Lord, Teach Us to Pray

I wait for you, O Lord;
I lift up my soul to my God.
Psalm 25:1-2a

The Catechism of the Catholic Church is broken up into four very broad sections, one of which is entirely devoted to prayer. It begins with this question: What is prayer?

Years ago it would never have particularly occurred to me to ask what prayer was. That, I assumed, was a "duh," like asking what a pew or the Bible was--it was something everyone knew. As a teenager, "talking to God" was not something I particularly liked doing. I did not know how to present a clean heart, a prerequisite to prayer I knew was essential. Even the very purpose of prayer more or less always eluded me. I could tell God about my day, but He already knew my every thought. I could ask Him for things, but He already knew I needed them. This view of prayer is, of course, very narrow, very pinched, very immature. When I became Catholic this view was blasted open, blasted into world of prayer so large that even now I feel completely inadequate to write about it. I have but put my toes into the ocean that restlessly awaits.

The first real definition of prayer I ever read was penned by St. John Damascene. He wrote, "Prayer is the raising of one's mind and heart to God..." There was much food for thought here, and it the implications of this simple statement occupied my mind for days. The idea that prayer might be something more than talking somehow came as a great revelation. Gestures took on a whole new meaning. I was always taught that one bowed one's head and folded one's hands to show that nothing will distract one from prayer (it never worked for me--the greatest distractions were there, inside my head). I never thought that the actions of kneeling, genuflecting, and crossing oneself might be prayer, leave alone any action that lifted the mind and heart to God. The question "What is prayer?" also made me realize that I was right to acknowledge that I didn't know how to pray. That simplicity was actually the perfect seed, the place one really has to start. I learned to say with the disciples of Jesus, "Lord, teach us to pray..."

Humility is the beginning of prayer--not only humility in the knowledge that we do not know how to pray ("...for we do not know how to pray as we ought... Romans 8.26), but because of the distance between our sinfulness and God's holiness (Luke 18.9-14). Although we speak of "man search for God," it is really ever God's search for us. Man's love, man's thirst, man's desire for God all begins with God's desire, love, and thirst for us. Like the woman at the well we do not at first even know what it is we are being offered: "if you knew the gift of God!" We thirst for God because He first thirsted for us. (John 4; 1 John 4.19) The goal of prayer is the Beatific Vision, to begin here on earth to taste, to see, to understand, and to learn of the infinite eternal love of God. "Because of his transcendence, God cannot be seen as he is, unless he himself opens up his mystery to man's immediate contemplation and gives him the capacity for it. The Church calls this contemplation of God in his heavenly glory 'the beatific vision':" (CCC 1028) Every Christian, without exception, is called to the heights of holiness and prayer.

"How great will your glory and happiness be, to be allowed to see God, to be honored with sharing the joy of salvation and eternal light with Christ your Lord and God, . . . to delight in the joy of immortality in the Kingdom of heaven with the righteous and God's friends." --St. Cyprian