Prayer for Depth

WE SENSE the importance of prayer; yet, we often find it difficult to pray. We might be familiar with various forms of prayer, from devotional prayers to different kinds of meditation, but we may lack the confidence that our own particular way of praying, with all its distractions is prayer in the deep sense.
The gospels show us Jesus praying in virtually every kind of situation. He prays when he is joyful, he prays when he is in agony, he prays with others around him, and he prays when he is alone at night, withdrawn from all human contact. He prays high on a mountain, in a sacred place, and he prays on the level plane, where ordinary life happens. Jesus prays a lot.
And the lesson isn’t lost on his disciples. They sense that Jesus’ real depth and power are drawn from his prayer. They know that what makes him so special is that he is linked to a power outside of this world. And they want this for themselves. That’s why they ask: “Lord, teach us to pray!”
But we must understand what they were looking for when they asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. They sensed that what Jesus drew from the depth of his prayer was not, first of all, his power to do miracles or to silence his enemies with some kind of superior intelligence. What impressed them and what they wanted too for their own lives was his depth and graciousness.
The power they admired and wanted was Jesus’ attractiveness, his power to love and forgive his enemies. What they wanted was Jesus’ wisdom and inner freedom, his
power to renounce life in self-sacrifice, even while retaining the capacity to enjoy the everyday pleasures of life. They wanted Jesus’ power to be big-hearted, to love beyond his own circle and to love poor and rich alike; to live with charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, trustfulness and chastity (self-control) Gal 5.22, . What they wanted was Jesus’ depth and graciousness. cf 1 Cor 1.30
And they recognized that this power did not come from within himself, but from a source outside him. They saw that he connected to a deep source through prayer, through constantly lifting to God whatever was on his mind and in his heart. They saw it and they wanted that depth for themselves. So they asked Jesus to teach them how to pray like him.
We too want Jesus’ depth and graciousness in our own lives. Like Jesus’ disciples, we also know that we can only attain this through prayer, through accessing a power that lies in the depth of our souls and beyond our souls. We know too that the route to that depth lies in journeying inward, in silence, through both the muddle and the peace that come to us when we quieten ourselves to pray.
In both our reflective moments and in our more desperate moments, we feel our need for prayer and try to go to that deep place. But we struggle to get there. We may feel we don’t know how to sustain ourselves in prayer. Yet in this we are in good company with Jesus’ disciples. A good beginning is to recognize what we need and where it is to be found. We need to begin with that same plea: ‘Lord, teach us to pray!’
13/1/12
Peter Knott SJ