Imagine we meet with a very special friend, whom we have not seen for a while. A person who holds a very important place in our lives. What would that meeting look like?
Would we sit down, impatiently looking at our watches, thinking of what we need to do later that day? Would we focus on what we want to say, taking up all the oxygen in the room? Are we focused on what we think, what we want, what we need or want to say or are we genuinely interested in knowing how our friend is?
It is difficult to imagine someone like Jesus being a friend like that to us, but He is accessible … available, every day, anywhere. In fact, He is there always with us, waiting for us to respond to His call for us to talk with Him through prayer.
I find it difficult to pray along with others sometimes because I get distracted or rushed. The random parishioner who seems totally unaware of how loud they are praying along, overshadowing all the other parishioners combined in communal prayers. This distracts me.
The other day, while at Mass, my wife and I sat next to some parishioners who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) stop chatting. One of them was texting during the Liturgy of the Word. I found myself getting annoyed and trying so hard to ignore them or to look at them differently. I was trying to look at them as Jesus might, but found it so difficult to summons up the Christian in me. So I prayed to God … “Sweet Lord, please give me patience, and soften my heart, so that I can see my brothers and sisters and children of God.”
While praying, I felt at peace. I all of sudden felt a wave of compassion wash over me, and I found myself asking the Holy Spirit to nudge them to pay attention. I prayed to God, asking for Him to have mercy on those parishioners because I do not know their situation, nor what they were discussing that was so important, but I prayed that everything would be okay in their lives and that they would leave the Mass more blessed than when they came.
A prayer is a conversation with God. And like any communication, it is important to pay attention, and to come into that conversation with the right attitude, the desire to engage and openness to hear as well as talk, as both are important. God doesn’t always answer right away, of course. And sometimes, there is no answer. But that isn’t the point of prayer, in my way of thinking. Prayer is an opportunity to know God. He already knows us, but that doesn’t mean that I cannot share what is on my mind.
For those of us who are blessed with strong connections in our lives to other people (a parent, sibling, or other family member, or even a close friend), we sometimes know how someone feels when we know what is going on in their lives. For example, if a close friend loses a loved one, we know they are sad. We don’t need them to share that with us.
But who doesn’t yearn to hear what that close person has to say? Even if we know very well how that person must feel, we are still eager to spend time with that person and listen, or sometimes just sitting in silence and feeling each other’s presence.
When I pray, I like to slow myself down. I like to briefly consider every word that I am saying, especially when I pray a rote prayer. It is so easy to recite a prayer from memory, without really stopping to consider what we are praying. Would we really approach a dear friend like that? Would we recite our speech at them or would we speak what’s in our hearts and minds?
Some people may find it difficult to think of time with God as being “expensive”. But if we think of that carefully, and imagine how we might value our time with someone like a TV personality, a politician or an important contemporary artist … if God was sitting with us, wouldn’t time spent with God be so much more valuable to each of us?
I sometimes think that we take for granted the time we spend in prayer because we can take the time whenever it is convenient for us. And perhaps that cheapens the experience. Or we are in a rush and decide to pray only from habit, or out of a sense of obligation. But if we could see the fruits of our actions in Jesus’s face … if He was sitting there looking at us … and we could see Him … I wonder how quickly we would change our way of thinking.
I am guilty of this as much as anybody else and when I catch myself rolling through the words from memory when I say grace, for example, I slow myself down. Lately, I even pick my plate up and hold it in my hands, forcing myself to really appreciate the sacrifice, the effort that it took from so many, and God above all else, to bring this food to me, so that I can eat. It makes me truly grateful, which I think is the point of saying grace before meals in the first place.
It takes me a long time to pray the rosary for that very reason. You can try this yourself. Go look at some prayers on this site. Practice saying every word like you mean it. Like it comes from inside you and that you are speaking to God, or the Virgin Mary, standing right in front of you, or sitting there listening to what you have to say.
I bet that if you do that, open-hearted, your experience and relationship with God will change dramatically.
Pray with Dad 