Bless this bed that I lie upon.
Four corners to my bed,
Four angels round my head;
One to watch and one to pray
And two to keep me till the day. Amen.
What is the earliest prayer that you remember?
A version of the prayer I began with is one that I remember and have shared with my own kids; that and the Lord’s Prayer were my earliest introduction to prayer.
From when we were young, many of us were taught to pray. But why prayer?
In 1928, Evelyn Underhill theologian and mystic wrote ‘What, then, is Prayer? In a most general sense, it is the intercourse of our little human souls with God. Therefore, it includes all the work done by God Himself through, in, and with souls which are self-given to Him in prayer…. Prayer is a purely spiritual activity; and its real doer is God Himself, the one inciter and mover of our souls.’
Prayer is our connection to God who created each of us; it is how we learn about our place in the world, and it is God who is the real doer in our souls.
1600 years ago, St Augustine of Hippo wrote: “You, O Lord, move us to delight in praising You; for You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”
From our youngest days, there is a longing to make those connections with God.
She doesn’t remember the exact question she asked her father that night. Like many of the questions she asked him when she was a little girl, it had to be something about church or faith or God. But she never forgot his answer that particular evening. As he sat on the edge of her bed, he listened intently, paused thoughtfully for a moment, and then responded: I don’t know.
What she still remembers, too, was her dad’s tone: It wasn’t I don’t know — leave me alone! or I don’t know — stop asking so many questions! Her dad’s tone that night was weightier and gentler: I don’t know. I’m only human. And then, as they did every night, father and daughter prayed together and read a story; and the next Sunday, as they always did, they went to church together.
Now an adult, she still remembers that night. She writes:
“I still chew on that moment now . . . What if my parents had never admitted I don’t know in those few minutes before prayer? I would have learned that faith meant certainty, that faith didn’t leave room for what we don’t know. But I have also come to realize that the answer my father gave me was important only as part of something larger. That conversation happened before a nightly ritual of prayer, continuing to talk to God, day after day. Perhaps it is because of that foundation that I remember the words so clearly. The I don’t know didn’t mean we stopped praying. Nothing fell away with it; it simply existed alongside our daily practice. The practice, not only the conversation, is why I remember that conversation as one of the most significant in my life. With it, I learned that faith could have room for doubt. That sometimes we admit what we do not know, and then it is time for prayer.” [From “My father’s words” by Laurna Strikwerda, U.S. Catholic, January 2019.]
Today’s Gospel is not simply a formula for praying but an invitation to engage God in an ongoing conversation — an invitation that comes with Jesus’ assurance that we can come to God with all our doubts and fears and questions, without feeling that we have failed God or that our faith is empty.
Jesus tells us that we can trust our prayers to God, and that God seeks to do us good in our lives.
For all prayer begins with realizing the loving presence of God in our lives — a love that is a mystery in itself — and expressing gratitude for that presence. And all prayer is sustained by trust in that love, trust that enables us to “ask and seek and knock” with all our questions and doubts and wonders, knowing there will always be a loving response to us.
But as we grow older, prayer is also about us and the changes it makes in our lives.
Again in the words of Evelyn Underhill, “A real man or woman of prayer, then, should be a live wire, a link between God’s grace and the world that needs it. In so far as you have given your lives to God, you have offered yourselves, without conditions, as transmitters of His saving and enabling love: and the will and love, the emotional drive, which you thus consecrate to God’s purposes, can actually do work on supernatural levels for those for whom you are called upon to pray.”
Prayer changes us. It moves us to intercede for others and help change the world for the better. To be that live wire, to offer God’s grace and love with a world that needs it. And such prayer, certainly reminds us that we are not God, that we are in need of God’s grace, even as we realize how much God has already blessed our lives.
There’s a Hasidic story about Mendel the tailor, who goes to his rabbi with a problem. He tells the rabbi, “I try to be the best tailor I can be. If a customer says to be me, ‘Mendel, you’re a wonderful tailor; you’re the best,’ that makes me feel good. But if somebody came into my shop every day and told me, ‘Mendel, you’re a wonderful tailor,’ or if a hundred people crowded into my shop to tell me that, it would drive me crazy. I wouldn’t be able to get any work done. So my question is, does God really need to have every Jew in the world tell Him three times a day how wonderful He is? Doesn’t God sometimes find it tedious?”
The rabbi answers him, “Mendel, that’s a really good question. You have no idea how tedious it is for God to hear our praises all day, every day. But God understands how important it is for us to remind ourselves of all He has done for us, so in His infinite kindness, He puts up with our incessant praying and accepts our praise.” [From Nine Essential Things I’ve Learned About Life by Harold S. Kushner.]
God does not need our prayers or praise – but we need to offer them. Prayer is the awareness of God as the source of all that is good and the ultimate fulfillment of our life’s journey, where our hearts rest. Prayer is not the scope and breadth of the words we utter but the sense of gratitude that compels us to give voice to those prayers. Authentic prayer enables us to realize God’s love in our love for family and friends and their love for us; to see God’s hand nurturing and sustaining every molecule of creation; to feel God’s life-giving breath animating every moment of our existence, and inviting us in and to share it with others.
And, in joining others in prayer, we find support and comfort in knowing that we are not alone in our search for God, that we travel the road to God’s dwelling in the company of struggling but compassionate souls like ourselves, giving praise to our Creator. As the rabbi explains to Mendel, and Evelyn Underhill has written, the prayers we offer are themselves the gift of our loving God.
Lord, teach us to pray, help us rest in thee…and Jesus taught us:
Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.
May it be so. Amen.
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