PRAYING AS WE OUGHT

St Paul shows his complete honesty in this part of Romans 8 (one of the most remarkable chapters of all of his letters). St Augustine reflects on this statement in one of his sermons.

“Surely,” he writes, “St Paul knew the Our Father. So how could he say that we do not know how to pray as we ought?” He then demonstrates that Paul was correct: we (and he) forget how to pray. In II Corinthians 12 he writes that after being granted “the abundance of revelations,” he was given a “thorn in the flesh” to keep him from being too elated. “Three times I begged the Lord about this…” But God told him, “My grace is sufficient for you…” So it seems that rather than resorting to the Lord’s Prayer, Paul tried other ways to pray, that were not appropriate for the Lord’s plan for him. Paul acquiesced, of course, but only afterwards. It took him a while to accept the petition “Thy will be done.”

Sometimes we invert Jesus’ own prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, and we wind up praying “Not thy will, but mine be done.” But all of us who have ever tried this know it doesn’t work that way. We might get “lucky” and find that our and His wills converge, but it is very often simply not that way.

Yet Jesus in the Gospels tells us to ask. How do we make sense of this seeming contradiction? It all depends and what we ask for, and why. Consider the petitions of the Our Father: we ask for what our daily needs are; we ask not to find ourselves in temptation; we ask for forgiveness as we forgive; we ask for God to be glorified; we ask for the Kingdom to come. If we reflect on these petitions, would it give us pause before we truly prayed them? And the version of “ask” in John’s Gospel (John 14:15-16, 16:24) advises us to ask for the Holy Spirit and to whatever truly makes our joy complete. Have we never asked for things that would have, finally, hurt us or disappointed us? Good parents don’t give their children everything they want because they can see the dangers and potential for damage. Would we expect less from the Father? What if we fervently asked for the Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth? From our excerpt today, that prayer would certainly be granted, and in that Spirit our prayers would be properly understood by God.

There are times when words simply fail me in prayer. Not only do I not know what to ask for, I have no idea how to ask. It may be in times of deep spiritual crisis (mine, or that of someone else that I care for), and I have no idea how to move. Here is the reason for the gift of the Holy Spirit—so sit with the Lord and trust that the Spirit’s inexpressible groanings will be what is needed. The best prayer, sometimes, is simply silence…. There is a story that I have heard attached to several different priests, including the St Jean Vianney, who noticed an old man coming to church for several hours every day. Finally, he asked the man what he was doing, sitting in the church for so long. “I look at God,” he replied, “and God looks at me.” It’s a great way to answer the question of whether or not we know how to pray as we ought. -Fr. David