Precious Prayer

Seeing how prayer slowly becomes life itself

03/14/2019

Matthew 7:7-12 Jesus said to his disciples: "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which one of you would hand his son a stone when he asked for a loaf of bread, or a snake when he asked for a fish? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him. "Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets."

I was walking through the halls of Mercy Hospital recently and noticed an evocative saying by Catherine McAuley, the foundress of the Sisters of Mercy. The quotation simply said: “Many a precious prayer can be said in a second.” I immediately smiled because I realized how often I had whispered a prayer in a second for a patient I had visited. I also began to think of all the precious prayers that the hundreds of patients and nurses and doctors must say in a second every day in that hospital. Prayers for healing, prayers for strength, prayers for comfort, prayers for peace, and maybe even a prayer for a merciful death. Today I want to give you a little perspective on prayer and how to help our prayers to be a little more precious. Here are three pointers on prayer.

First, be careful not to look at prayer as a business transaction. I think we Americans are especially susceptible to the “business model” of prayer because we instinctively tend to treat all relationships with a business model. For instance, we judge a prayer by its efficacy, that is, we ask, “Did the prayer work? Did we get what we asked for?” We wonder what is the R.O.I. of prayer, the “return on the investment.” In the middle ages, the Catholic Church was accused of treating prayer, and even the sacraments, as a business transaction, and charging people for indulgences. To be clear, indulgences themselves are a part of authentic Christian piety, but treating them as a business transaction for profit is a sinful corruption. In other words, what makes prayer precious is not how much it costs, but how heart-felt it is. The business model can be useful for improving many relationships, but it does not make prayer precious, it makes it pernicious, harmful.

Second, Jesus gives us the perfect perspective for prayer as a father-son or parent-child relationship. God the Son, who did not always get what he asked for from God the Father, said: “Which one of you would hand his son a stone when he asked for a loaf of bread, or a snake when he asked for a fish?” You will remember Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane where he asked for the cup of suffering to pass him by, but then he accepted the Father’s will. That is, Jesus was speaking from personal experience when he talked about precious prayer. The right model for prayer, therefore, is the family model. Prayer is precious when it is a loving conversation between a parent and a child. Unfortunately, most of us only appreciate that model after we become parents ourselves and sometimes have to say “no” to the precious prayers of our children.

And thirdly, prayer is not a parachute for safety when the plane of our your life is going down in flames, but rather it is the oxygen tank for a scuba diver as he swims underwater. A friend of mine recently joined the Norbertine religious community in Orange, California, and took the name Brother Titus. His patron saint is Blessed Titus Brandsma, a Carmelite friar who died in the Dachau concentration camp. Brother Titus sent me a letter yesterday and ended it with a quotation from Blessed Titus, saying: “Prayer is life. Prayer is not an oasis in the desert of life.” As we grow and mature in the Christian life, we stop looking at prayer as a box to check every day – I said my rosary, I made it to Mass, I prayed the Angelus – so then we can run off to do more interesting things. Rather all those more interesting things start to feel like interruptions – however important and necessary – in our life of prayer and conversation with God. Prayer is not a parachute to be used in case of emergencies; it is the oxygen tank we need to breathe as we dive deeply into the mysterious depths of life.

What makes prayer precious? Precious prayer is not a business transaction where we seek a return on the investment. Precious prayer is a loving conversation between parent and child. And precious prayer is the oxygen we need to breathe. Catherine McAuley was right: “a precious prayer can be said in a second.” But in the end, prayer becomes synonymous with every second of life.

Praised be Jesus Christ!