Clear The Land For Prayer

What I really love about Catholicism is its pragmatic approach to life. Just because we walk with God does not mean that we will eliminate hardship. Our attentiveness to prayer and the principles of our faith do not minimize the risk of pain in our life. Knowing God is with us, however, helps us dramatically when life dishes out its worse. I say that with reservations however, because there have been seasons in my life when my perceived inaction from God angered me. In the end each of us are called to trust and that is very difficult to do sometimes. We just don’t have all the pieces to the puzzle. We cannot see the whole picture.  

Self-discipline and Gentleness 
If we want to be successful in our prayer life, we need to be able to have some control over our carnality and mental disposition. Our minds will often wander during prayer and that is to be expected but we need to have the discipline to see things through. During prayer we need to call ourselves back to a gentle attentiveness as our minds begin to wander.
Prayer is not about harping on our own failures. It is unceasingly gentle as we meet with a Father of unfathomable love. So be gentle with yourself during prayer. Sometimes your meeting just doesn’t go as planned. That’s ok just recommit yourself and move on. We have to be able to accept our human limitations. Those limitations, however, are not an excuse for a lack of effort.

Sound Expectations
A story I heard years ago about our expectations in prayer really showcases the mercy and love of God against the backdrop of our own perception about it.

A woman with a young family was trying hard to carve out prayer time during the day but her children constantly occupied all her time. As soon as the new day started the children were looking for their mother and so her prayer time with God always came to an abrupt halt. Mom was a little hard on herself regarding her perceived inadequacy in prayer. Weeks later she was attending a seminar on prayer and inquired about her struggles to the event speaker, who suggested that she look at things differently. He said, “Could it be that God, who existed in your children, was so eager to get a warm embrace from you that He was the one that abruptly ended the prayer time each day so he could welcome the day with you?”  
It sure made this young mother think entirely different about prayer and it opened up a world of possibilities and freedom for her. God was not busting her. He was loving her. Sometimes our days are so cluttered, our prayer time consists of sporadic words to Our Lord. God saw that mothers heart. He sees the intent. Yes, we need to try to carve out time each day to pray but we also need to accept our own limitations.

Be gentle with yourself. Life is full of ebbs and flows and sometimes things won’t click but don’t give up.

We, as Catholics, often sweat through various spiritual exercises as if they were designed to produce a Christian Charles Atlas. Many Christians live as if only personal discipline and self-denial will mold the perfect me. The emphasis is on what I do rather than on what God is doing. It’s as if God is a spectator on the bleachers who cheers when I show up for prayer. Our eyes are, far too often, fixed on the wrong image. We focus far too much on ourselves. It’s God who works in us and through us as we yield our lives to him.

Mortification
Catholics have this great word that we don’t hear often. It’s called mortification. Mortification is defined as a subduing of bodily desires. We can look at mortification in a clearer way as simply a detachment of things that hinder our relationship with Christ.
Specifically, in prayer it could be things that I do which prevent me from making the time to pray. One of the things that I struggle with is plain old sloth. I am a hard worker by nature but when it comes to spiritual matters sometimes I’m just lazy about it. Habitual affection for things that draw me away from God should set off warning bells. The sad fact is often we know it and disregard the warning.  We need to remember that we’re all called to self-denial.

For those of you with really busy lives I would say to use good discernment about what makes your life so busy. Some continually add responsibility after responsibility to their already hectic days while others have no control over their busy schedules. We all have responsibilities and some of those demand lots of time. God understands that. But He also wants us to use sound discernment and make wise choices. St Teresa of Avila would ask us to be exceptionally wary of things that erode our opportunities for spiritual development. We are all engaged in a spiritual battle with the enemy of our souls who wants us to fail.

God is not a task master who acts like some kind of a cosmic coach documenting the rights and wrongs and pointing out how bad we’ve failed. Yes, He is merciful and understanding but He’s also righteous and holy. We all need to be honest in our assessment of our own spirituality. There certainly will be a season of accountability for all of us. When that occurs only God knows. This much I know, God expects our honesty. So be truthful with yourself and with God, while holding yourself responsible for the success of your prayer life.

Tips for a Successful Prayer Life
In relation to prayer we need to put all diversions away when we meet with God. Select a time of day when you are at your best. Preferably in the morning but it could be anytime during the day. Try your best to have a silent and calm demeanor when you meet and not a cluttered mind. Have an open and willing disposition. We will get into more details in the next blog post.
Finally trust God in the process of prayer. You are only human. God said I will work all things together for the good to those who follow me. So trust Him at his word. At the end of my day I’m always aware if I’ve made the time to meet with God or perhaps have not. We need that kind of sensitivity.

Mortification also involves wisely looking at my use of time.  Answering the call of service under the guise that it is a work of God while ignoring a fuller relationship with God through prayer and spiritual reading is a pathway to darkness. St Teresa was very adamant about that. Learn to discern what is from God AND for YOU and what is not for YOU. Some endeavors, even while appearing to be righteous things, are paths away from God which are disguised as light. Even Satan can come to us as an angel of light.

Each path we take produces some variable in our life. Is the path you’re presently on creating a more fruitful existence or is it self-serving?

G.K. Chesterton said this, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.” Don’t give up on developing your prayer life. God will meet you right where you are. The Christian life was never meant to be followed in our own strength. Sure, it demands discipline and work but God will always show up to make up for our lack. Yield and trust is all God asks of you.

Our eyes are often not on God at all. At heart we are practicing Pelagians, who believed there was no need for God’s grace because people only need to make up their minds to do Gods will. Meaning it’s all up to us….  

We subtly believe that we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and indeed, we can do it ourselves. This errant notion transfers over into our prayer relationship with Christ and nothing could be further from the truth. Our approach to the Christian life is as absurd as the enthusiastic young man who had just received his plumbers license and was taken to Niagara Falls. He studied it for a minute and then said. “I think I can fix this.”

Later, as we become aware of our inadequacy and insufficiency our bootstraps are cut and once the original fervor has passed we start to give up. We discover our inability to add even a single inch to our spiritual growth because our eyes are focused in the wrong place. There begins within us a long winter of discontent that eventually flowers into a subtle despair as we are overcome by the ordinariness of life, by duties done over and over again. We begin to believe that the surrender to Christ is beyond our reach.

Surrender to a dynamic prayer life is not out of your reach. God has not made the process difficult, we’ve convinced ourselves it is. 
Our prayer life should reflect a humility that we don’t have many answers and we’re open to being molded and having our ideas challenged. Pride gets in the way.

Closing Thoughts & Recap
In closing nothing good is easy. It takes effort and some discipline to succeed at anything we do. It is no different with our prayer life. We have the incredible guidance of people like St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila and countless others who urge us onward. The rewards are unfathomable and yes, eternal. Your life depends on it so make sound choices.
 

1. Have proper expectations. Be patient with the process of prayer.
2. Self-denial: Anything good requires work. Prayer is no different. Keep at it.
3. Clear the land: Remove the obstacles preventing you from scheduling prayer time

You can also refer to our video post on our parish youtube channel

In our next post we will lay the foundational elements of a good prayer life as we continue the series on Building a Successful Prayer Life.