Lenten series: Prayer

So far in these Lenten posts the focus has been on the baptismal promises themselves. Now I'm going to shift the focus, but only slightly, to consider what are commonly called the "three pillars of Lent": prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. I say it will be only a slight shift because these three practices are indeed closely tied to our baptismal promises and to the way we live them out.

But take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father. When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your almsgiving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.

When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.

When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to others to be fasting. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.

This passage from Matthew is the Gospel reading we hear proclaimed each year on Ash Wednesday. Notice that Jesus doesn’t say if you pray, if you fast, if you give alms -- he says when. These three practices are fundamental to our spiritual lives. We’ll spend the next few posts looking at them more closely to find out why. Hint: it’s not because God wants you to suffer for the sake of suffering. :)


Prayer

Any attempt at Lenten renewal has to begin with an honest evaluation of our prayer life, both in terms of our participation in the Church’s liturgical prayer and of our private prayer life. If your commitment to Sunday Mass is at all weak, then remedying that has to be the number one priority during Lent. No amount of personal prayer "makes up" for not participating in Sunday liturgy. That’s because the Mass is primarily the action of Christ. It’s Christ making present his sacrifice on the cross. We join ourselves to his offering when we participate at Mass, so that it becomes an action of the entire Church, Christ the head and his Body.

Since I’m constantly amazed to find adult Catholics who don’t know this, I’ll state it for the record. Missing Mass on Sunday without a legitimate reason is a mortal sin. (Legitimate reasons could include: illness, hazardous weather conditions, childcare, etc.) If you miss Mass without just cause, you must celebrate the sacrament of Penance before you present yourself for Holy Communion again.

If you’re already faithful to Sunday Mass attendance, then perhaps you should take stock of the quality of your participation. There are few of us who couldn’t do better in this regard. The fathers of Vatican II called us to full, conscious, and active participation in the liturgy. The Mass is not something we sit back and observe the priest doing. It’s a prayer we all make together. There are no spectators at Mass.

Let’s start with exterior participation, since that's pretty basic. Do I sing when I’m supposed to? (And don’t try the excuse that you can’t sing. It would be hard to be a worse singer than I am....so I sing quietly, but I do sing. And, please, no ranting in the comboxes about having to sing hymns you hate. There are places in St. Blog's where that is engaged in with relish. This ain't one of them, so expect such comments to be deleted.) Do I make all the appropriate responses, postures, and gestures?

Even more important is interior participation at Mass. Am I praying along during Mass? Do I make a conscious effort to call myself back when my mind wanders? Do I focus on the readings and really listen for God speaking to me? Do I offer up myself and my intentions during the Eucharistic Prayer, so that I might unite my offering to Christ’s? Do I prepare myself inwardly to receive the Body and Blood of Christ, or have I perhaps grown so accustomed to the routine that I no longer give much thought to what I’m doing?

Outside of Mass itself, is there something I can do to deepen my understanding of the liturgy? Maybe I need to learn more about the Mass so I can appreciate and understand the meaning behind the words and gestures we use. (This book will help with that.) Maybe I need to spend time with the readings during the week. Some people like to read them ahead of time to prepare for Mass, while others like to come back to the readings later in the week and reflect on them more in light of the homily. Some people do both. Try and find what works for you.

Of course we also engage in private prayer, and Lent is a good time to take a look at how we're doing there as well. Our personal prayer lives are as varied as we are. There are many different kinds of prayer, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Aside from the Mass, there is no kind of prayer we all have to engage in. There’s an old adage that I like: "Pray the way you can, not the way you can’t." That simply means that you shouldn’t try to force yourself to pray in a way that just doesn’t "fit" for you. Some people love to pray the rosary, others find it difficult and draining. Some people like devotions like chaplets or novenas, some people don’t. Some people like to pray the Liturgy of the Hours, some don’t. Some people like "structured" prayer, while others like just talking to God. The point is to find the kind of prayer that works for you and stick with it. The caveat is that you should be ready to reevaluate and readjust as you grow. Once upon a time, I found the rosary really difficult and rarely prayed it. In the last couple of years, I’ve found myself drawn to it more and more, and now I pray it daily.

It really depends on where we are in our spiritual lives and where the Holy Spirit is leading us. If you don’t really pray very much at all aside from at Mass on Sunday, then you should start with finding some form of prayer that "fits" and try to carve out a time each day when you can pray. Start small and build from there -- start with 5 or 10 minutes in the beginning, and focus on making it a regular part of your day. Once you’ve made a regular commitment to it, God will give you the grace to extend your prayer time.

I suspect most of your prayer lives are more advanced than that, or you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog, and you probably wouldn't be this far into this particular post. :) Most of us probably do pray daily already, so the tasks for us are different. It’s no longer a question of having to "make time" for prayer. Once we have a regular prayer life, then one of the challenges becomes avoiding falling into a spiritual rut. We need to be alert for those times when we feel the Holy Spirit nudging us in a different direction with our prayer and be willing to go with it. Another challenge is to learn how to persist during the times when prayer is difficult and dry and when God feels distant. Faith is praying even when we don’t feel like it -- maybe especially then.

How do we evaluate our prayer lives? How do we know of we’re praying "enough"? Is there any such thing? How do we know if we’re praying "correctly"? These are hard questions to answer, because it’s different for everyone. But prayer is not about quantity. Saying more words to God more often isn’t the goal in and of itself. The point is to grow closer to Him; our prayer needs to change our hearts to make them more like His.

One good rule of thumb is that we evaluate our prayer lives by the fruit it bears in our lives. Jesus told us "by their fruits you shall know them." So we need to consider what kind of fruit our prayer is bearing for us in our relationship with God and with others. Are we growing closer to God? Growing in our desire to know and do His will? "Loving God" doesn’t mean having warm, pious thoughts about Him when we pray or "feeling" Him there. If we have those positive feelings during prayer, then great. But feelings come and go; they’re fickle. The real test of our love for God is whether we’re growing in the desire to obey Him and to seek His will. Of course we’re weak human beings, so carrying out His will is hard; sometimes we fall short on the execution. But the desire to do His will should be increasing gradually because of our prayer.

Are we growing in those things that St. Paul tells us are the fruits of the Holy Spirit: (Galatians 5) Charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, chastity. Are we growing more loving with others? More patient? However holy you may feel because of the time you spend in prayer, something is wrong if it’s not gradually making you more patient, kind, etc. Or in those times when we fail to act as we should -- as we all do frequently -- we should at least be growing more and more aware of the gap between the way we’ve acted and how Christ calls us to treat people. It shouldn’t just be a matter of shrugging our shoulders and letting it roll off our backs, so to speak.

Does our prayer life strengthen us in our primary vocation? What does that mean? Well, God plants us in the soil where He knows we can grow in holiness. Look at the concrete circumstances of your life to see where and how God is calling you to grow more holy. So if you’re married, that’s your primary vocation. Your spouse and family are the soil in which God planted you, and He’s given you the tools to grow in holiness right where you are.

I’ll make up an exaggerated example to make the point: let's say you think that growth in prayer consists of spending as much time as possible alone in the church before the Blessed Sacrament praying through all 150 Psalms each evening...which you do instead of having dinner with your family and tucking your kids into bed at night. However holy that prayer time may seem to be, a red flag should be going up because of the way it’s seriously impairing your ability to be a good spouse and parent, which is your primary vocation. Your prayer life needs to be suited to nourishing and strengthening you in your primary vocation, not calling you away from it. God doesn’t call everyone to be monks and nuns. He doesn’t expect a wife and mother to pray the same way as a nun does; nor does he expect a husband and father to pray the same way as a monk does. Anytime we’re trying to take stock of our prayer lives, we need to keep our primary vocations in mind and gauge ourselves accordingly.