When parents come to me with the painful news that their children have stopped practicing their Catholic faith, they find it hopeful when I turn to St. Alphonsus and what he has to say about salvation. He recognized that the poor people he served were sometimes not terribly faithful in their church-going, but that they still had many different ways of praying: at home, at work in the fields, on a journey, alone and sometimes together. “Those who pray,” St. Alphonsus said, “will be saved.”  He recognized that prayer ultimately connects us with God which means there is a relationship.

Now it is important to stress that there are many, many different forms and ways of prayer.  Most of us have learned prayers that we repeat: The Our Father, the Hail Mary, the rosary, the creed; indeed, many of us pray regularly certain devotions such as the Divine Mercies or the Memorare to Our Mother of Perpetual Help. Or we have memorized favourites picked up over a lifetime of paying attention to good prayers. 

Moreover, alongside the prayers that we have learned, most of us are also pretty capable of spontaneous prayer, not just when we are frightened or need help, but even more so when we are grasped by something beautiful or stunning or humbling. Then we respond with thanks, a sense of awe, a deep peace in the presence of the Transcendent.  Such prayers are probably more common than we actually pay attention to!

When we pray, we are not throwing words into the Great Unknown, into some infinite or distant universe.  No, we are conversing with Our God. 

Now, somebody who doesn’t know God might say, “How dare we presume to chatter with God! We are weak and fragile mortals!”  To which I reply: But that is exactly what God wants from us, to be presumptuous enough to trust in the reality of this relationship. Indeed, God has spent thousands of years revealing to us both God’s Love and God’s Intimacy to his daughters and sons.  Indeed, St. Alphonsus’ entire sense of prayer was that we should “speak to God as to a friend,” for that is what God has taught us.

Now, many of us have a difficult time conceptualizing or thinking about God—which is understandable because God is so far beyond us. But to help us in this friendship, God has become visible in Christ and we are powered by his Holy Spirit. Long before we open our lips or our minds in prayer, Our God is already with us, inviting us to walk in faith with Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Consequently, the attitudes which ground an honest and open prayer life can be briefly explained. First, the prayer must be sincere which means we need to think about what we seek or strive for in prayer. Do I really want to help my neighbor who is ill or in prison? Do I pray for those qualities or virtues that will make me a better person to live with?  Do I trust God with what I am asking—and ultimately do I trust God’s response?

Second, prayer must be humble. We think here of the publican who stood at the back of the Temple, beating his breast and praying, “God have mercy on me a sinner.” Humility implies that we recognize our total dependence upon God, how all in this life is a gift from God, how gratitude and praise should stream from the wonder of a God who cares so deeply for us. Humility recognizes God as God and us as God’s beloved, even if flawed, creatures.

And, finally, our prayer should be confident and persevering. There are many times in our prayer when we treat God as our servant, expecting immediate responses to our prayers. We pray in a crisis and then we move on. Or we do not get what we want and we complain about or blame God.  We forget those people in the Gospels who went 12 years with a hemorrhage or 18 years with a crooked back or 30 years on the side of the pool at Bethesda. At root, I think we often forget that ultimately we are striving in prayer to understand and then have the courage to follow God’s Will. And to do that we have to get over our own self-centered wishes in order to listen to and understand what God is saying to us so that we may do God’s Will with trust and fidelity. 

You will learn a great deal about yourself, your relationship with God, and your own faith if you pay attention to your attitudes in prayer. Ultimately, though, I would ask you to think for just a moment on the most basic and profound guiding principle or attitude for us, for our faith and for our prayer: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” 

Remember that you are deeply and infinitely loved; and then strive with all your being to love God in return!