Prayer is to present one’s self in the presence of God who awaits to transform and purify us. For God is the fullness of being, every perfection, without beginning and without end.
“You must make time each day for prayer…. This is important, for we come to know God, to grow into men and women of faith, to see ourselves as members of God’s greater family, the church. And for all our activity, our busy-ness, without prayer we will accomplish very little.”
This was how Pope Francis emphasized the importance of prayer, during his meeting with families in SM MOA Arena on his pastoral visit to the country in 2015. “If we don’t pray, we won’t know God’s will for us.”
Prayer, an actualization of faith
Man, through reason, has the ability to know for himself that there is God. For God has planted a spark of the divine in everyone’s heart. He can go on living denying His existence, not lifting a finger to be acquainted with his creator and redeemer, but such attitude does not alter God’s presence in everything He made.
Christian science acknowledges that there is an infinite mind, that there is “an incorporeal divine ruling over all as eternal spirit,” all eternal, all knowing, all wise, truly omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent.
This Being, supreme in power and goodness, acts with power in the history of mankind in carrying out His purpose—the only essence of what is best in every human life.
Leo J. Trese describes Him as “He is, who is, no one created Him, He always was and always will be.”
Saint Martin of Tours, travelling in Alps mountain, was apprehended by robbers. He was calm and unafraid even when a sword was placed over his head. A robber, intervened to ask, “Why are you unafraid?” “God watches over me in life and death,” Martin replied.
A prayerful man, life to him is a grateful affirmation of God’s all-encompassing presence. To live sans worries, preoccupations and self-gratification, because God knows best.
But God, the perfect gentleman, only comes to one who goes to Him, although He longs to commune with men He so dearly loves.
The discipline of prayer life
Man prays to God for wellness in body and spirit. He prays to saints for their intercessions, to guardian angels for protection and to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mediatrix of all Graces.
As a conscious effort, prayers can be vocal, our own words or others’. As a prayer of quietude, it can be a presentation of thoughts and feelings or listening to God in our heart or in tears.
Others contemplate on Bible verses, gospel, scenes, spiritual writings while meditating their relevance to one’s life. Or it can be a prayer of adoration, contrition for one’s sins, thanksgiving for blessings or supplications.
A quiet place to pray is preferred because noise can easily disturb one’s flow of thought and any distractions can easily manifest itself and influence dispositions. It is in silence that man can best confront his true self—his nothingness.
The early fathers of faith lived in desserts and mountains. To date, monks and their counterparts still prefer the stillness of monasteries.
Innumerable are the graces which God promises to those who pray: “Cry to me and I will hear you.” (Psalm 49.15) “Call upon me and I will deliver you.” (Jeremiah 33.3) “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened”. (Matthew 7:7)
So the desire to be with God in prayer, should be growing as a guide when all desires to be wordly permeates the self. The hunger for God through prayer can purify man’s conscious and unconscious being.
As the psalmist cried: “Out of the depths, I cry to You, O Lord, Lord, hear my voice! O let Your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleading”. (Psalm 130:1-4)
Prayer, though, is not what we alone do. For prayer is the work of the Holy Spirit. To the extent that we are humble, patient and sincere, God will stir awareness in our heart to purify it, illumine the mind and enlighten the soul.
As Soren Kierkegaard says: Prayer does not change God, but changes us.
How sad, though, that others drunk with power and success consider prayer as a weakness, a support cane when one is unable to help the self.
God’s time and way
Man carries the image of God according to his liking. And it is a merciful God who will say yes to one’s pleadings in His own way, at His own time.
And so the saddest reality when one’s prayer requests are thwarted is to feel forsaken, with hopelessness and despair. In these dark moments of aloneness some people commit suicide, perhaps shouting to high heavens, “My God, why have You abandoned me.”
The tragedy of life is when mortal man equates his benchmarks of a desirable life with that of God.
Saint Paul to the Corinthians emphasized that no one can ever fathom the mind of God, his mysterious and hidden wisdom, and sometimes, “reduce to nothing those who are something so that no human being can boast before God.” (1 Corinthians 28-29)
Although God invites all to partake his blessings, He reminds men: “My thoughts are not your thoughts nor are your ways my ways.” (Isaiah 55:9)
Theologians contend that God surely grants what man pray for if it is in consonance with His will. (1 John 5:14-15)
Since the beginning of time, God the lawgiver made known his instructions to people. Among the 150 psalms, the majority of which were composed for liturgical worship, Psalm 119 is the longest.
The psalm praises God for the splendid instructions in the form of “edicts, commands precepts, words, utterances, ways, decrees teachings,” for Christians to follow. “Long have I known from your decrees that you have established them forever.” (Psalm 119:152)
Thus, man can never adore a God in the image of his liking. God can share man’s intimate feelings and thoughts but He is God with laws that ought to be followed.
The loving parent that He is, to our prayers, His answer can be yes, no, wait or I have something better for you. God makes everything beautiful in His time according to His Ways.
But always, man should remember, when he approaches God in prayer, that he is nothing and good for nothing without God. So, the first foundation of prayer is humility, to realize who we are and to whom we are taking to.
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Santiago is a former regional director of the Department of Education National Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris Collegium in Calauan, Laguna, and Mater Redemptoris College in San Jose City, Nueva Ecija.