Souls of Prayer

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

We are told in today's Gospel, “It came to pass, as he was praying in private, that his disciples also were with him. And he asked them, saying, ‘Who do the crowds say that I am?’” (Luke 9:18).

We are told, “It came to pass…he was praying in private.” All throughout the Gospel, Our Lord gives great importance to prayer. So, one of the first things we have to learn in our spiritual life is about prayer. And we are always learning.

There is a phrase in the Gospel that says, “No longer do I call you servants, but I have called you friends” (John 15:15).

One writer says that that's among the most important lines in the whole of Scripture. We are called to be friends of Jesus, intimate friends of Jesus. For friends to get to know each other, they have to communicate. They have to spend time with each other.

If somebody was to say, “You know, I have a great friend, my best friend, they live in Alaska. and we talk once a year on the telephone.”

Well, you would know that that's not really a great friend. Friends have to see each other, they have to communicate, they have to share what's in their heart. They have to talk.

For our relationship with Jesus to grow, that talking is very important; hence, the importance that's given to our two half-hours of prayer. We don't delay them, we don't put them off, we try to get them done in all sorts of places, if necessary.

Basically, the rule of our life is two half hours of prayer. We have to try and make those two half-hours really into prayer, so that it's not three minutes of prayer and then twenty-five minutes of something else, or distraction, or thinking about other things.

St. Teresa of Ávila always brought a book with her to the prayer. That's one of the reasons why our Father has written the books that he wrote: to help us in our prayer.

Nearly everything that our Father wrote, all his homilies, all his books—all about helping us to be souls of prayer. That's the goal.

In the course of our life, we have to try and get to know those books really well. Use them frequently, get to know those points, talk to Our Lord about them.

We might start our prayer telling Our Lord about the things we did yesterday, or the things we're going to do today. Little bits and pieces of conversation.

But often, after two or three minutes that can run a bit dry, and we need something else to keep our prayer going. So, we read a point or two, and then we talk to Our Lord about that point or two. And we read another point or two, and then we talk to Our Lord about those things.

Our prayer is not spiritual reading. We're not reading all the time. In the norm of spiritual reading, when we read, the emphasis is on reading. We keep reading.

If we stop to pray and talk to Our Lord about every line or every word that we read, we'll never get through the things we have to read. The idea is that we spend time reading, and maybe later we bring those things to our prayer, if the Holy Spirit has spoken to us.

But in our periods of prayer, the emphasis is not so much on reading. It's on talking, conversing with Our Lord. We read a line of Scripture or a word, like we've just done, or a word or two of The Way or some other book, and that stimulates our conversation. Then we go back to read something else.

There was a little girl once who went to Mass with her Mum. Her Mum used to stay behind to do a few minutes of Thanksgiving after Mass. The little girl stayed there a bit longer.

Finally, the mother came out and the little girl stayed on a little longer. When the little girl finally came out, the mother was curious to know what she had been praying about.

She asked her daughter, “What were you talking to Jesus about?”

And she said, “I was just telling Jesus that today I'm going swimming, and if he wants he can come and stay inside me and be a bit like a submarine inside me as I swim around in the water.”

The mother was impressed by the simple, childlike prayer of her daughter, who knew how to tell Jesus the simple ordinary things that she was going to do that day.

Our prayer is to be full of those simple ordinary things.

When we talk to our friends, we tell them about the ordinary things of every day, what's going through our heart, what's going through our mind, what we did yesterday.

We don't come out with big, long words that we looked up in the dictionary, that people don't understand. We talk about simple ordinary things.

We say the same things very often. It's very healthy that our prayer is full of those ordinary things that we do every day.

We come to share them with our best friend. We seek out His company. We lower the drawbridge of our heart because our prayer is a heart-to-heart conversation.

The heart is very important in our faith. “Come back to me with all your heart. … Rend your heart and not your garments” (Joel 2:12-13).

“I will take out your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezek. 36:26).

St. John Damascene says, “Prayer is a raising up of the mind and of the heart to God” (as quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Point 2559).

In prayer, our mind and our heart need to be at work. It's an intellectual exercise. Therefore, often the best times to do our prayer are early in the day. Our mind is at its best very often.

Our mind has to be at work. But if we're just using our mind all the time, maybe we’re just planning or thinking. We might not be praying.

The heart makes it into prayer. Affection. “Jesus, I love you. Increase my faith. Increase my hope. Increase my love.” Raising up of the mind and of the heart.

If our prayer is all heart, then it's just pure sentimentalism. We don't go to the prayer to feel good. Feelings in the spiritual life can be very erroneous.

In other areas of life, feelings can also be erroneous. Some people can feel as healthy as a horse and they might have a big cancer inside them. Some people might feel terrible but they might be very, very well. Feelings can be very erroneous and feelings in the spiritual life can also be very erroneous.

When Christ was on the Cross, He didn't say, ‘You can't beat this feeling. Live on the right side of life.’

Christ on the Cross must have felt awful. But yet He said, “Greater love than this no man has, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

Sometimes in our prayer, God may grant us consolations. We might feel good, we might feel in the seventh heaven. But if we never feel in the seventh heaven, that doesn't mean our prayer is not going well.

Our Father said, “Someday you might go to your prayer and you might feel exhausted. You might feel dry. Nothing might come in your prayer. There might be no human consolations. There might be thirty minutes of battle.”

“But,” he said, “that might be the best prayer that you ever did. Because that prayer is all done for God.”

The day we go to our prayer and we have all sorts of human compensations, we feel good, we get nice ideas, and we feel very enthused about our spiritual life or our vocation or whatever. Wonderful. God may grant us those graces.

But if those things aren't there, it doesn't mean that we're not going well. Perseverance in prayer, fortitude, hanging in there.

“When you pray,” Our Lord said, “go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matt. 6:6).

Our Lord here emphasizes the heart-to-heart relationship of prayer. It's very personal, very intimate. There's nothing that will bring our spiritual life forward faster than our mental prayer.

Probably, from the time we were small, we learned all about vocal prayer, Our Fathers, Hail Marys, Glory Bes, which obviously have their place.

But it might not have been until we came in contact with the Work that we heard about mental prayer—praying with our mind.

Nothing will bring our spiritual life forward faster than periods of mental prayer. That's why it's so important.

We talk to God with our mind, and we foster that spirit of mental prayer. Because it's a mental exercise, hence, the best times of the day are good times to pray. Don't leave it to the last thing at night, when we're sleepy, or not awake, or whatever.

We “pray to our Father in secret.” It's very personal, very intimate.

When we do vocal prayers, we may be praying with other people in the Mass or the Rosary. There's always a possibility it can be anonymous.

But mental prayer—nobody else can do our mental prayer. That's why we have to be very faithful to it. Give it great importance every day. Priority.

“In the morning, long before daybreak, he got up and left the house, and went off to a lonely place and prayed there” (Mark 1:35).

It's like the example for all souls of prayer in the world. “In the morning, long before daybreak...” The primacy of prayer. Prayer comes before everything else.

One of our main concerns everyday has to be, Do I take care of my prayer? Do I get my prayer done?

To leave off our prayer, to forget about it, or to miss it, should be something unthinkable. It's something we should talk about when we go to the chat. It's the first thing we talk about.

If we've got other problems to talk about, we talk about them first, but then always, How was my prayer this week? The first thing we talk about.

Did I use a book? Did I talk to Our Lord? Did I get any inspirations? Do I have a lot of ups and downs in my prayer? There's always something to say about our prayer, or what we've been praying about.

‘I was focusing on this topic’ or ‘I was asking about these souls, or these friends of mine’ or talking to Our Lord about the apostolate.

“And then he withdrew from them about a stone's throw, and knelt down and prayed” (Luke 22:41). Before everything important in His life, Our Lord spends time in prayer.

The whole purpose of our formation is to make us into a prayerful soul. We come to value prayer. We come to see that prayer is the fulcrum that moves the world.

Things happen because of prayer. This school came about because of prayer. The conference center came about because of prayer. The spirit of Opus Dei spread all over the world because of prayer.

God wants us to be a soul of prayer, to make things happen in and through our prayer. We have faith in prayer, hope in prayer, trust in prayer.

“If you have faith,” said Our Lord, “everything you ask for in prayer, you will receive” (Matt. 21:22).

You might think, ‘You know, I've asked for a lot of things in prayer, but sometimes I didn't get exactly what I wanted.’

Often Our Lord doesn't give us exactly what we want, but very often He gives us much greater things: our vocation, insights, ideas, inspirations, affections. He opens our minds and hearts to new things, deeper things; leads us along deeper spiritual pathways, sometimes without us realizing them.

There was a priest in a rest home for priests in Rome, and some priests of the Work used to go and visit there. They met this elderly priest who was 85 years of age. He was a retired professor of Canon Law at the University of Perugia.

They gave him a prayer card and told him to pray the prayer card to St. Josemaría; he would receive whatever it was he asked for.

Then they went away, and they came back about a month later. This man saw them, and he beckoned them to come over. He produced the prayer card and said, “I've been praying this prayer card, but I didn't get what I asked for” in a tone that ‘I want to register a complaint.’

So they asked him, “Well, what did you ask for?”

He said, “I asked that I would be reinstated as the professor of Canon Law at the University of Perugia.”

They felt like telling him, “Look, you might have asked for something a bit more reasonable at 85 years of age.”

But they didn't want to hurt his feelings, so they didn't really know what to say to him. But when they got home, they told the story to Blessed Álvaro.

“Father, what should we tell that priest?”

He said, “Go back and tell him that maybe St. Josemaría hasn't given him exactly what he asked for, but tell him he's given him something much greater: the gift of perseverance in prayer. Because really, if you're asking for something like that at 85 years of age, that's a sign of real faith and hope and perseverance in prayer.”

Sometimes, Our Lord gives us much greater things.

“If you, evil as you are,” said Our Lord, “know how to give good things to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him?” (Matt. 7:11).

“How much more?” It's a beautiful phrase.

Our heavenly Father is all the time giving us good things, opening our eyes to new realities, letting us see new beauties, beauty, truth, and love, revealed to us in all sorts of ways—through our spirit, through points of doctrine, through things we come to see, through the optical angle in the world that Our Lord gives us.

It fills us with faith and hope and joy and so many other things, and enthusiasm, and wonderful ideals that God has placed in our life, the greatest ideals that any person could have, and all the fruit of prayer.

“But the news kept spreading, and large crowds would gather to hear him and to have their illnesses cured. But he would go off to some deserted place and pray” (Luke 5:15-16).

There were great miracles happening. Incredible things were happening around Him. People were being cured. He was feeding five thousand people (Matt. 14:13-21).

Yet Our Lord didn't focus on all those things. He didn't say, ‘OK, bring on another five thousand; let's feed everybody.’ Or, ‘Let's cure everybody.’

Our Lord withdrew to some quiet place, deserted place, to pray, as though emphasizing to us the danger of activism. We're not just here to run around doing things all over the place and to keep on the move.

Our role is to pray because that's the basis of everything. That makes everything else happen.

“Now it happened that he was in a certain place praying, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples” (Luke 11:1).

It's about the only time that the apostles asked for the right thing. They also asked for faith on another occasion (Luke 17:5).

“Teach us to pray.” They didn't say, ‘Teach us to work miracles, teach us how to feed five thousand people, teach us how to cure all these illnesses, to be a walking hospital, a walking medical facility.’

“Teach us to pray.” Our Lord wants us to say those same words: ‘Teach me how to pray.’ We spend the whole of our life learning how to pray.

One Christmas Eve in Rome, Don Álvaro came down to have a get-together with some people who were there. He was always cheerful, but on this occasion he was a little more serious.

He said to the people there, “You know that St. Josemaría is working many favors for many people all over the world. Sometimes his gracious favors are for people who know nothing about Opus Dei. To me, he gives me nothing.”

“But,” he said, “I've come to realize it's because I don't know how to pray.”

There were many young people in that get-together who sort of swallowed hard. Don Álvaro was saying something like that in front of people fifty years younger than him.

They knew very clearly, if there was anyone in the Church today who knew how to pray, it's Blessed Álvaro.

Yet he had the humility to say something like that: “I don't know how to pray.”

If he had the humility to say something like that at the end of his life, how much more are we in need of saying the same thing to Our Lord in the tabernacle: ‘Lord, I don't know how to pray. Teach me how to pray.’

Our Lord said, “Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3).

The pathway of spiritual childhood is the way to go. Learn to pray like little children—very open, very sincere, very innocent, very sweet.

Know how to begin again. Make a lot of mistakes. Each time that we come to pray, we can try and renew that spirit of childlike-ness.

A lady came to a get-together in Singapore once with Don Javier. There was a newsletter on the seat, and while waiting for the get-together to start, she started to flick through the newsletter.

She found a picture of our Father there, St. Josemaría, with a beautiful smile, such a warm smile.

She told me, “You know, I don't like your founder. I don't like your founder. I looked up The Way and I found penance, mortification, these other things. This isn't me, this is not my spirit, not my cup of tea.

“But then when I opened this newsletter and I saw the warm smile of St. Josemaría, I said, Oh, my goodness, somebody with such a warm smile like that, they must have a very warm heart. Maybe I was wrong about The Way.

“So I went back and had another look at The Way and I found life of childhood, spiritual childhood, cheerfulness, treasures, spiritual treasures. Very different from my first impressions.”

We also have to discover those wonderful treasures that are there. We've been given real spiritual treasures. We're very wealthy from a spiritual perspective.

St. John Paul II said to Blessed Álvaro once, “Opus Dei is very rich.”

He said, “We're very rich in prayer.” Pope St. John Paul said, “That's what I meant.”

We have wonderful things. We have to use them, milk them for all they're worth.

God gives us great talents, five talents, to be a soul of prayer, to work at it, talk about it, go forward little by little.

While we come to do our prayer normally in the presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, we know we can pray anywhere because we're ordinary lay people.

Sometimes we do our prayer, maybe in the garden, or walking along the road, or something. We know that often our best prayer is done in the oratory, but sometimes we find we have to do it on the move for various reasons.

One time somebody asked St. Josemaría to point out to them the most beautiful chapel in Villa Tevere. There are many little oratories there.

“Which is the most beautiful oratory in Villa Tevere?” St. Josemaría said, “The street.”

He pointed to the street outside, more or less emphasizing that our role of prayer is not to be sort of stuck inside in little oratories. We're not in a monastery or in a convent.

We're people of the street. We can pray anywhere—in the middle of a busy street, in traffic lights, crossroads.

But we also need to come and spend time with Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, which is often where we do our best prayer. It's there that we learn how to belong to Jesus Christ.

A journalist once asked Mother Teresa, “Your vocation, Mother Teresa, is to serve the poor. Isn't that right?”

She said, “No, that's not my vocation. My vocation is to belong to Jesus Christ. Because of that, I serve the poor.” Very interesting distinction.

Our vocation is to belong to Jesus Christ. Because of that, we live the lives that we live.

We work in the Catering, we work in the school, we do this type of work, we do this type of apostolate, because we belong to Jesus Christ, and because He wants us to live this way, and live this spirit, and do things this way and that way.

But first and foremost, we belong to Jesus Christ, and therefore, the primacy of our prayer.

When we try and do our two half-hours of prayer, that leads us to live a better presence of God during the day.

When we're mopping the floor, or laying a table, or pressing the button of a washing machine, or answering a door, or just chatting with our friends, or in a get-together, we learn to find God in those ordinary things: to converse with Him, to do the norms of always: acts of thanksgiving, acts of faith, acts of hope, acts of contrition.

These coming days are like the week of the angels, coming to the Feast of the Angels. It's very appropriate that we invoke the angels a little more.

We talk to St. Michael and St. Gabriel and St. Raphael. We pray a little more to our guardian angel. We begin to see the angels around the tabernacle a bit clearer and more frequently, or the angels of the people around us that we're working with or in the get-together.

We live in the presence of the angels.

Our guardian angel hopefully takes us by the hand and leads us forward in prayer. He's always beside us.

Every day we pray to our guardian angel: Help us to take care of these spiritual treasures. Keep us away from bad things. Defend us against the wickedness and snares of the devil.

You see, God has lit a little candle in our heart, which is our vocation. The whole world and the devil will be trying to blow out that candle.

Our guardian angel and St. Michael are there to protect that candle. Help us to take care of the important things. Go back and begin again, to steer us clear of problem things that might endanger us in any way.

Little by little, by taking care of those two half-hours, we try to convert our whole work into prayer. The secret of Opus Dei is not work; it's prayer.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church has a chapter which is called “The Battle for Prayer.” It's a battle. Our Lord wants us to fight that battle.

We can turn to Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels, and tell her:

Lovely Lady, dressed in blue—
Teach me how to pray!
God was just your little boy,
And you know the way.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

GD