Prayers Lead to Prayer

All over the world today, people are saying prayers -- Buddhist monks are chanting prayers that have been said for centuries; Roman Catholics are saying the Rosary or novenas; Sufis are whirling; Muslims are touching their foreheads to the earth, and Hindus are offering fruit in their temples.

According to Bishop Robert Barron, "prayers lead to prayer," or communion with God.  This is why people pray -- to touch the face of the invisible God.   And He, in turn, is passionately waiting to   touch our hearts.  When the energy of God meets our human energy, it is like the burning bush Moses encountered in the desert -- we are on fire but not consumed.

St. James put it this way:  Draw close to God, and He will draw close to you.  "Saying prayers" of whatever fashion is our way of stopping our lives momentarily to draw close to the God Who is "closer than a brother" to us.  He is "surely in this place," as Jacob discovered in the wilderness, though "we do not know it."  And so he called that place Bethel, meaning House (Dwelling Place) of God.

We are the living "Bethels" -- dwellings of the Most High God.  He is within us, and yet we do not know it.  If we stop looking around us long enough, close our eyes, and begin to approach the Temple of the Lord through prayers, we may find Him running to meet us, as the Prodigal Father ran to meet his returning son along the road.

What kind of prayers? people ask.  "I don't know how to pray."  St. Augustine has the answer: Pray as you can, not as you can't.  One reason every culture and race has developed formal prayers is that we are hesitant to approach the invisible God on our own -- and when we do, we are not sure our prayers are effective or heard.  We stumble and fall because we are on unfamiliar territory, and not even sure we are on the right path.

Thomas Merton's famous prayer is useful for almost all of us:

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.
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.

Here is truth -- that we don't know what we are doing, but that God is faithful to us in our simplicity of prayer, no matter what form it may take.