The Power of Prayer

We live in a noisy world. There is no shortage of pundits and experts offering advice about how to live our best lives. The cacophony of information swirls around us like a cyclone; it spins around and around until we find ourselves completely disoriented.  I have come to believe that prayer helps to slow down the spinning and creates the quiet space needed to nourish our spiritual lives.

While I don’t proclaim to be an expert and certainly am not prepared to tell you how to live your best life, I can tell you how prayer is helping me live mine. Learning about prayer is really the work of a lifetime, and I am just getting started!  At this moment in time, I understand prayer to be about asking for things from God that I cannot achieve on my own. It isn’t about trying to change God’s plan, but rather trying to figure out what His plan is and what He wants me to do to accomplish it. Of course, the challenge always is, am I willing to do it? Prayer teaches us humility of heart as we struggle to accept that God is the Creator, and we are the creatures. Yet even as I write this, the supplicant nature of my role in the relationship leaves me uncomfortable. The notion that “I am the handmaiden of the Lord.” (Luke 1:38) makes me bristle. It sounds so submissive and subservient.  Yet once I let go of my secular interpretation and realized this is not a gender issue but rather a Divine v. Human issue it makes sense. Accepting and surrendering to do God’s will – to fulfill the very reason he created me – life  becomes simpler. I have fought this for years, relying instead on my own sense of self-reliance. I have learned the hard way that “Let Go Let God” brings a sense of inner peace that is counterintuitive to most of us.

I suppose, the first question we must ask ourselves is, do we want to make space for God? Like all relationships, it will require effort and a fair amount of selflessness. Are we ready for the disruption that is likely to come with that change? I must admit, I still yearn for my leisurely Sunday mornings reading the New York Times in my pajamas until noon when my alarm goes off at 6am to serve as Eucharistic minister at 7am Mass. Yet despite the sacrifice, the impact of morphing from a Christmas and Easter Catholic to a Sunday-go-to-Church-Catholic has had an impact on my life that is hard to describe.

Making time to be with God in prayer must come out of a sense of love, not out of obligation. When we love someone, we create time and space for them. We make room in our busy schedules to share the details of our life with them because it brings us joy and comfort. We surround ourselves with pictures and artifacts that make us think of them. It is that simple.

But don’t confuse simple with easy.

I am now at the stage of struggling to make the leap from being a Sunday-go-to-church-Catholic to becoming a Monday through Saturday-practice-what-you-heard Catholic. It is easy to sit at Mass and listen to sermons about forgiveness, humility, and loving your enemy, etc., but it is quite another thing to embrace those concepts in the world. Worldly demands oftentimes place me in direct conflict with the things our faith calls me to do, which impedes my ability to develop a relationship with God. Our culture’s focus on being self-made and self-sufficient makes it difficult to acknowledge my dependence on my Creator and to trust in God’s Providence.

I work hard to create space for God in my life by following a few simple 3 rules: 1) I make time to pray, even when I don’t feel like it. 2) I speak honestly with God, letting Him know when I find our relationship burdensome, despite my immense gratitude that he is always there for me no matter how many times I put Him off and 3) I remain attentive for His voice to illuminate His path forward for me. Bishop Robert Barron wrote, “one of the most fundamental truths in the Bible is that the spiritual life is not primarily our quest for God, but rather God’s quest for us.”^[1]  I found comfort in that.

Still, I wonder, if pray is meant to be a conversation with God, do we even have to go to church?  If God is everywhere, what difference does it make where the conversation happens? It is a fair question. As Catholics, we learned that we are supposed to pray the way Jesus prayed, and he prayed both in private and community.  In my experience, at this stage of my journey, I have discovered a deeper sense of connection with God when our conversations occur in a sacred place. Perhaps the subtle difference of asking God to come to my house versus me making the effort to go to his house tips the scale in the proper direction. My thinking, though it may not be sanctioned by the Church, is start building your relationship with God wherever you are most comfortable. Right now, this minute. But do be thoughtful about it. It is important to step outside your everyday routine to make room for the invasion of God. 

Important relationships require energy. They require space to exist and to grow. Committing to spend 10 minutes a day with God allows you to morph from the obligatory “visit-you-on-holidays- (or Sundays)  kind of relationship, into a a “sit-at-the-kitchen-table-and-chat-over-a-cup-of-tea” type of relationship. It’s like calling your mom daily, even when you have nothing to say… just to check in. These 10 minutes are a way to connect with God to hear His message despite the cacophony of sounds swirling about us.

If it’s easiest for you to hop on your spiritual journey path by going to Mass once a week, do it. If you prefer to dedicate a specific time and space to start the conversation, do that consistently.  Developing a prayer life takes time but if you beat yourself up for doing it “wrong” you’ll never get started.

^[1] Bishop Robert Barron, An Introduction to Prayer, Word on Fire, Elk Grove Village, IL 2024., p.4.