My Thoughts 27/10/2021

I am sure you knows many people who pray in very different ways. My mother when she went to bed of an evening had a prayer book that was filled with prayer cards and because she found it difficult to sleep would sit up in bed and pray using the book and the cards. This was her rhythm and her way of prayer.

You often hear the quote from the Benedictine Dom John Chapman “Pray as you can, not as you can’t.” His other saying was “The more you pray , the better it goes”.

St Paul in the reading today at Mass gives us some very consoling words on prayer. Especially for us who sometimes struggle with prayer and might get disheartened.

“The Spirit comes to help us in our weakness. For when we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit himself expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words, and God who knows everything in our hearts knows perfectly well what he means, and that the pleas of the saints expressed by the Spirit are according to the mind of God.”

It is good to remember that In prayer God always makes the first move. He is waiting for us to respond and God gives us the spirit who gives us the words, if we need words. It is the spirit who moves us to pray. Mother Teresa says: “God speaks in the silence of the heart. Listening is the beginning of prayer.”

The desire to pray is the beginning of prayer. This is similar to the words of George Bernanos “The wish to pray is a prayer in itself.” Try not the make judgements about your prayer. It is enough that you have a pattern of prayer and that you have a desire to be open to the spirit who will give you words and who prays in you.