pat loughery

As I’m teaching a course on Prayer this fall and intentionally seeking to expand my students’ understanding of prayer, I’m also finding it difficult to come to a solid definition of the concept myself.

In our first class gathering, I showed our students these descriptions from well-known voices through history:

“Prayer is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God or the
requesting of good things from God.”

– St. John of Damascus, from the Catholic catechism

and another…

“There are several definitions of prayer. But it is most often called
talk, a conversation, a colloquy with God. Conversing with someone,
not only do we speak but we also listen. Prayer, therefore, is also
listening. It consists of listening to hear the interior voice of
grace. Listening to hear the call. And then, as you ask me how the
Pope prays, I answer you: like every Christian — he speaks and he
listens all the more. The most important thing is precisely what he
“hears.” And he also tries to unite prayer with obligations, his
activities, his work, and to unite his work with prayer. In this way,
day after day, he tries to carry out his “service,” his “ministry,”
which comes to him from the will of Christ and from the living
tradition of the Church.”

– Pope John Paul II,
Address to the Institut Catholique, Paris (June 1, 1980)
from The Wisdom of John Paul II, p. 59.

and another:

Prayer in my later years has become simply letting myself be nakedly known, as I am, in all my ordinariness, face to face, without any masks or even religious makeup.

Richard Rohr, Lever and a Place to Stand, A: The Contemplative Stance, the Active Prayer

and a bonus quote.

“Prayer is the movement of trust, of gratitude, of adoration, or of sorrow, that places us before God, seeing both Him and ourselves in the light of His infinite truth, and moves us to ask Him for the mercy, the spiritual strength, the material help, that we all need. The man whose prayer is so pure that he never asks God for anything does not know who God is, and does not know who he is himself: for he does not know his own need of God. All true prayer somehow confesses our absolute dependence on the Lord of life and death. It is, therefore, a deep and vital contact with Him whom we know not only as Lord but as Father. It is when we pray truly that we really are. Our being is brought to a high perfection by this.”

– Thomas Merton, source unknown

I’m finding that I use a concept these days that includes the ideas of mindfully recognizing and intentionally pursuing the presence of God the Sacred.

It used to be that prayer meant a dialogue with God, including both speaking and listening.  Of course, usually we speak more than we listen, both in relationship to God and other people.  But prayer meant mainly conversation.

I’m lately finding that description to be limiting.  In particular, I find that prayer is largely about presence: my presence with God; and God’s presence with me.

God is present with me at all times and in a broad variety of ways, many of which I do not yet recognize.  God is present to me as I speak and attempt to listen, and as I pray from the Gospels and the Psalms, and as I gather with others in a time of celebration and worship.  And God is also present to me as I see the changing colors in the leaves of the trees along my commute to work, in the wisdom and humor I hear in my children, in the way my soul sings when I see a beautiful cloud or hear the beauty of a well-tuned engine.

God is present with me when I recognize the transcendent in my everyday life.

So I intentionally, mindfully pursue God in that everyday life.  I want to be aware of the beauty of the life that I live, whether that beauty comes from a Psalm or a child’s smile or reading a well-crafted phrase or seeing a trout on the rise.  When I’m aware of those transcendent moments, I see the veil between the mundane and the Holy being pierced beyond repair.

If those moments of mindfulness simply turn me toward being thankful for the written word or a lovely smile or a beautiful fish, I’ve missed the ultimate point.  Instead, they should turn me toward their Creator who speaks abundantly and wittily and profoundly in these moments.

If seeking and perceiving Presence is the point of prayer, then the activities of prayer can be profound or mundane.  Cooking can be prayer; tuning a bicycle can be prayer; attending a concert can be prayer; showering and breathing can be prayer.  If I recognize and sense and pursue God in these activities, they can be prayer-full.

Prayer has become for me a challenge to open my spirit and my eyes to recognize the Holy in all that I see and experience.  Not all that I experience is Holy, but the Trinitarian God has so drenched this life in the colors of Presence that it is nearly impossible to miss that Presence.