Prayer based on very few words

Between the processes of “saying our prayers” using many words, and of prayer without words, there are other possibilities. 

One of these is the possibility of choosing something in between—one word or a phrase of a very few words which speak deeply to us and which are a basis for our prayer.

This word or very brief phrase is repeated over and over, slowly and thoughtfully. Such a choice, the fourteenth century author of the well-known work The Cloud of Unknowing, suggests is sufficient.  He says: “Take a little word of one syllable, the shorter the better.  Maybe words like “God” or “Love”—the shorter the better. Choose any word that you like, a word of one syllable that you like best. Fix this word in your heart so that, whatever happens, it will not go away. This word is your protection whether you are at peace or disturbed.”

However, the most frequent problem in prayer is not that God is not present to us but that we are not present to Him. If we are distracted, if our mind is wandering all over the place, we cannot claim to be praying. We can help overcome this by finding a place, which seems to call us to prayer—a quiet place, perhaps with a statue or holy picture or work of religious art on which we can focus.  Outstanding among such places would be a church or chapel, which contains not only items of religious art, but also the real presence of Jesus in a tabernacle.

In addition to choosing our prayer space carefully, it can be very important to recall prayer formulae that are familiar and attractive to us and which we are happy to repeat over and over again. Such formulae could be a phrase from a hymn or from a prayer book, a spiritual book, a vocal prayer that means much to us.

And of course, most important, is the awareness that the Jesus we are communicating with in our prayer is a Jesus Who loves us. We have only to recall His experiences in this life, many of them demanding—demanding even unto death—and these for our salvation, to bring us to a new awareness of His love for us.
Is our love for Him central to all that we are, all that we have, all that is important to us?  And is it helpful to us to remain focused on that love by focusing on a few words, a phrase, a vocal prayer? We can only answer, “Yes” if we have made the effort to pray in this way and discovered that such a process is indeed helpful to us.

Verbal prayer—wordless prayer—in between, prayer with few or relatively few words—how do we know when we are being called from one form of prayer to another? We know when the form of prayer, which we have been using for some time, is no longer helpful to us. Then when we try to use another form of prayer, that turns out to be difficult for us also.  We may be tempted to give up on prayer and say something like, “Oh, well, this is a waste of time. I will concentrate on doing good works.”  And yet, when we consider our human relations, if we work alongside another human being, sharing in good works but never sharing who we are to each other, we can hardly speak of this relationship as being one of love or friendship. But we do want our prayer life to be one of love with Jesus. Let us try to communicate with Him as seems best for any particular period in our life, and be willing to continue to reach out to Him even when that seems difficult.