Basic Attitudes and Forms of Prayer

Introduction. We began yesterday a series of meditations on "How to Grow in Prayer." We shall pursue this theme throughout this novena. Yesterday we focused on one simple idea: the secret of prayer is love. If you are in love with God, you will know how to talk to him, converse with him, and that's, very simply put, what prayer is all about: to converse with God.

But then, you have to be in love with God, you need to have a personal relationship with him. If you have that, prayer should come pretty naturally. If you have a good relationship with a friend, or with husband or wife, when you have quiet time together, you don't have to ask yourself: what are we going to talk about; you just talk about everything and anything that comes to your mind. And in so doing, you express your love. And it's the same with God. It's that simple, really. So, we’re going to continue to explore how to grow in prayer.

First, quiet time with God. (Preliminary) Now, how do we converse with God when we have selected moments of quiet time to spend with him? We should make time like that for God, even if it's only 10 minutes at a time, to have this kind of relationship with God. Set aside a few moments of quiet time to talk with him, to listen to what he may want to say to your heart. Then, as you go on, you probably will want to spend a little more time.

Vocal and mental prayer. Now, when you're with the Lord, here are a few different ways in which we can pray. We can say vocal prayers, like the Our Father, the Rosary; we can also read prayers from a book. The Psalms in the Bible are beautiful prayers. They contain all sorts of prayers: we praise God, we thank him for his blessings, we ask forgiveness, we ask him for our needs...all sorts of prayers. The Psalms are very good to teach us how to pray when we don't know what to pray for, when we don't know what to say.

The danger of saying vocal prayers is that we easily say them in a routine fashion, without even thinking of what we are saying. I know because it happens to me also. It happens to everybody. So, when we say vocal prayers, like the Rosary, we have to be especially careful that we are attentive to what we are saying as we talk to God. We must be attentive to HIM mostly, aware that we are having a special audience with Almighty God. What a favor he is granting us!

Sometimes, vocal prayers take the form of singing. We have some beautiful hymns in the Church repertoire today, hymns we sing at mass, perhaps, which are inspired from the Bible. I can share with you that myself, when I am in my quiet prayer time, early in the morning, in my room, all by myself, I will sometimes sing praise to the Lord. One, for example, that I like very much: "How Great Thou Art!" It just inspires me. It helps me to pray. I don't sing loud so as not to disturb my neighbors; but I sing in my heart and it just lifts me up. I can block out any foreign thoughts, distractions; I'm just pray to God.

Mental Prayer. Besides vocal prayers, there are also mental prayers, prayers that we say in our mind, without sounds. And that is very good too. Just silent prayers. We talk to God in our hearts, maybe just thinking of him, looking at him, so to speak. Sometimes, I can visualize myself just sitting next to Jesus, holding hands like two lovers, and just being happy to think he is very close to me. That's a beautiful prayer. It's very uplifting. The Lord then will sometimes let me know that he is indeed very close to me too. Just being happy in his presence is itself a prayer. Thus I speak to him, I convey a message to him. And he speaks to me by touching my heart and making me realize that he is there. It's just as simple as that. This is the kind of prayer that can really change our heart and bring us into a very intimate union with God. This is mostly a prayer of the heart. We don't think so much as we formulate affections, holy desires, joy, praise, and such things.

So much for the different ways we can pray: with our voice and with our mind, in silence. Realize who is God, we pray to and who we are. This will inspire in us the attitude we must have when we pray.

Prayer is a conversation with God. To pray well, now, we need to realize who God is we are praying to, and who we are. Then we can talk to God the way we should.

Now, when Jesus taught us how to pray, he said: "Say: Our Father, who art in heaven, etc." Those first two words "Our Father" are the key words of the Lord's Prayer, and, I would say, of any prayer we say, because they place us in a right relationship with God: God is my Father; I'm his beloved child. I don't have to use any fancy words with him; I just talk, I come to him to love him. I trust him. I ask him for my needs. I trust he will answer me because I know he loves me. He is my Father. If we really understood what it means that God wants to be for us a loving Father, how much easier it would be for us to pray. When you go to your father, to your mother, you don't use fancy words; you talk simply, using familiar words. Conversing with them, chatting with them, comes natural. And so it should with God.

But let us never forget that God is not just Our Father. He is also the Almighty One, the Creator of the universe, the Supreme Being, he is our Lord, our Master. Therefore, when we come into the presence of God, we do not talk to him as we would to a "buddy." We treat him as "God," but a God who has freely brought us into a close loving relationship with him.

Those two things: God Almighty is so far above me, so different; I'm nothing, I'm his creature; but at the same time there is a closeness. God has granted me freely in his love, as a gift, to be his child. And so, there are two aspects in our relationship with God. He is the Almighty and I must reverence him; I must approach him with honor and respect, as one greater than myself. But at the same time, he is my Father, someone I am close to. I can talk to him with perfect abandon and trust. No stilted language.

These seem to be two contradictory attitudes, mutually exclusive. That they are not. We take note of that in our daily dealings with our human parents. We do not deal with them as with equals; we honor them. They are our elders. As our parents, they are superior to us. And so the fourth commandment of God enjoins us to "honor our Father and Mother". We always speak to them with deference and respect. But at the same tine, we are perfectly at ease with them because they love us and have a special closeness to us. There is a legitimate familiarity within the family circle.

And this is how it is with God also. We honor and reverence him as the Almighty God, but we are not afraid of him. He is not a distant God. He is the God who came down to us, shared our very life. We enjoy a legitimate familiarity with him, an easy access. He is approachable. We can talk to him as we talk to our human parents.

These are the basic attitudes we should have when we approach God in prayer. Who is God? He is at the same time God Almighty and our Father. We are his creatures, but also we are his beloved children.

Four Basic Acts of Prayer

Now that we have these relationships well established, what do we say when we pray? There are basic acts that are most appropriate in our relationship with God, precisely because of who he is and who we are: Adoration, Thanksgiving, Petition, and Repentance.

Adoration (and two closely related acts of admiration and praise)

When we think of God as our Creator and the Lord of all, the first attitude that befits us as his creatures is adoration. I adore you, my God. What does adoration mean? I bow down humbly before you, recognizing that you are the Lord of all, the Supreme Being. I humbly prostrate myself before you. I am nothing. Everything I have I have received from you. I adore your sovereign majesty.

When I see the works of God, the Creator of the universe, the vastness of space, the planets, the sun, the moon, and the stars; he created the mountains, the valleys, the rivers, the oceans, the animals; above all he created man. I stand in awe before God and I feel like singing: "How great thou art!"

Admiration. That too is a form of prayer. To admire, to stand in awe. How great and awesome you are, O God! That's a beautiful prayer. You may be just standing there contemplating a sunset, and you just stand there in admiration. Admiration is one of the finest forms of praise.

Thanksgiving

Now, that God is so great and full of majesty, glory and power, he is also our benefactor, our greatest benefactor. For this reason, thanksgiving has a very important place in our prayer life. He has given us everything we have, everything we are. I cannot budge a finger unless he gives me the power to do so. I cannot take a breath, I cannot produce a single heart beat, unless God is there empowering me. Everything I have: my life, my health, my parents, my friends, the food I eat, the air I breathe, everything is a free gift of God to me. When I think of that, I just want to say: thank you, my God! Thanksgiving is such a basic prayer. No surprise that you have a lot of Psalms in the Bible that are pure thanksgiving.

There is one particular psalm I love very much. It's very close to adoration. It's Psalm 8, composed by David. David is there contemplating the world God has made and he is filled with admiration. Let me read a few verses: O Lord, our Lord, how glorious is your name over all the earth! When I behold your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, What is man that you should be mindful of him?

See how great God is and look at me, a little nothing compared to all that; and still God cared enough for me to create me. Who am I, God, that you should be so good to me? You have made the son of man a little less than angels and crowned him with honor and glory. You have made him in your image and likeness. You have given him rule over the works of your hands, putting all things under his feet. God gave us the whole earth for our use. We lord it over the animals, over the fields. Everything is ours to use. Man is the king of this earth by God's decision. All the sheep and the oxen, the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, the fishes of the sea. O Lord, our God, how glorious is your name over all the earth! Isn't that beautiful?

I can also think of the prophet Isaiah in the temple of Jerusalem one day. He had a vision of heaven. The Lord appeared to him. Angels surrounded him and were singing: "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts!" Then, Isaiah said: "Woe is me, I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips...yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!" This vision marked Isaiah for the rest of his life. God had given him to see in some way his glory, his holiness. After that, when Isaiah thought of God, it was "The Holy One of Israel."

There are moments like that in prayer when God impresses himself on us in a certain way and for the rest of our life.

Petition

After prayer of adoration and thanksgiving, there is petition. We continually beg of God because we are creatures of need. We depend on God for everything and all the time. As I said earlier, I can't even budge a finger unless God enables me. Petition is the most familiar form of prayer.

We might think, on the surface, that praying for our needs is a bit selfish, self-centered, but it doesn't have to be. If we know how to pray, how to ask properly, we shall see it as an act of worship. As we pray for God's help, we proclaim our dependence on him. We acknowledge that he is the source of all good things. That is why we need him all the time. And we also believe that he is a good father who loves us. In a word, we acknowledge who we are and who he is. And this honors him.

We do not approach God with the sole thought of getting things, but in a spirit of reverence. We proclaim both his power and his love in providing for our needs. This is the kind of prayer that God answers.

Repentance

Finally, as God's creatures, we have the duty to do his will. Because God made us entirely, we belong to him. Just as if you build a house, it's yours, you can do with it what you want. You can sell it, give it away, you can rent it. Well, we are God's creatures. He made us entirely, and so he can do with us whatever he wants, or rather tell us what he wants us to do to fulfill his plans, plans he has conceived for our good and happiness. But they are his plans. We are bound to live the way he wants us to live. And whenever we sin, it's because we refuse to do the will of God. We refuse submission to our Sovereign Lord and Master. Sin is always disobedience to God.

If we sin and want to get right with God again, there is a fourth kind of prayer we need to do: repentance. We must tell God: "Lord, I love you, but, you know, I am weak and I have sinned by doing my will instead of yours, and now I'm sorry. Please, forgive me." When we do that, we correct the wrong we have done. We now place our will back into submission to God. And God, always merciful, forgives us. We are once again in a right relationship with our God.

So, these are the four basic and essential kinds of prayer which we all must engage in. If we remember this, it may help us to talk to God as with a friend and tell him our praise and adoration, how we admire him; then we thank him and count our blessings; then, we ask for our daily needs (our daily bread; as Jesus put it in the Our Father). We may pray for peace in the world, the health of our friends, the people we promised to pray for. And finally, we ask God for his forgiveness for our sins. If we do that, we shall take a fairly easy way to learn how to pray well. Amen.

Prayer Novena Index