This meeting is focused on prayer.
1. Meditation
A Powerful 10 Minute Guided Meditation - YouTube
2. Song
Andrea Bocelli - The Lord's Prayer - Live From The Kodak Theatre, USA / 2009 - YouTube
3. Narrative
https://www.franciscanmedia.org/franciscan-spirit-blog/how-can-anyone-pray-always
Practice
All prayer is practicing for prayer. No one really knows how to pray, as Paul states in our epigraph at the beginning (Romans 8:26), and it is in this very experience of weakness and incapacity that the Spirit comes to pray in us, with us, and as us—with “groans unutterable” (Romans 8:27), which early on took the form of speaking in tongues (1 Corinthians 14:1–25) after the first Pentecost. Paul emphasizes that this early form of Christian prayer “does not feed the mind” or, in another translation, “my mind derives no fruit from it” (1 Corinthians 14:14). It was prayer at the prerational, transrational, or unconscious level, we might say today. It was done to us!
Already we have something deeper, at least partially proceeding from forces beyond us, and thus many would say “Spirit led,” which is something other than saying, thinking, memorizing, or reciting by ourselves. In fact, it is often called “babbling” or “praying in the Spirit,” which appears to be somewhat embarrassing because it surely deflates the ego at least in the eyes of others. Although, the first time you surrender to it, it is a defeat to your own intelligence and common sense, too. No wonder it died out.
Luke’s comment is significant in his ending to Matthew and Mark’s excursus on what we call “intercessory prayer.” He adds that the answer to every intercession is always the same: “How much will the heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him [for anything]?” (Luke 11:13). So maybe prayer at its deepest level is not about getting something, problem solving, or resolving issues (although we are encouraged to trust in God for these things), but rather, all prayer is a radical receptivity to the Holy Spirit, which itself is inspired by that same Holy Spirit! We eventually know that God creates within us the desire—to desire—to pray for whatever we need or want. A divine and reverse Catch-22, you might say!
All we can do is pray that God can keep us open and completing the circuit of desire. God wants these good things for us more than we do, and any authentic Christian prayer is just seconding the divine motion. Again, we are merely practicing, continually learning, and forever surrendering to the divine mind. Letting go of our own small mind is the burden of all contemplative practice. And maybe this is why contemplative prayer died out too!
It is no surprise, therefore, that teachers of contemplative prayer, centering prayer, meditation, or the prayer of quiet, consistently prefer to use the words practice or sitting to describe what they do. Yet, it is not so much an action, a doing, as it is a non-doing. Prayer is not so much that the I is praying, as the profound and life-changing realization that prayer is happening through me. All I can do is gratefully be open to it and allow it to happen to me and through me and with me—and as me.
Prayer is also happening at rudimentary levels, in nature, in animals, in all growing and living things. How many of the psalms as well as the hymn in Daniel 3 speak easily of rivers “clapping their hands,” fire and heat “praising,” and animals and beasts “blessing the Lord”? This is not some New Age poetry; this is our poetry, our prose, and our gospel! How have we missed this? We defined prayer so supernaturally that we forgot how to do it naturally with what was all around us.
The act of praying might be the deepest meaning of something, in fact, the deepest meaning of being alive itself—and as in all of nature, elements, and animals, trusting and allowing the dying as a needed and important part of the life. It’s only our humanity that wants to decide whether to join in with “the height, the length, the depth and the breadth” of things (Ephesians 3:18). The rest of creation seems to do itself quite naturally, spontaneously, and fully.
Prayer is saying “yes” to the paschal mystery at work in all things, and joyfully joining in with that flow—the movement of both death and resurrection equally—and thus allowing the very life of the Trinity, in whose pattern all things are created. This is already intimated in the first sentences of the Hebrew Bible in Genesis 1:1–2: God (Father), together with the Hovering Wind (Spirit), speaks the creative Word of Forms (Christ). History itself is one cosmic prayer spoken by God through this ongoing creation from the very beginning—each species “eagerly awaiting the full recognition [that they are each in their own way] children of God” (Romans 8:19).
What else could fully good news mean? We humans are the free and blessed ones who can enjoy this daughterhood and sonship consciously and lovingly as we join in the one divine flow of praise, adoration, gratitude, and chosen solidarity with all that God is doing. Paul excitedly calls it “the great parade” or “the great triumph” (2 Corinthians. 2:14) that we are all invited to join. We are being prayed through, it seems, often without our even knowing it. But you can now know it, enjoy it, and pass it on.
In a very true sense, God is the only one praying, and we are all invited to join the Son, Jesus, in his one completely trustful and eternal “Yes” and his one eternal “Amen” (2 Corinthians 1:20) to that infinite prayer of God—and thus to all and every single thing that is. The indwelling Holy Spirit teaches us how to trust, enjoy, and suffer this flow. Thus all true prayer is in the Spirit and in Christ. We do not know how to do it by ourselves. This is surely what distinguishes Christian contemplation from other traditions and also what frees us from too much emphasis on any precise technique or undue asceticism. Jesus never emphasizes posture, fasting, timing, or gesture—only intention—which is why and how we can indeed “pray constantly” (1 Thessalonians 5:16), which before we never thought was possible. It is just this:
God is the one who loves and prays through us,
Jesus shares and participates in this flow with and in his Body (us!), and
the Spirit keeps it all moving, dynamic, alive—and always flowing outward!
4. prayer
Prayer for Perseverance
Holy Lord, Thank You for grace. Please help me move beyond the hurdles that trip me up and give me the strength and wisdom to look up and see the hope I run toward in Christ. In Jesus’ Name, Amen. ~ Gwen Smith
5. Meditation
6. Song
Be with Me at Morning - YouTube
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