Possible difficulties in your prayer

When you move toward a time of prayer, normally you look forward to it as a time that will be one of peace and joy.  Sometimes, however, for one reason or another, you may be surprised to find that this is not so on this particular day and that it is very difficult for you to settle down to celebrate such a relationship with God.  

Although you may not be aware of any reason for being distracted from God and the things of God, you find that, today, it is very difficult for you to pray quietly and to be aware that you are indeed in God’s presence.   

Perhaps, in your relationship with others, something has happened that is a source of anxiety, even a cause of anger, to you, and it is difficult for you to set this feeling aside.  You may try to pray with the joy you have experienced at other times, but you do not feel joyful, and you cannot pretend that you do.  What can you do in this situation?  

You may say to myself, “Oh, this is hopeless.  I just can’t pray today,” but this is really not true.  What is true is that you cannot feel the joy of prayer that you have felt at other times.  However, faith is calling you to communicate with God, and the only thing you really can do is to maintain your awareness that you are in God’s presence and to hope that your present mood or feeling of distraction or hurt will be lifted.  

Will God step in and lift the mood immediately?  That is unlikely.  Can you continue to sit in His presence although you have no feeling of great joy such as you have had at other times when you prayed to Him?  Yes, you can do this.  It may not seem easy or even worthwhile to do so at this point in time, but it is living out of an act of faith, one that God will accept in love from you. 

It can even happen that, when you do try to rest in stillness and to quiet your distracted mind, your lack of quiet and peace in God may seem to get worse.  Yet, you should not give up on the effort.  There is stillness at the center of your being, and if you can find this center, you will be aware of peace deep within you from which you can reach out to God and share in His peace.  

An Augustinian priest in England, Father Benignus O’Rourke, O.S.A., has this to say about the situation:  “To reach the place where Christ awaits us, we need to be prepared for long periods of silence and quiet, long enough for our doubts to dissolve, our cares to lose their urgent pressures, our uncertainty to give way to trust.  To wait in silence for as long as it takes is to be taken eventually to our still center where we find that the mind has become quiet and the heart is at peace.  And in the stillness we find God (Benignus O’Rourke, Finding Your Hidden Treasure, page 57).”

Are you aware of having a “still center where [you] find that the mind has become quiet and the heart is at peace, and in that stillness, [you] find God”?  Maybe so, maybe not.  But now that it has been brought to your attention, perhaps, sooner or later, you may experience this.  Do you have to say endless vocal prayers to assure yourself that you are praying?  No.  Father Benignus, in the same little book, quotes an unknown poet who writes: 

Abandon yourself to Him in longing love, 

simply holding on to nothing but Him

so that you may enter the silence of eternity

and know the union of yourself with Him.

And if in the silence, He does not answer, He is still there.  

His silence is the silence of love…

It is good to wait in silence for His coming. 

“In the silence, He is still there.  His silence is the silence of love…”  

Do you sometimes experience “the silence of love” with other human beings whom you love?  Perhaps you do with a friend who is very close to you as you both engage in activities, which for a time, call for all your concentration.  You are focused on your activities, but at the same time, you are aware of and appreciative of each other’s presence, and you know that, sooner rather than later, you will once again be communicating directly with each other in your usual style.      

 In the same way, in our prayer, we can sometimes move from a sense of Christ being distant in our lives to a sense of His presence.  Let us continue to try to pray the prayer of silence especially when, for one reason or another, we cannot seem to feel or be aware of God’s presence during our prayer time. 

The more active group balances the strictly contemplative group; the contemplatives balance the more active group. Both find the experience of God in their life styles.