Prayer

Then I asked if I could say a prayer.
Startled, he said, “Why would you even ask?”
So I proceeded.

Placing the heart’s full attention on all that is good and right in the world,
I ask that you be healed in body, mind, and heart.
That you may use this pain and suffering as an opportunity to grow.
That you may fully awaken to your true Self.
And find a peace like no other…

At the end, he thanked me.
Asking: “Why would anyone reject it?”
And I turned my head and cried.

—-

“Be still and know that I am the Lord.”
She said, quoting Psalm 46.
Be still and know that I AM.
With tears in her eyes, she told me she loved me.
I held her hand and thanked God,
Lord Jesus, for the gift of our communion.

—-

We sang “The Strife is O’er” for you.
But, if I could have just told you how precious it is.
Talked you down from that roof.
And shown you all that you still had to do.
Little Mimi, your life was its own prayer.
Couldn’t you see?

—-

But you don’t look like those little bald guys in the orange robes!?

And we laughed.

[END]

Spontaneously composed as part of my final self-evaluation for an 11-week full-time hospital chaplaincy internship. Three are interactions I had just in the past week, and one is me remembering my friend who killed herself in 2004, age 23.

Father Maurice Zundel on Prayer

  • Q: What is prayer?
  • A: It is a cry of love, a conversation with God. It fulfills our need to speak to those we love.
  • Q: Does prayer inform God what we need?
  • A: No. He already knows that better than we do ourselves.
  • Q: Does it change the will of God?
  • A: The will of God is perfect, infinite, and cannot change. Prayer cannot change God, but it aims at changing man, and opening his heart to God. We pray in order to submit our will to the will of God.
  • Q: What is the will of God concerning us?
  • A: It is for our good, our happiness.
  • Q: Can God make us happy if we do not pray?
  • A: No, because our happiness depends on there being a partnership of love between God and ourselves. There can be no such partnership without mutual love, without conversation. Prayer is a conversation of love. [...] Prayer is a gift of God to man. It honors man, not God, because it puts man on an equal footing with God. In making our destiny depend to some extent on ourselves, on our prayer, God treats us as equals. Prayer is choosing God. "We approach God with steps of love." (St. Gregory)
  • Q: What makes a prayer?
  • A: Everything in our life which can be performed with love. We can unite ourselves with the whole universe, love everything, identify ourselves with everything, provided that God is the center. It is good to ask for everything in our prayers, because it shows we wish everything to be spiritualized. For example, the grace before meals gives us an opportunity to affirm our free will, to sanctify what we eat, and to see in it a gift of Love, rather than a bodily necessity.
  • Q: When should we pray?
  • A: Always. Every action offered to God is a prayer. (Just as a father of a family who works to support his children is thereby showing his love for them.)
  • Q: Should we pray each morning and evening?
  • A: Yes. It is essential to set aside, each day, time in which we think of nothing but God. (Just as a father shows, in a special way, his love for his children by spending some of his time playing with them and giving them all his attention.)
  • Q: How should we pray?
  • A: We should pray in the way which best unites us with God. We must decide this for ourselves. It will not always be the same.
  • Q: Must we use words, recite set prayers?
  • A: Prayer is first and foremost a cry from the soul. All vocal prayer -- even inspired prayers like the Our Father and the Hail Mary -- should only be the beginning and the consecration of that inner prayer which springs from faith, hope, and love.
  • Q: Can the body pray?
  • A: Yes. The body normally expresses the spirit.
  • Q: In what does the prayer of the body consist?
  • A: In its bearing, its movements, words, and expression.
  • Q: Can the body pray all day long?
  • A: Yes, provided that, all day long, it expresses a loving soul (especially by silence and purity).
  • Q: How can nature pray?
  • A: Every time men contemplate it in order to come closer to God.
  • Q: What is the liturgy?
  • A: It is the public prayer of the Church. It is above all a prayer of praise, concerning God, not ourselves.
  • Q: What means does it use?
  • A: The whole of nature. Everything can be blessed, everything can be changed into prayer. The liturgical blessings bring about a transfiguration. Everything becomes a sort of canticle of love. For example, water becomes holy water. [...] NOTE: In making our discovery of God we make the discovery of our own person, of the whole of nature. Everything becomes infinite and eternal. All nature is a transparent veil over the face of Love. Religion is a life of love. Reality is only a sign of the presence of love.

The Merton Prayer

In Thoughts in Solitude, Part Two, Chapter II consists of fifteen lines that have become known as “the Merton Prayer.”


MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

—Thomas Merton, “Thoughts in Solitude”
© Abbey of Gethsemani

With thanks to Gary Gach.

Source: mertoninstitute.org

A silence which is not an absence of sound

“The infinite sweetness of this Greek text so took hold of me that for several days I could not stop myself from saying it over all the time…

Since that time I have made a practice of saying it through once each morning with absolute attention. If during the recitation my attention wanders or goes to sleep, in the minutest degree, I begin again until I have succeeded in going through it with absolutely pure attention. Sometimes it comes about that I say it again out of sheer pleasure, but I only do it if I really feel the impulse.

The effect of this practice is extraordinary and surprises me every time, for, although I experience it each day, it exceeds my expectation at each repetition.

At times the very first words tear thoughts from my body and transport it to a place outside space where there is neither perspective nor point of view. The infinity of the ordinary expanses of perception is replaced by an infinity to the second or sometimes the third degree. At the same time, filling every part of this infinity of infinity, there is silence, a silence which is not an absence of sound but which is the object of a positive sensation, more positive than that of sound. Noises, if there are any, only reach me after crossing this silence.”

—Simone Weil, in a letter dated around May 15, 1942 written to her spiritual director Father Perrin, as published in Waiting for God