HOW WE PRAY

Thursday after the First Sunday in Lent

“If you want God to give you what you want,” the eight-year-old instructed two younger children standing with him on the patio outside St Mary’s, “you have to hold your hands like this.” He placed his palms together and crossed his right thumb over his left, in perfect imitation of the way those serving the altar, acolytes to archbishops, were taught when they were no older than the children before me. Nathaniel scrunched his nose and looked at me. “Right, Father?”

“Well, it’s…” I began tentatively, not wanting to participate in the spawning of a new heresy. All Nathaniel needed (and it was enough, for those of you who knew him) was that I not contradict him. He could go from there.

His hands still folded liturgically, he frowned a bit and warned his catechumens: “Don’t do this.” He pointed his joined hands towards the ground, “or you’ll get the opposite of what you want.”

Sometimes you just have to admit defeat. Before he could entangle me further in error, I got up from the bench and fled to the safety of the church.

St John of Damascus has given us the most sublime definition of prayer. Writing 1,200 years ago, he said, “Prayer is the lifting of the heart and mind to God.”

St John wrote from the depths of the desert encounter with God, drawn from the stark monastic tradition of the Christian East. The soul, stripped of every distraction, ventures into isolation to encounter the One Who Is. Freed from the daily cares of life, keeping body and soul together on rations of dried peas and water, the desert fathers hammered out St John’s definition of prayer in the blast furnaces of their souls. They rose above the world—its beauties and temptations—to find God. Purifying the heart of its love of self and the mind of its fleeting attractions, those who pray in this tradition lift earth to Heaven.

I’m fairly certain if you hold your hands facing the ground (“where the devil lives” I can hear Nathaniel warning) while you pray, you won’t get the opposite of what you intend. That being said, Nathaniel is an unlikely but useful spokesman for another tradition of prayer. It is, we might crudely say, “the Prayer of Asking.” When we turn to God with an anxious or anguished heart and say “O God, help me!” we’re within our rights as creatures. We can pray selfishly, just as we can act selfishly, but asking God to help us, those we know and love or simply those we’ve been asked to remember is not an unworthy or unacceptable prayer. It can be of great benefit to us spiritually if it opens our hearts and minds to how utterly dependent we are on God—it then becomes a prayer of humility—one of the highest virtues.

Nathaniel wasn’t wrong to think he should ask God for stuff when he prayed. The Lord Himself taught us to pray for our daily bread. This approach to God doesn’t turn from the world, but sees the beauty and goodness, the mysteries of creation, as signs of God‘s Presence with us. If St John Damascene speaks for the fiery tradition of the East, St Francis of Assisi is a fair spokesman for the Christian West. Finding God present in all creation and intoxicated with His praise, St Francis said that everything, even death, joins in an unending hymn to God. This tradition sees Heaven here, amongst us, on earth.

One of these approaches is not right and the other wrong. Both emphasize true and necessary things about prayer, God and the world. God has placed us in a world of wonder and we are right to praise Him for it and delight in the gifts it has to offer. There is a time for feasting, a time to ask, a time to rejoice in God’s gifts.

But God is not His creation. He is Uncreated, distinct from everything that exists. Some of the greatest teachers of prayer in the Eastern Christian tradition insist that God doesn’t exist. What they mean is that “existing” is something that only created things “do,” and since God is not created, since He is above His creation, He doesn’t “exist” in the same way everything else does. To approach God the Uncreated One, they say, requires us to “lay aside all earthly cares.” Even beauty and goodness can distract us from God. There is a time to fast, a time to surrender oneself, a time to turn from earthly joys.

Lent is a special time for prayer. We don’t have to say more prayers, or longer ones, but we can mature in prayer. We need to “lift our hearts and minds to God,” to glimpse—even if for a second—something of the Lord as He Is, not as we imagine Him to be. We are creatures, though, subject to earthly cares and fears and hopes and the joys which come and quickly go. It is meet and right to lay our burdens at His feet and hold our hopes and fears up to Him.

This Lent, deepen your practice of prayer. If you usually pray ten prayers, pray one instead and savor each word—hold each word in your heart and offer it to the Lord. See how He speaks to you. If you only pray with a book, drop it. Spend this Lent speaking to God simply, heart to heart. If you never rely on a book, pick one up. The Prayer Book or an old manual of prayers have enshrined some of the highest aspirations of the human spirit. You’ll find there things you’ve long wanted to say to God but couldn’t find the words.

Lift your heart and mind to God—and while there, ask for the good things He has prepared for those who love Him.

PS--Don't worry about your hands.