September 2006 Feature Article: Prayer

from the

Prove It! The Catholic Teen Bible

New American Version Bible; inserts by Amy Welborn

Prayer: What is prayer?

Prayer is talking to God, but it’s more than that. It’s even more than listening to God.

Prayer is being tuned into God and responding to His presence in your life.

That can mean talking, listening or just being. It can mean singing, drawing or writing. It can happen alone or with others. It can be joyful, grateful, hopeful and even angry.

Prayer is all of those things. That’s why St. Paul was able to say the most amazing thing about prayer. He told the Christians in Thessalonika, Greece to “pray without ceasing.” (1 Thess 5:17).

Wow. That’s a lot of prayer. Maybe even a whole life’s worth.

Great Moments in Prayer

Abraham prays that God spare a sinful city. (Genesis 18:16-33)
Moses and Miriam praise God for saving Israel (Exodus 15:1-22)
Hannah prays for a son (1 Samuel 1:9-11) and thanks Him for one (1 Samuel 2:1-11)
Kind David prays in humility (2 Samuel 7:18-29)
Mary praises God (Luke 1:46-55)
Jesus prays for his disciples (John 17)
Jesus prays in Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-46) and on the cross (Matthew 27:45-46)
Paul prays for his fellow Christians (1 Thessalonians 5:23)

Live It!

Different forms of prayer:

There as many different ways to pray as there are people, but when you get down to it, there are just a few basic ways that we respond to and talk to God:

Prayers of Praise: We praise God just for who He is. (Psalm 104)
Prayers of Thanksgiving: We thank God for his blessings. (Psalm 118)
Prayers of Intercession: We pray for the needs of others (Psalm 79)
Prayers of Petition: We pray for our own needs (Psalm 102)
Prayers of Sorrow: We ask God’s forgiveness for our sins (Psalm 51)

Learning to Pray

Do’s and Don’ts:

Do be totally honest with God. Don’t hold anything back. (Job 29-31)
Don’t pray just to hear yourself talk or to show off (Matthew 6:5-8)
Do be open to accepting God’s will, no matter what it is. (Matthew 6:9-10)
Don’t think that God doesn’t care about your problems. (Luke 18:1-8)
Do trust that God will answer your prayer, somehow, some way. (Luke 11:5-13)
Don’t forget to pray with others. (Matthew 18:20)
Do be humble, remember who you are, and remember who God is (Luke 18:9-14)

Doesn’t God already know how I feel?

Sure. And God is everywhere, all the time, too. You’re right about that.

But what’s also true is that if we really and truly love God, we want to express it. It’s just like any relationship. If our best friend or our boyfriend or girlfriend never, ever tells us how much we mean to them, never expresses any kind of affection…we might wonder, right?

This isn’t about rules. It’s about a relationship. If you love God and are dependent on Him….you really can’t stop thinking about him or talking to him. That’s what love is.

Let everything that has breath give praise to the Lord! (Psalm 150)

What should I feel when I pray?

There’s no “should” or “shouldn’t” about feelings during our prayer. Sometimes we expect that if our prayer is “real” or is “working,” we’re going to feel some kind of emotional high or excitement, or we’re going to hear God’s voice booming in our ears.

That’s not the way it works.

Don’t depend on emotions to judge your prayer. God sometimes works through our emotions…and sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes emotions can even be an obstacle to hearing God’s voice clearly.

That way of hearing God’s voice during prayer and in our life in general is called discernment.

To discern what God is saying to us in our prayer lives, we need to remember some important points:

We have to put aside our own desires, and put God’s will first. (Mt 6:9-10)
We’ve got to be open to anything. God sometimes asks us to do surprising things. (Mark 10:17-22)
We compare what we’re feeling to God’s Word in Scripture and the Church’s teaching, whether it’s bringing us really deep inner peace, (Phil. 4:4-9) and whether it’s bringing us closer to God. (Mt. 17:16-20)

What difference does it make?

Praying with and for others:

Praying is something we do alone, sure, but we also pray with others. God doesn’t just call us to follow him as individuals – he calls us as his people, his Church.

So it makes sense that we gather as his Church and offer praise and thanksgiving to Him. God’s friends have never – from the people of Israel to the earliest Christians – treated prayer as something to do just on your own with your own made-up prayers.

Praying joins us, not only to God, but to all of creation as well!

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own, so that you may announce the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. (1 Peter 2:9)

Why pray to saints?

Catholics believe that death is just the beginning – it’s the beginning of new life with God. So that means that the people who have died and gone to heaven are still around – they are part of the Church, or the Communion of Saints.

So Catholic prayer to saints is absolutely no different than you asking your next-door neighbor to pray for you. When we pray to saints, we don’t worship them. The word prayer, in its origins, just means “ask.” If you actually read the prayers to saints that Catholics pray, you see that’s what they’re all about – asking these holy men and women to pray for us, just as we ask our friends on earth to pray for us as well.

Does God Answer Prayers?

It may not seem like it, but God does always answer our prayers. Jesus says he does (Luke 11:5-13, Matthew 8:5-11).

The problem we sometimes (okay,usually) have is that we can’t see the big picture. God’s answers may not fit into our plan. They may seem to go against what we think is best. The problem is, like little kids begging from their parents, we don’t always know what’s best.

It’s hard, and there are no easy answers. But in the mystery, there’s trust. We know that even Jesus himself felt abandoned by God on the cross (Mt. 27:46), but that God himself told Job that everything works together for the good in His plan. (Job 38-42:6)

Putting it into Action:

If Prayer is my way to God then…

…I should pray a lot.

Face it. Life is complicated. There’s a lot you don’t understand. You sometimes have a hard time understanding yourself. Don’t you wish there was someone who could clue you in on the best way to live and how to be happy and at peace?

Well, there is. If you really do believe that God created you and that God loves you beyond reason, then you’ve got to trust that God isn’t going to abandon you. If you need answers…God’s got them. Have you asked him lately?

(Ps. 118:5; Luke 19:1-10)

Pray It!

I should trust prayers that have helped others draw closer to God.

Of course, prayer comes from the heart. The great saints all tell us that the beginning of prayer is the simple movement of your heart towards God. We don’t need lots of words to get there.

But we do need some words. And while it’s great for us to use prayers that we make up ourselves, as Catholics, it’s also good to remember that we’re not alone. Millions of people before us have prayed, and others have passed down the words they used, and used them themselves.

And these are some powerful words – the prayers in Scripture, prayers of the Mass, and the traditional, ancient prayers you’ll find in any prayer book.

Face it. Sometimes we can’t find the words to pray. Paul says this himself: “…we do not know to pray as we ought.” (Rom. 8:26). We need help, not just to put our feelings into words, but to make sure that we don’t get all wrapped up in ourselves and our egos. The words we pray should lead us to God…and there are tons of tried and true prayers that do just that.

The most ancient of those prayers are the Psalms. Written over hundreds of years before Jesus, they have been used by Jews and Christians to express every nook and cranny of faith and yearning.

They’re a great place to start – especially if you’d like to pray more, but you just don’t know where to begin.