Prayer

PRAYER GUIDE

PRAYER ATTITUDES

God alone is our true source of happiness. It was in an encounter with God and their desire to remain in God that the saints had the love to love heroically. There is only one way to receive that love – prayer.

THE PRAYER METHOD

Every method of prayer will fail if it is just a matter of 'doing this'. This prayer method involves the awareness of God's promptings and responding to those promptings. Thus it is primarily a spiritual method, based on a practical method. The most essential point is, “If you begin to experience a higher form of prayer, give over to it.” You will see how this is played out within the method.

STAGE 1 - MEDITATION

Meditation is using some content for your prayer. It could be a passage of scripture, or a song, or an icon, or our attentiveness at Mass or even just the presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament during Adoration. What is essential is that we are actively seeking God. If you are not spontaneously encountering God in a personal and deep way, you will have to put some work in. This work is meditation. I will use meditating upon a psalm as an example of the inner process of prayer. I suggest the memorizing of the psalm to increase your focus upon the psalm. As you memorize the psalm (for example, “It is he who forgives all your guilt.”), you start to think about what the actual words mean, eg that God forgives. This may lead you to become aware of your own situation in relation to the psalm, eg that God forgives you. You may then become aware of the personal love God has for you. As you deepen in this though you may become aware that God is personally with you, and start to experience that gentle loving presence of God. This awareness of God's presence is the second stage. We have actually covered seven steps each deeper than the first. Let us plot all seven.

1)    Not praying. Being distracted. Day dreaming. This step was the step before we started.

2)   Memorising. This step is our active work of meditation. It might not be memorising, but could be rosary, reading scripture, Eucharist etc.

3)   Starting to think about the words.

4)   Connecting the words with you personally.

5)   Becoming aware of God's Love, goodness, mercy etc.

6)   Become aware of God's personal love

7)   Become aware of God's presence. This step is the beginning of the second stage.

Each of these steps are a higher form of prayer than the previous. We could begin to experience the higher form, but think it is a distraction, eg that we should keep memorizing, but this is wrong. As we begin to experience a higher form, we should give over to it and let God be God. If we become distracted, then we should start again memorizing. This is only an example of various steps. You may have different steps. The essential thing is to recognize the more transcendent steps that take us to God and our giving over (surrender) to that step. Some of these steps are just the workings of our mind, but the awareness of God's presence is God's own initiative and  work in us.

STAGE 2 – AWARENESS OF GOD'S PRESENCE

Have you ever had the experience of feeling as if someone is looking at you, then turning and seeing the person looking at you? Some do. This is a bit like that inner awareness of God’s presence, except, God always looks with eyes of love. This awareness is precious. It is God's love manifest in our soul personally. It is like our inner compass now points to God. We know where he is. He is with us. He is always with us, but now we are finally aware of it. But this is not the final step. We should surrender ourselves to that presence. This is the next stage surrender.

STAGE 3 – SURRENDER - CONTEMPLATION

Once you are aware of God’s presence, you can surrender yourself to that presence. Allow ourselves to be consumed by that presence. It is a love beyond words. It is satisfying. Finally our hearts are resting in God and abiding in him and he in us. St. Teresa of Avila calls this the prayer of quiet. It is the beginning of contemplation. Since we have worked towards it, it is called 'acquired contemplation'. But this terminology does not do justice to the priceless beauty of this grace. No words can. Many people use the word contemplation to indicate a mental reflection or being quiet before God, but these meanings are not this specific surrender to this warmth of God's love which is how many saints use these words. If you have not experienced this kind of contemplation, then keep trying. There is a surrender and perseverance needed to acquire it, but it is always a gift of God, we can never earn it or achieve it, only predispose ourselves to it. Once you experience it, enjoy it. Keep abiding in it as long as you can. If you become distracted start building up again, by starting with memorizing/meditating.

Once God has given you this gift, be open to it. Sometimes it is just a matter of opening your soul to God, and you begin to experience contemplation. Then there is no need to meditate, you are already at the goal you seek.

THE PRAYER FORMAT

The following is a suggested prayer format.

1)    Call to mind God's presence, by making the sign of the cross.

2)   Pray the Our Father to help enter into prayer.

3)   Read the suggested passage for the day. Read it slowly. If something catches your attention. Think about it. If your mind starts to wander, go back to reading the scripture. It does not matter if you don't finish reading the whole passage. It is more important to think about God and reflect on his goodness.

4)   If something comes to mind, particularly as a response to what you read, to do a particular thing, then make a decision to do it. This step is very important. The more you give as a response to your prayer time, the more God will give to you, the deeper will be your prayer.

5)   Finish with the sign of the cross.

GROWTH IN PRAYER

Like any athlete training, there are cycles of growth. They say it takes 6 weeks to form a new habit. The amount should be an achievable goal. Not too much or too little. By maintaining the amount of prayer daily over a period of time, it will become a habit. Once it has become a habit, you are ready to take the next step and increase it. There are basically three stages to the cycle.

1)    Initially getting use to it. You must keep making the decision to pray each day and not give up.

2)   Consolidating it. You are use to it, but you still need to persevere with it to keep it up. Periods of busyness can make you give it up. It is important to keep it up or even increase it slightly during these 'dry' times. When you most feel like giving it up, is in fact the time that it is most becoming a habit.

3)   Comfortable. It's part of your routine now, but maybe it's becoming too routine. Now is the time to make a commitment to go deeper. To take the next step.

THE PATH OF PRAYER

Here is a path to growth in prayer spread over a three year period. Work out where you fall in on this scale. What are you doing well? What is the next step for you? This is only a guide. It is not meant to be rigid.

YEAR 1

TERM 1

5 minutes a day. Start going through Mark's gospel. Start with the Sign of the Cross, the 'Our Father' and then a passage from Mark. Finish by thanking God and making the sign of the cross. You may like to make some kind of small resolution in response to the prayer time, eg call up someone, pay some money back, help someone out.

TERM 2

15 minutes a day. Continue the same basic prayer format, but you may like to start memorizing a psalm a week. Work on one psalm per week. It doesn't matter if you don't remember the whole psalm, but it is important that you seek God's presence.

TERM 3

Night prayer. You should at least buy the short from of the prayer of the Church which includes morning, evening and night prayer. For this term complete night prayer each night. Give a bit of extra time for personal prayer.

TERM 4

Pray each morning the 5-15 minutes based on Mark's gospel or a psalm and night prayer each night.