Prayer Part IV: Praying with Everything

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. Romans 8:26

Praying with everything was unattractive to me. I didn't like the expression. It was wishy-washy. It was a watered-down way of praying. I pictured someone sitting next to a precious article, Grandma’s watch or Uncle George’s tombstone and praying, perhaps for guidance from these people. Or worse, I imagined someone making the tiresome excuse that they can find God in Nature and, therefore, have no need of church. I suppose I’m a snob about prayer.

Since that time, I have prayed in the ways I just described and have found peace and love in the practice. And I still go to church every Sunday.

In Thessalonians, Paul tells us to: Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 5:16-18. How is a person meant to pray without ceasing? Didn't Paul have work to do, practical problems to solve, distractions? More to the point, didn't he have dry spells, moments of doubt and discouragement?

Paul is asking a lot of us, to be sure, but he also said that: we do not know how to pray as we ought. Paul knows that our prayer is always going to be insufficient. There is always going to be a little too much of us in it, too much crowding out of God. The solution is the Spirit who is there to pray in our place, to add to our prayer with sighs too deep for words.

Imagine the love Jesus felt for this world and all in it, a world he created after all. He came to it, was born of it. He looked at our world and at us and saw objects of his love. We can look around us and see everything in that same way, with that same love. This is prayer. The oak tree whose leaves are browning, the chickadee at the bird feeder, the shirt you are ironing, the face of the young cashier at Target, all holy.

Prayers right there.

It is the Spirit who is always with us, in us, prompting us to see a prayer where we would not, to open our eyes to the holy, to open our hearts to love where we would not dare to expect it.  Imagine! God is so determined that we pray that he has given us the Holy Spirit to pray with us because We do not know how to pray as we ought.

If the universe is God’s creation, which it is, and if all of creation was made holy by the Incarnation, which it was, then surely there are bright moments in our existence that await our understanding, our prayer. We cannot approach these miracles by ourselves. The Spirit leads us, fills in the blanks for us, opens our eyes, whispers in our ears the words that we can neither hear nor utter.

Our neighbor’s picnic umbrella blew off of their deck recently. It was torn in several places. A gusty wind blew it about the yard. Its tatters flopped sadly against the grass. Its once bright stripes were faded. I watched this for a few moments from the warmth of my dining room and without even connecting the obvious dots of brokenness, fading, helplessness Then, I knew I was praying. We do not know how to pray as we ought.

There was no need to connect myself to it. No need to read a lesson into it. That umbrella was a prayer and I prayed it with sighs to deep for words.

Prayer, then, in summary, can be recited, read, memorized. It can be a devout reading of scripture; it can be merely placing yourself in the presence of God. And it can be everything, just as God is everything.

We wonder if our prayers will be answered. They will. Aunt Clara’s cancer might come back, Sandy might not pass algebra. That crush of yours might not propose. Still our prayers are answered because the one prayer that we always say, that we don’t know how to say as we ought, is the prayer that brings us to God. It is the only prayer. It is God’s prayer and it’s ours.

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If you have slogged though all four parts of this essay on prayer, thank you! I am adding here a brief bibliography, slim volumes that have helped my prayer. The catechism tells us that prayer is “lifting our hearts and minds to God.” I really can’t add much to that except that humility is necessary in prayer and that “We do not know how to pray as we ought but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”

Barry, William S SJ -  Paying Attention to God
Norris, Kathleen - Cloister Walk
O’Hea, Eileen CSJ - Manifesting in Form
Taylor, Barbara Brown - An Altar in the World
Wiederkher, Macrina OSB - A Tree Full of Angels