In the gospel of Luke (11:2-4) the disciples make this request after recovering Jesus from one of his many escapes from the crowd into private prayer. Jesus gives them what we call the Lord’s Prayer – just a few phrases. In Matthew’s gospel (6:9-13) Jesus gives it as a private prayer, after warnings again hypocritical public devotion and repeating empty phrases or many words. In all gospel accounts Jesus spends nights and solitary hours in prayer. No doubt, these were extended periods of contemplation rather than vocal repetition of words. The Lord’s Prayer is also found in the Didache (Dee-da-kay) a manual for early Christian worship and instruction from the late first or early second century. How to pray apparently was more a concern for the early church than a talking point in Jesus’ ministry.
Historically, the Church has not followed Jesus’ example in his preference for contemplative prayer. It has been left it to religious orders, monks, the “professionals.” Today there is an emergence of interest and participation in various forms of contemplative prayer. Not surprisingly, the “non’s” or unaffiliated drive this trend, rather than “faithful” church members, who have been wired with a default to clergy-lead or vocal prayer.
Like the early church, personally we may struggle to pray or feel like we are not doing right or praying at all. Teach us to pray may be a cyclic need as we face new experiences that break down our false egos and gods.
I have been a church congregant for my entire life, with 25 in a religious community, 25 years of priesthood, and over 30 years under the guidance of a trained spiritual director, and I am still learning how to pray. Like others, I have followed (and regressed!) in this progression:
- Without rejecting vocal prayers, we move to the realization that prayer is more a listening to God than asking God to listen to us.
- Periods of darkness and apparent abandonment bring us to the reality that that prayer changes neither God’s mind, things, nor events. Prayer changes our hearts, our vision, our response to the world, and consequently our relationships with others.
- Prayer transforms our faith to one in an all-loving but not all-powerful God. God cannot override our free choice of rejection or blindness. When we love, we do not compel, but allow the other freedom of choice—why would God be different?
- Prayer awakens us to the reality that Paul describes in Romans 8: we do not know how to pray; it is the Spirit who prays in us! It is God’s initiative in us, rather than our own doing that cries out in prayer. We simply need to tune-in.
- Prayer is an awareness of a Presence, an energy, within and without, and sometimes, though not necessarily, a response to it.
There are many ways of being open to that Presence—breath work, stillness, chanting, meditation. If this sounds like Buddhism, it should: Jesus was a misunderstood Eastern mystic, calling all to a relationship he shared with God. We also can be aware of this presence in service to others (ministry) or whatever we are doing mindfully.
Our emotional state—joy, grief, anger—can also be our prayer. Too often we associate an emotion with prayer—as if we must feel a certain way to pray OR (worse) that prayer provides a pleasant emotion.
The good news is that there is no such thing as an unsuccessful attempt at prayer. When we go to pray, we are already praying. This is why and how Paul could urge us to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:16)
We can’t help but ask the Lord to help us to pray, but actually we don’t need to learn; we only need to practice.