Day 6: Prayer

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Tuesday of the First Week in Lent

In your prayers do not babble as the gentiles do, for they think that by using many words they will make themselves heard. Do not be like them; your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Matt. 6:7-8

For many of us prayer means nothing more than speaking with God. And since it usually seems to be a quite one-sided affair, prayer simply means talking to God. This idea is enough to create great frustrations. If I present a problem, I expect a solution; if I formulate a question, I expect an answer; if I ask for guidance, I expect a response. And when it seems, increasingly, that I am talking into the dark, it is not so strange that I soon begin to suspect that my dialogue with God is in fact a monologue. Then I may begin to ask myself: to whom am I really speaking, God or myself? . . .

The crisis of our prayer life is that our mind my be filled with ideas of God while our heart remains far from him.

Listen to your heart. It's there that Jesus speaks most intimately to you. Praying is first and foremost listening to Jesus, who dwells in the very depths of your heart. He doesn't shout. He doesn't trust himself upon you. His voice is an unassuming voice, very nearly a whisper, the voice of a gentle love. Whatever you do with your life, go on listening to the voice of Jesus in your heart. This listening must be an active and very attentive listening, for in our restless and noisy world God's so loving voice is easily drowned out. You need to set aside some time every day for this active listening to God if only for ten minutes. Ten minutes each day for Jesus alone can bring about a radical change in your life.

You'll find that it isn't easy to be still for ten minutes at a time. You'll discover straightaway that many other voices, voices that are very noisy and distracting, voices that do not come from God, demand your attention. But if you stick to your daily prayer time, then slowly but surely you'll come to hear the gentle voice of love and will long more and more to listen to it.

Deep silence leads us to suspect that, in the first place, prayer is acceptance. People who pray stand with their hands open to the world. They know that God will show himself in the nature that surrounds them, in the people they meet, in the situations they run into. They trust that the world holds God's secret within it, and they expect that secret to be shown to them. Prayer creates that openness where God can give himself to us. Indeed, God wants to give himself; he wants to surrender himself to the person he has created; God even begs to be admitted into the human heart.

Our Prayer

Why, O Lord, is it so hard for me
to keep my heart directed toward you?
Why does my mind wander off
in so many directions,
and why does my heart desire
the things that lead me astray?
Let me sense your presence
in the midst of my turmoil.
Take my tired body,
my confused mind,
and my restless soul into your arms
and give me rest — simple, quiet rest.