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Formed in Christ

Friday, January 10, 2025Faith

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It seems obvious. You can't hear if there's too much noise. And if you cannot hear, then you cannot listen.

With the apt title "Prayer Today: A Challenge to Overcome," Cardinal Angelo Comastri leads off the series of prayer guides for the Holy Year 2025. Cardinal Comastri is not the first and will not be the last to urge us to pray and yet realistically face the challenges that prayer seems to pose and has posed through the journey of salvation history.
Looking at some figures in Catholic history, he tells us a bit about the challenges they faced, sometimes battling seemingly overwhelming obstacles or challenges. The idea, I think, is to help us see the struggles the saints had as they prayed, the temptations to give up, the problems, evils, or sins that almost engrossed them and to give us, "Pilgrims of Hope," the confidence to keep progressing in our own prayer lives with our own challenges.
Some of them are familiar: time, distractions, obligations, or duties, and a singularly notable one -- the need for silence.
Time is perhaps the most precious commodity we have. Thus, using it for God shows that we consider our time with God very valuable or, more properly, priceless. If you look to the monks and nuns in monasteries, you'll think, "I can never do that." You are probably on target. They started somewhere, usually with small chunks of time.

Here's a little exercise to try. The Lord's Prayer, the Our Father, is well known to us. And we often zip through it at Mass. I must remind myself of this, as well. Pick five minutes in your day, at any point of the day, and the same point daily is better. Take the five minutes to say, or better pray, the Our Father. Sounds simple, right? You will be surprised how slowly five minutes go by when you are focused on one thing, in this case, the prayer Jesus himself taught us.
Distractions: The cardinal reminds us that we must set aside all the things that we usually have at hand for our prayer time. Again, try it for five minutes. Think -- no television, no sports, and no cell phone. Notice none of these things are bad. Rather, we set them aside for something better -- God.
Obligations or duties: We have them, and some have lots of them. Perhaps no one has more of them than a mom. And moms tell us they love getting away, even for a bit, from all of it, simply to recoup or regroup. There are moms' prayer groups popping up, and parishes often have them several times a day to accommodate the requests and the varied schedules of the moms involved. If moms can find time, most of the rest of us could, as well.
And the biggest one -- the need for silence. It seems obvious. You can't hear if there's too much noise. And if you cannot hear, then you cannot listen. So, with all the other issues mentioned above, as you start, the most important will be getting those elusive five minutes of complete quiet, apart from distractions and duties, and ready to listen even as you pray the words of the Our Father.
I recommend the Our Father, because, as Cardinal Comastri reminds us in his little introduction to prayer, when the disciples of Jesus asked him to "teach us to pray as John (the Baptist) taught his disciples," it was the Our Father that Jesus taught them.
We have started a new civic year -- 2025. So, resolutions are a common means of setting goals. Perhaps a resolution about the five minutes a day would help kickstart or restart your prayer life.
In the coming columns, we'll see some of the ways that others have taught their disciples to pray.
"Prayer Today: A Challenge to Overcome," or the seven following booklets are not readily accessible. Two other "beginner" guides are more available, one from the 20th century and another from the 21st. And while they are for beginners, they are also most helpful if you need a restart of your own prayer life. In some ways, we are all truly "beginners."
One is "Beginning to Prayer" by the late Orthodox Archbishop Anthony Bloom. At less than 100 pages, including its introduction, it is a classic and a little gem. It is both practical and easy to follow. Initially published both in Britain and in the U.S. in 1970, it is still available. Check at Amazon. Listing at less than $10, you cannot go wrong. I have a copy from seminary days (50 years ago), with a cover price of $1.45!
The other comes from Bishop Robert Barron of Word on Fire fame, who recently wrote "An Introduction to Prayer." At 150 pages divided into 26 chapters, it contains something for everyone. It's available in multiple versions: paperback (like Bloom's book, less than $10), Kindle, and audiobook from Amazon.