THE THREE OPERATIONS OF PRAYER


THURSDAY, FIRST WEEK OF LENT   

Esther 4:17; Ps 138:1-3,7-8; Mt 7:7-12

Asking, Searching, and Knocking

We are back on the subject of prayer, for concerning the practice of prayer, we can never say enough. The reason is that prayer in itself is the essential or defining operation of a Christian. Every entity that has life has vital operations that support its life and the end or purpose for which that life is lived. For a Christian, the spiritual life is essentially the sanctifying grace which the presence of the Holy Spirit introduces in the soul. The central vital operation of the Christian is prayer, which he does or carries out in union with the Holy Spirit. So, the departure of the Holy Spirit marks the spiritual death of the soul, because the spiritual life cannot be solely sustained by self-operations. Our spiritual life is a participation in the life of God and not something solely belonging to us. The purpose of our spiritual life is the attainment of communion with God. Subsequently, the spiritual practice of prayer fosters a deeper and richer communion with God. The purpose is set by God who operates in us, through our cooperation with the Holy Spirit, to bring us to the desired communion. We come to the desire for heavenly communion in the guise of the Son. Thus, the Spirit we receive and with whom we cooperate is the Spirit of the Son.  Based on this, we have posited that our spiritual life is the life of Jesus Christ within us. Because the groom and the bride become one body in their union, we are truly one with the Son of Man.

Our understanding of the structure and operation of our spiritual life reveals the three levels of prayer operation. For the maintenance of our daily communion through awareness of God’s presence and designs for us, prayer is asking; we ask for the grace to hallow God’s name. The daily routine of asking or requesting hinges on defining awareness of God as our Father; being mindful of the awesome holiness of His Name keeps us sacrificed before Him or consecrated to Him. The First part of the Lord’s prayer covers this initial and routine awareness of a Christian. This defining awareness of God as our Father directly flows from the presence of the Holy Spirit within us. The second level of prayer is a searching or seeking of God’s holy will. It is a heightening of the first operation of prayer. In seeking, we stand in need of more light from God to discern his will for specific issues. Prayer as searching longs for a deeper participation in the mystery of Christ, through which his mind comes to be in us to know and accomplish the will of the Father for specific issues. The second part of the Lord’s prayer covers this, when we pray for the coming of the kingdom of God and our daily bread.

The third level of prayer is the knocking operation. The operation of knocking aims at escaping from the presence of our enemy and his fallen angels, who pose an immediate threat to our salvation, bodily and spiritual. This is the most intense operation of prayer due to the nearness of powers of darkness and their consequences on our spiritual life. As the struggle for survival brings out the best in an organism, the knocking prayer is the most intense and piercing spiritually. The last part of our Lord’s prayer contains this operation of prayer, when we ask for forgiveness of our sins and deliverance from temptations of the evil one. A demonstration of the prayer of knocking is that of Esther. “Queen Esther took refuge with the Lord in the mortal peril which had overtaken her. She besought the Lord God of Israel in these words: ‘My Lord, our king, the only one, come to my help, for I am alone and have no helper but you and am about to take my life in my hands.’” The Holy Spirit, who is the author of our spiritual life and prayer, leads us to any of these levels of prayer according to need, with our cooperation. Because He is God, the prayer He inspires in us is according to the mind of the Father. Our Lord confirms this saying: “Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For the one who asks always receives; the one who searches always finds; the one who knocks will always have the door opened to him.” When the door of divine light is opened, darkness and forces of evil are driven out in an instant. “On the day I called, you answered me, O Lord.”

Let us pray: Bestow on us, we pray, O Lord, a spirit of always pondering on what is right and of hastening to carry it out, and, since without you we cannot exist, may we be enabled to live according to your will. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.    

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