A faithful church member recently told me that perhaps the congregation needed instruction on how to pray. The member suggested that perhaps a sermon series could provide information on prayer techniques, give sample prayers and teach people what to say or think when praying. Initially, I thought that the suggestion was a good idea, but then I began to think about how it might be implemented. What would I say? What instructions could be given? Where is the curriculum for such lessons?

I don’t think that there is any magic formula for prayer. Jesus, when asked, gave some commentary about not being too public with prayer. And he offered the words of The Lord’s Prayer for his followers to use. The Psalms are filled with examples of prayer and there are other stories of prayers throughout the Bible. But the simple truth is that prayer takes a lot of practice. It doesn’t always work. I follow regular disciplines of prayer and I find that sometimes my mind wanders. Sometimes I am less than focused on what God has to teach me. Often I don’t have words for my prayers.

The Rosary is a discipline for praying that is designed to assist faithful people in memorizing and retaining in memory certain principal events in the story of our people and to give thanks and praise to God. When praying the Rosary, the faithful make the sign of the cross, say the Apostles’ Creed, repeat the Lord’s Prayer, the Gloria, a Brief prayer called “Hail Mary,” and contemplate twenty events, one for each bead of the rosary. The events are grouped into four sets of five events to make memorization easier. The twenty events are:

The Annunciation
The Visit of Mary to Elizabeth
The Nativity
The Presentation of Jesus
Finding the Boy Jesus in the Temple
The Baptism of Jesus
The Wedding at Cana
Proclamations about the Kingdom of God
The Transfiguration
The Institution of the Eucharist or Holy Communion
Jesus’ Agony in the Garden
The Scourging of Jesus
The Crown of Thorns
Jesus Carrying the Cross
The Crucifixion
The Resurrection
The Ascension
The Gift of the Holy Spirit
The Assumption of Mary
The Reign of Christ

As prayer disciplines go, it isn’t a bad one. It does encourage the one praying to think beyond him or her self. However, like any discipline, it can be abused. Repetition sometimes causes diminished focus. Instead of the intended plan of thinking about the events in Jesus’ life and the story of our faith, ritual repetition can lead to repeating the words in one’s mind without paying attention to their meaning.

I find it valuable to mix up my prayer disciplines from time to time. But I was raised as a Protestant and did not grow up with Catholic traditions of prayer. It might be entirely different to those who grew up in the Catholic church or who have converted to that faith.

But I would like to encourage people to push deeper and to think about prayer in an entirely different manner. Before talking about that, however, I need to make an observation. People pray naturally. As they go through their lives. There are three major types of prayer that come to people even when they have had no religious training. I think of these three types of prayer as developmental. One comes more naturally to children, another to teens and young adults and the third to those who have some age and experience. Sometimes I think of them as three seasons of prayer:

The first season is supplication. We ask for things that we want. A child will think to her or himself, “Please, please, please, I want (desired item) for Christmas or for a Birthday.” This kind of praying often has some kind of magical element. The child thinks that if they wish hard enough or pray often enough their wish will somehow magically be granted. It is not uncommon for prayers like this to be impossible requests. People sometimes think they are praying for miracles when the request is really for a suspension of the laws of physics or the granting of a life without suffering or the escape from grief. Sometimes these prayers can seem very serious to the one praying and a bit silly from an outside perspective.

The second season of prayer is prayer for salvation. At its core, a prayer for salvation is something that every teenager thinks quite naturally, “Get me out of here!” It is a request to escape from one’s immediate circumstances. These prayers can be very serious in the case of those who are suffering persecution or oppression or injustice. It is a request for outside intervention to change the circumstances of this life. Often such prayers begin with a focus on problems or difficulties and continue to an imagined better set of circumstances. Such a prayer can have a sort of “make my wishes come true” quality.

The third season of prayer is simply and expression of gratitude. There are moments when one is overcome with thanksgiving. Life can be very good. People can be very loving. Families and communities can be richly supportive. There is much in this life that is filled with joy. I find that as I age, this prayer comes to me more frequently and more naturally than was the case when I was younger. I don’t know if that experience is unique to me, but I don’t think so.

Having introduced those three seasons of prayer, I want to state simply that prayer is different from our perspective than it is from God’s point of view. We think that there are times when we are praying and others when we are not. We set aside time for prayers and follow schedules, routines and disciplines. So it seems to us that we “pause” for prayer or take time for prayer or go to prayers. But God is always listening, always interested. From God’s perspective there is no time when we are not praying. I think it was Henri Nouwen who said, “All real living is praying.”

The deepest and most sincere prayer we can offer is not in the words we say, but in the life we live.

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