Without God's grace we can do nothing on the
supernatural level.
How do we aquire this grace?
By which means?
By two means;
Prayer and the Sacraments.
But prayer is fundamental, also in relation
to the Sacrements themselves.
The way to obtain God's grace, and to
maintain our presence in it, is prayer.
The objective of our faith is to unite ourselves
to God, to live His life in us.
We know that it has occured many times
throughout the history of the Church that
Catholics have been deprived of the Sacraments
through no fault of their own, e.g. in China where
many people had been converted to the faith through
Saint Francis Xavier in the 16th century and then
later on were left with no priest to administer the
Sacraments for 300 years. When they were again
visited by missionaries in the 19th century,
the missionaries realised that thousands of them
had continued the Church by administering the 2
Sacraments that can, if no priest is available, be
administered without a priest; Baptism and Marriage,
but what maintained their faith was prayer.
They were people that prayed.
Prayer is something that every person can do,
no matter place or circumstance.
"Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord
shall be saved."
Romans 10:13
But obviously anyone who has access to the Sacrements
but do not avail of them by his own fault, will not be saved.
So what is prayer?
Saint Therese of Avila's definition of prayer is:
The lifting up of our soul to God.
She also said that to pray is
To speak to God while loving Him.
Because prayer is not a dry speech to God,
we put the entire weight of our love for God
into it.
Prayer is an act of the virtue of religion, an
appendix to the virtue of justice,
justice concerns giving to each person what
we owe them.
We owe a lot to God and we will never be
able to pay back our debt to God, but we are
obliged to do all that we can do; by practising
the virtue of religion.
The virtue of religion has many acts:
Devotion: (to get us started)
Saint Thomas Aquinas described devotion as
"the readiness to internally place oneself at the
service of God, to honour God"
Which leads us to
Adoration:
Our total submission to the Divine Majesty of God.
God is Master of everything.
What springs forth from adoration is
Prayer:
Speaking to God out of desire,
moved to honour Him, using words.
However, formulated external prayer without
this internal movement is worthless, it is
not even prayer.
As Saint Therese of Avila said:
To pray is to talk to God while loving Him.
Sacrifice
is the fourth act of religion.
But staying here on prayer.
To pray is to talk, to say the word, to say words,
words pronounced by human beings.
The elders of the Church distinguished 3 types
of Words:
Verbum Cordis: Word of the Heart
Verbum Mentis: Word of the Mind; the Spirit
Verbum Oris: Word of the Mouth (the spoken word)
The word of the mouth is simply the words we hear
when someone speaks, one expresses words with the
intention of being understood.
What emerges from the mouth is an expression of
what the spirit thinks; the word of the mind.
The word of the mind; our thoughts, does not
necessarily need to be spoken, but we do think all
the time; they are the words of the mind.
It is from this place that prayer comes; it is
an internal silent conversation with God.
It is called mental prayer.
What purpose has the word of the mind?
It is to know something.
To know something is to express it.
I tell myself something in order to
know it, I say it in order to know it.
The word of the mind has 2 functions; it
also allows us to express it orally.
Who are the conversation partners of our mind?
1.: Ourselves
e.g.:
I just solved a mathematical question, I go over it in
my mind; " I talk to myself".
But the constant conversation partner to the
words of the mind, whether we know it or not,
is God.
That is why we have to be very careful with our
thoughts.
We need to clean them up.
God hears everything:
The words in our minds,
the words from our mouth
and even those in our hearts;
nothing escapes God's attention.
Addressing the words in our mind which are
constantly under God's gaze, to Him, is prayer.
God does not need us to pronounce the words.
But it is best to direct the words directly to Him.
If we ourselves have the constant awareness that
we are always walking in the presence of God, we
will be more careful with our thoughts, we would
be sure to have only good ones, and we can address
them all to God, who is right there, and who hears
them.
This is what is meant by living in God's presence
and this is what prayer is.
The mind is always mulling things over, apart from
when we sleep.
If we address all this incessant mulling over in our
mind, to God, it is excellent, because it becomes
impossible to think whatever we want, our minds
are raised up.
Prayer is a fundemental thing for human beings.
and
"The prayer of a righteous person is powerful
and effective"
James 5:16
What are the objectives of prayer?
To praise God
To thank God
Ask for forgiveness for our sins from God
Ask for God's help ( petitions/supplications)
Realising our total dependance on God, knowing
our own powerlessness, makes us beggars, we
have nothing, God has everything.
Fundamentally that is what prayer is.
So are therer any preconditions for prayer?
No, none, because there is none mentioned in the
Scriptures.
There are descriptions of prayer, but no conditions.
There is no need to go through a check list before
praying to see that we are ticking all the boxes.
What is necessary is that the prayer is a real genuine
prayer; a supplication, an internal word adressed
to God.
Do we need humility to ask God for something?
Well, the very act of begging God for help, is
in itself an act of humility,
humility is the essence itself of prayer.
"Ask and it shall be given to you; seek and you will
find, knock and the door will be opened to you. For
everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds;
and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened."
Matthew 7:7-8
Another question sometimes asked regarding
prayer is; "do we have to be attentive when praying"?
Yes indeed!, for if we are not, we are not praying at all!
So all the necessary "conditions" for prayer are the
essence of prayer themselves.
Sometimes when someone have committed a grave sin
they stop praying altogether. Psychologically this is because
they feel (wrongly) that they will offend God even more
if they pray, they feel they have lost the right to talk to Him,
but it is the opposite which is the case, that person needs
God more than ever, and God will HEAR his prayer.
It says in Scripture that we must "pray without cease".
So what does that mean? We all have other things to
do as well in our lives.
Again the elders of the Church distinguished between
3 types of prayer.
1. The ACTuel prayer ( the ACT of praying)
2. The virtual prayer
3. The routine prayer
The actuel prayer is simply when we carry out the prayer,
the act of praying.
The virtual prayer is what remains by the virtue of the prayer,
it is the residue of the actual prayer, it's internal efficiency,
it's power, it's influence, which stays afterwards.
That is why it is important to pray in the morning, before
starting the day.
The routine prayer; the mechanical automatic prayer, has
zero value, it is not a prayer.
Going around the house reciting the Hail Mary while doing
or thinking about other things, has no value whatsoever.
"To pray without cease" means to remain in this internal
movement which is set in motion after real prayer, as
long as it is not revoked by committing a serious sin.
A genuine prayer is always granted.
Not necessarily in the way we had imagined, but it is
always heard and answered in the way that is best for us.
For example Saint Paul supplied God 3 times to remove
"the thorn in his flesh", some affliction he had, but God
refused to remove it, for the greater good of Paul, saying
"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made
perfect in weakness".
And also; if we stop praying, if we give up saying:
"my prayer isn't being heard, it is no use", did we
really genuinely want it in the first place?
Genuine prayer is a powerful lever which can change
the course of history.
We must do what we can ourselves, and ask in prayer
for what we can't do.
We don't pray in order to inform God about our situation,
He already knows everything about us, better than we do
ourselves, the prayer is to express the desire, the need of
the soul.
Thomas Aquinas said that it is better to pray for ourselves
than for others, because it is not God we need to change but
ourselves; to become better, to do better, that is why it is
easier to have those prayers granted, to ask God to help us
to improve rather than to help someone else.
The goal of prayer is to improve the praying person.
Bottom line:
With prayer everything is possible.
