I
Love is the most powerful element of life. Love flows from the heart, the deepest truth about us. It is where we live when we are most authentic. The heart is our hidden center that transcends the power of reason. Only God truly understands the depth and beauty of our heart. All other loves are ultimately partial and incomplete when it comes to our heart. Ultimately, only God can provide full satisfaction for the heart. The heart is our way to discover what is truly real. There is a dynamic relation between prayer and the heart. They both need each other for the most trustworthy encounter with God.As we make progress in prayer, it becomes clear that discipline is a truly important element of deep personal prayer. We need a commitment to make time for our daily prayer, whether it is a rosary or lectio divina, a novena or contemplative prayer. Without discipline, we can easily skip our prayer time. Steady prayer draws us into a spiritual warfare with the forces of darkness. This demands constant effort on our part, especially as we advance in prayer. It also requires the wisdom to see how we can be deceived into wasting our time at prayer.
As our prayer life matures, there is a common problem: just fulfilling an obligation. We decide we are going to pray even though our heart and mind are wrapped up in some upcoming project or emotional disturbance or some form of internal stress. What often happens is that we go through the motions of prayer without the essential component, communion with God. We just want to get our commitment to pray out of the way. We are not truly present to our prayer.
Our body is there, but our mind and heart are caught up in something altogether different. This is different from the ordinary distractions of our prayer. More importantly, this is not the same as dryness in prayer which makes our prayer time difficult. This dryness often is a sign of progress and purification. In this lack of composure of heart, our prayer suffers because our heart is not involved.
II
When we pray, whether in the rapture of charismatic chants or the deep silence of contemplative prayer or simply reciting the rosary on the bus, we need to pray from the heart. Attempting prayer out of habit, without being truly present from the depth of our heart, leads to failure. The goal is communion with God. This requires a wholehearted effort to give full attention to what we are doing. Any superficial effort easily slips into a waste of time.Prayer is a serious commitment of our whole person: body, psyche and spirit. It demands composure of the heart, a gathering of our faculties for a single purpose. We want to center all our energy on the task at hand, communion with God.
Teresa of Avila has some sound advice to begin prayer. Be conscious we speaking to God as a poor sinner. For her, the critical ingredient to gain focus in the beginning of prayer is humility. Humility is the truth of who God is and who we are.
Whether prayer comes from words or bodily expressions or the silence in the deepest part of our being, true prayer has one common source. The Scriptures repeat it in over one thousand passages. Prayer comes from the heart. Just saying the words or going through the motions without the inner connection of the heart is not prayer. Composure of the heart overcomes this obstacle.
I am sure we all have had this experience of not making the connection with the heart at the beginning of our prayer. We tend to take the spiritual battle of prayer for granted. Prayer demands work and determination. Sometimes, just trying to make the connection to the heart is our prayer. God is patient and loving. Often the struggle to gather ourselves away from the pressures, worries and desires of life is a meaningful expression of prayerful love on our part that God embraces.
Ernest Larkin, O. Carm., a great teacher and wisdom figure in the Carmelite tradition, used an insight of Woody Allen to address this problem with prayer. The comedian said ninety five percent of life is simply showing up. Fr. Larkin said it is the same with prayer. In spite of all our difficulties, we need only continue trusting in God.
III
There is nothing ordinary about prayer. It is a precious gift that God always initiates. It is love seeking love. God is calling us into this loving Mystery. This deep personal connection with God, the goal of all true prayer, alone satisfies the thirst of the human heart.While it is a blessing to have the habit of deep personal prayer, there is a shadow side to this spiritual growth. We often slip into a shallow approach to prayer. It becomes ordinary and routine Our ego is our nemesis in this battle of prayer. Our commitment to regular prayer drives the ego to despise prayer because it is losing control.
This spiritual warfare is often hidden. This is why it is so important to consciously work for composure of the heart, to be truly attentive to what is going on within us when we pray. It always demands a “determined determination” to quote Teresa. We need to clear the heart of our preoccupations, anxieties, hurts and desires. Life will be there waiting for us after we pray.
