for us as I am of the existence of the laptop with which I write this. I love the sacraments of the Faith and the beauty of Scripture. But words come hard when I pray. I watch in wonder as my wife, Kristin, is able to spontaneously find opportunities to glorify God in the things of the world—and I recall with awe her calling our kids to the living room window to point out a cloud formation and lead them in a rousing chorus of “Yay, God” at the beauty of the sight. She is able to turn to music, Christian and otherwise, to put herself in the presence of the Lord no matter what is going on in her life. And she instinctively turns to prayer before sending our adult children back out into the world.

I, on the other hand, find my mind wandering when I pray.  Moreover, I struggle to find words (ironic, given my profession) when asked, as I often am, to lead a prayer.

In this, I suspect I am not alone. Many of us struggle to pray. Many of us are worried about "doing it wrong,” of “saying the wrong words.” And so many of us give up the attempt. We do well to remember what prayer is: talking with the Lord, communicating our love, our needs, our sorrow, and our gratitude to Him—and listening to Him in return.

We are made to be in a relationship with God, and so we are made to pray. But just like when we were young, we need to learn how to do it.

Those of us who have watched small children grow can recall their attempts to master language. My brother, Patrick, used to refer to the top of his sippy-cup as its “roof.” Our Annie referred to the first meal of the day as “bref-kist” and fireflies as “ligh-ling bugs.” Her brother Danny was hospitalized at age five with what he called “the ammonia,” and their older sister Kathleen (at around a year and a half) would ask for “blub-blow” ... and we would run for a dish of ice cream.

As family members, and especially as parents, we knew exactly what the children meant. They didn’t need to have perfect grammar, flawless diction, or even the right words. We knew.  And while we knew they would eventually need to speak in standard English—they couldn’t go to kindergarten uttering “baby talk”—when they finally got the language “right,” we all cried a little inside. Saying the “wrong words” was a sign, after all, of their absolute trust in us and confidence in our ability to understand them.  

There was something beautiful in their language. The fact that you, gentle reader, took a few minutes to recall the language of the little ones you know—and that you smiled when you remembered—is testament to the truth of what I am saying.

How could our Heavenly Father possibly look at us any differently?

Jesus tells us that we need to be “like little children” (Matt. 18:3) as a condition for salvation.  We need to put our pride aside and remember that we never stop being children of our loving, all-knowing Father. He knows “what [we] need before [we] ask Him” (Matt. 6:8). He understands our words even when we struggle to say them. As His disciples, we share in the life of Jesus, and Jesus called His Father “Abba,” “Da-da,” “Daddy.” As we learn to pray, let us keep this fact in mind: that when we pray, we pray to our Heavenly Daddy Who loves and cherishes us and our every word.  

As we embark (or continue) on this adventure of learning the language of prayer, we can take comfort in those of the Church. If my wife spontaneously prays on seeing a sunset or on hearing a song, I say my rosary, or the Memorare, or the Prayer for Generosity, or the Lord’s Prayer. I need the language of the prayers of the universal Church. There is a grace in that too. When I pray those prayers, my words are those of Christians throughout the world and throughout history. In our own way we—separated by the reaches of time and space—become the “two or more” who are “gathered in [Christ’s’] name,” bringing Him into the “midst of [us]” (Matt. 18:20). At any rate, praying the prayers of the Church is a solid start as we grow in the language of faith.

But even if we still struggle, we can take comfort in the words of French author, Georges Bernanos, who observed that “the wish to pray is prayer itself.” And, of course, God is always willing to help us find our words.

All we have to do is ask.

A.M.D.G. / B.V.M.H.