How to pray
The brothers in Egypt are said to have frequent prayers, but they are very brief and, as it were, suddenly hurled, lest protracted delays may cause to vanish or to dull the alert and aroused attention that is indispensable to one praying. By this they also show that this attention, if it shouldn’t be dulled when it can’t last, also shouldn’t be suddenly broken off when it continues. For if we shouldn’t indulge in a lot of talk in our prayer, neither should we avoid sustained prayer when fervent attention continues. To talk a lot while praying is to use superfluous words to ask for a necessary thing, while sustained praying brings the heart’s continued and pious emotion to the one to whom we are praying. For quite often praying consists more of groans than of words, more of tears than of talk. God looks upon our tears, and our groans are not hidden from him who made all things by his word and does not need human words. We need words, then, to help us consider and to observe what we are asking for, not in order to inform or to sway the Lord. (Augustine Epistle 130, 20-21; PL 33, 501-502)
Wonderful. Great advice for liturgy as well as prayer.
“;;; not in order to inform or sway the Lord.”
I love the the caution against trying to inform the Lord. We do try to to that, don’t we. Silly humans that we are :-)
“We need words, then, to help us consider and to observe what we are asking for, not in order to inform or to sway the Lord.”
Wonderful! and absolutely central to understanding prayer. And, incidentally, what good advice for all those called on for public invocations at dinners, conventions, other such gatherings, those who spend an inordinate amount of time telling the Lord what he — assuming that he is in fact omniscient — already knows.
I quoted yesterday from a German Jesuit site; here’s another bit that seems apt here, pretty homely when compared to Augustine.. Again, apologies for clumsy translation. Unfortunately, these reflections are always unisigned — save for one, a year go, trying to deal with the question of how such things as the Haiti quake take place in a world created for good.
“According to an experienced spiritual adviser, prayer has more to do with listening than with making words. . . How is it for me, when I pray? . . . Maybe it seems to me like squeezing an orange. I go at it with a bit too much pressure, in order to get as much juice as possible. Is it the same with my prayer, that I want to force a result? The more words, the more pressure in the squeezing?
“Or does it seem to me, rather, that there’s no prayer when I’m silent, for whatever reason? Though when it comes particularly to listening, then perhaps I’m only separated from prayer by a thin veil. Is it perhaps that I need simply to listen? in my speechlessness, to pay attention to what is within? How simple that would be. . . . ”
Though in real life, the practice of silence seems not so simple at all. At least for me.
Centering Prayer is wholly silent, except for the internal recall of a “Sacred Word” which is a psychological cue to call us back from the distractions that invariably and constantly appear. The distractions, can, of course, be noisy.
In CP there are no requests. comments, images or words, not even any praising of God, and no waiting for messages from Him or for mystical experiences. It is not an act of either voice, imagination, memory or intellect. It is a sheer act of the will intending to accept the presence and action of God within us. Accepting the will of God not just in the moment but absolutely is, of course, the hardest part of all. And it’s utterly silent.
“In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”
What Joe has given us is a little excerpt from Augustine’s Letter to Proba. It is a wonderful mini treatise on prayer. Augustine’s reflections had a powerful influence on, among othrs, the author of the “Cloud of Unknowing” – in turn, that great Carthusian text was a shaping force on the so-called practice of “centering prayer.”
Thanks Joe! I hope you keep this up all during Lent. I look forward to these beautiful texts.
Once I learned this I found that I could actually pray —
“Pray as you can, not as you can’t.” Abbot John Chapman, Downside Abbey.
Two more maxims:
“It’s quantity, not quality, that counts.”
“Pray for a half hour every day. Unless you are very busy: then an hour.”