THE CHRISTIAN PRAYER

THURSDAY, ELEVENTH WEEK IN ORDERINARY TIME

Sirach 48:1-15; Ps 97:1-7; Mt 6:7-15

What Christian Prayer is About

Prayer is the core of our life as Christians. To understand the essence of prayer and pray well is to live the Christian life well and be pleasing to God. Not to pray well is to miss out on the essentials of Christian life and our communion with God. We have understood the Christian life as a spiritual communion with God. Since God is the Supreme Spirit, our communion with Him is more interior and spiritual. Therefore, the prerequisite condition for a good prayer life is living a recollected or interior life. Because God is the foundation of our existence, we enter the path of prayer by conversing with our inner selves. Through self-awareness, we progress to the awareness of the Supreme Consciousness we call God, who reveals Himself to us in all things, but within us as our origin. On this basis, we present prayer as a rooting exercise; it is an exercise to renew our spirit in the Supreme Spirit we call God. To lack in the exercise of prayer is to grow shallow in ourselves. We wither away and die gradually without the exercise of prayer.

If God is the supreme Consciousness or Spirit, our prayer does not add anything to Him, but helps us connect to Him and gain the grace of self-awareness. This defining self-awareness is only possible through the light his presence sheds within us in prayer. Our Lord’s admonition that we enter into our inner or secret place to pray is because it is the only way for us to grasp the meaning of prayer. Prayer is a gift from God and bears its fruit in our communion with Him. We connect through prayer to the Supreme Consciousness that is God and open our channels for him to flow personally into us, enabling us to define our own individual consciousness. Thus, meditation and contemplation are the key components of the Christian prayer. The rituals of the Church’s liturgical celebrations illustrate this point. The Lord presentation of himself as our spiritual bread is hinged on this understanding. As physical bread nourishes our natural life, the word of God gives and nourishes our spiritual life in God. Just as many of us are sick and losing physical life because of malnourishment of our bodies due to the types of food we are eating, which are not well-suited to our body structure and functions, many of us are malnourished and dead spiritually due to wrong spirituality and corrupted Gospel.

God is the Supreme Consciousness existing in Himself. We come to Him in prayer, not to condition Him in any way, but that we may be conditioned in His holy will. His holy will is our greatest good. The admonition of our Lord for us not to babble in prayer, and the prayer he taught us, confirm this. “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. So you should pray like this: ‘Our Father in heaven, may your name be held holy, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven those who are in debt to us. And do not put us to the test, but save us from the evil one.” Since the Father knows all we need and is willing to give them to us, prayer disposes us to receive all the available graces in Christ Jesus our Lord. Elijah’s greatness as a prophet lies in the conformity of his desire with the will of God.

Let us pray: O God, strength of those who hope in you, graciously hear our plea, and, since without you mortal frailty can do nothing, grant us always the help of your grace, that we may please you by our resolve and our deeds. 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.