PRAY UNCEASINGLY

November 9, 2008

Speaking through St. Paul, God has given us the command to pray unceasingly (Rom. 12:12). Like the first followers of Jesus, we are called to give ourselves continually to prayer (cf. Acts 6:4).  So important is the communion with God we can achieve only through prayer that it is to be preferred to all other human activities and all other efforts to serve him and give him glory.  The reason it is to be preferred is because God's will for us is our happiness and nothing can make us as happy as communion in love with him.

The Lord himself was a model of this prayer, which alone can prepare, strengthen, and sustain us through our life's activities in such a way that we never lose sight of God or lose our way in life. In the first place, Jesus was content to put off his public ministry for the first thirty years of his life, preferring instead a quiet life, hidden from the eyes of the world, in the little hamlet of Nazareth. These years were not wasted, but afforded him abundant time for contemplative communion with his heavenly Father. They enabled him to pray unceasingly during the countless uneventful days and hum‑drum routines of carpentry work. Then, during his brief public ministry of three years, in which the demands he placed on himself were exhausting, he nonetheless made significant time for prayer (cf. Mk 1:35, 6:46; Lk 6:12, 9:28). He prayed before beginning each day's work. He retired to deserted places to pray, even when he knew crowds were looking for him, hungry for his teaching and desperate for his healing power. He spent whole nights in prayer before making important decisions. He concluded the Last Supper with prayer, then prayed in the garden before his passion. Even from the cross he prayed.

The primacy of prayer in our lives and the cultivation of our interior life with God is further illustrated by an event in the Lord's life, as recorded by St. Luke (10:38‑42). A woman named Martha invited him to her home, then busied herself with all the details of hospitality. She had a sister named Mary who seated herself at the Lord's feet and listened to his words. When Martha complained that her sister had left her to do the household tasks alone, the Lord replied, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and upset about many things: one thing only is required. Mary has chosen the better portion and she shall not be deprived of it."

How can we afford to take Mary's portion? How can we take care of our career and household tasks, our civic duties and social obligations, like Martha, while yet reserving adequate time for prayer?

First, we must honestly ask if it is time we lack, or desire. For example, in spite of all that's said about our hectic pace of life, all the evidence shows that Americans in general are watching more hours of television than ever before. When people come home at the end of the day, the first thing they seem to reach for is the remote control, not the Bible. The old saying applies here that "those who desire find a way; those who don't find an excuse". Don't we all find a way to make time for the things we really value?

The primary issue, then, is committing specific times to prayer every day, and considering fidelity to that commitment a matter of fidelity to the Lord. If we want to learn to pray unceasingly, we must begin by honoring those daily times of prayer, and by making everything else secondary to them.  The more we pray, the more conscious we become of God, and of our communion with him, and the more does this awareness linger throughout the day.

What is it like to pray unceasingly? We've all experienced something like it. We've all had something unceasingly intrude into our minds and hearts. Maybe it was when we first fell in love, and found ourselves unable to concentrate on much of anything but our loved one. Or maybe it was when some great disaster, or the threat of one, struck us, and we were beset by anxiety over the future, asking over and over, "What will I do?" Or maybe it was a deep wound or betrayal that left us depressed or aching, so that no matter what we did, we couldn't get it out of our mind.  Just as we can fall into prolonged, uninterrupted states of romantic longing, or of depression or anxiety, so also we can enter prolonged states of unceasing communion with God in prayer.

Prayer is uplifting our minds and hearts to God. When we practice this enough, it becomes natural, spontaneous, and effortless. It is not merely that we have become proficient at what we've practiced, but that the Holy Spirit himself guides, forms, and sustains us. In the end, it is by God's own strength, not ours, that we are borne aloft.

God calls us to unceasing prayer, and so it must be possible, with his grace. He desires this communion with us, and all that is necessary is that we stir within our hearts the same desire for him.

+Bishop Raymundo J. Peña

last updated 11-Jan-2010 8:22 sitemap