Answering the Call to Prayer
If you are a parent, there will be times when you really love being a parent and all you want to do is take care of your kids. But then there will also be times when the baby needs its diaper changed and you really don’t feel like doing it, or when your kids need to be driven to school and you have to wake up early to give them a ride and you don’t feel like doing it. Taking care of them is something you do not because it’s something you feel like doing, but because it is something you know that God has called you to do.
The same concept goes for prayer. I was journaling one time during adoration and came up with something based on a piece from a book I had read at the time and based on my experience in adoration:
While reflecting on the sacramental presence of Jesus, I notice a shadow enveloping the sight of the Host. I am using this experience to relate to times when we find it hard to see Jesus even though we are in His presence (i.e. during prayer). However, this is not really a bad thing. In fact, “we could not fulfill the duties of our calling if we were constantly aware of the ceaseless miracle within us. If the divine presence continually showed itself through our nature, the world’s thronging demands would have no meaning for us. A life of faith would be impossible.” [...] Sometimes we don’t recognize Jesus’ presence but it is the moments we DO recognize His presence that allow us to yearn for more and to understand what He is calling us to do. (quote is from Transforming Your Life through the Eucharist)
From my experience, prayer seems to become most difficult to do when life seems to plateau. Nothing is going really wrong, nothing is going super well, and you really don’t feel God’s presence - and we all get here. Even Mother Teresa had moments of spiritual dryness...and she’s being canonized!! But it is especially important to persevere in those moments because those are the moments when we are extremely susceptible to putting God behind us and relying on our pride to figure things ourselves - especially when we aren't receiving what we think is a timely response from God. Side note: God’s timing is always perfect timing.
Mother Angelica says this: “There will be hard times when your faith will be attacked and when your doubts will be increased. What will you do? Persevere in prayer now.” Couple this with Romans 12:12 – St. Paul says to “Rejoice in hope, endure in affliction, persevere in prayer.” Prayer is something that is absolutely necessary in building your relationship with God, and as I said before, it requires perseverance, humility, and patience! I'll admit that prayer is definitely not easy, and it IS easy for us to get caught up with life and put prayer to the side. But we must see that prayer “is our food without which nourishment we perish.” Think of it as exercise - something your body needs (and intrinsically desires). Except prayer is exercise for the soul. As you exercise, you initially start to feel good. But as I’ve experienced in exercise, you reach a certain point in which you feel as though you’ve plateaued. Your mile times start to get smaller only by milliseconds, your bench press max doesn’t seem to budge, your weight changes at much smaller intervals, etc. This plateau happens in prayer as well. But you know what’s wonderful about this idea? It’s that even in those moments of exercise where we’ve seemed to reach a speed bump, if we persevere, we will eventually start to see progress again - and listen to this: no matter what limitations your body may have on exercising goals, your soul will never be satisfied because the soul is not bound by those limits. For example: no matter how much you practice and train, you won’t run as fast as a cheetah - you’re not physically designed for that. On the other hand, your soul will not reach a point in which it cannot comprehend enough Hail Mary’s and Our Fathers. So what I’m saying is, despite you feeling as if your prayer life reaches a plateau, perseverance will continue to push your ever-growing soul to desire more ways to be satisfied! St. Jean Vianney describes prayer very beautifully and eloquently:
“My little children, your hearts, are small, but prayer stretches them and makes them capable of loving God. Through prayer we receive a foretaste of heaven and something of paradise comes down upon us. Prayer never leaves us without sweetness. It is honey that flows into the soul and makes all things sweet. When we pray properly, sorrows disappear like snow before the sun.”
Wow. “A foretaste of heaven.” Think about that...
St. Therese calls also calls prayer a “surge of the heart” to reach towards heaven. Do you know what else is an encounter with heaven?
The mass aka a type of prayer aka one of the most intimate encounters with Christ you can experience.
God desires you to speak to Him and desires you to listen to him. After all, prayer is dialogue between you and God, and the best way to understand His will for you is to speak to Him and to allow his Spirit to speak to you – God’s desire to pursue us will not relent until He’s received all of us. He truly longs and thirsts for that relationship with you! Listen to how beautifully the Catechism describes this thirst:
The wonder of prayer is revealed beside the well where we come seeking water: there, Christ comes to meet every human being. It is he who first seeks us and asks us for a drink. Jesus thirsts; his asking arises from the depths of God's desire for us. Whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God's thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him. (CCC 2560)
I can literally go on and on about what the saints and the Catechism have to say about prayer. It’s all so beautiful. Prayer is part of your human nature - the ability to pray was something given to you by God when you were infused with a soul - and it is your ability to reach with an outstretched hand towards heaven and build that relationship with your Heavenly Father!
I would like to encourage you to humbly open your hearts to the ways God chooses to speak to you and through you. If praise & worship hasn’t really been your thing, give it a try. If meditative prayer and repetitive prayer like the Rosary hasn’t ever been your thing, give it a try. Whatever you think hasn’t been your “thing” in the past, humble yourself, and offer that up in prayer to God.
For thousands of years He yearned for the moment to bring His son into the world for our salvation. And all it took was a simple “Yes.” Since the day He created you, God has been yearning for your “Yes” - just like He yearned for Mary’s “Yes.” He has been eagerly waiting for you to take that next step to journey with Him!
It is our part to seek, His to grant what we ask; ours to make a beginning, His to bring it to completion; ours to offer what we can, His to finish what we cannot. -St. Jerome
God Bless