The Real Difficulty in Prayer: God’s Attitude
A little bit of our heart is never enough. God is never satisfied unless we offer ourselves completely. God always wants more, the whole thing. Love is not about a little bit. All the problems in prayer are rooted in this divine posture. On our part, we are often willing, and even enthused, to bring God into some of our life. God has no interest in an eight-hour day. The divine program is twenty-four seven. It takes us on a long and winding journey to grasp this sense of totality that is God’s agenda.
We cling to the controls with an unimagined ferocity. We simply want to be in charge of how much time and what part of our life we will give to God. Both the “when” and the “how” of this venture definitely must happen on our terms.
This contrast between God’s approach and our approach is the root of our difficulties in prayer.
All this effort to open ourselves to God has one purpose. It is completely and absolutely about love. While love, no doubt, is a wonderful thing, it is very costly. Love constantly calls for a serious change in our personal schedule and a whole lot more. When dealing with God, we become artists in the great human venture of compromise. We end up in a program with God that includes our negotiables but we withhold our non-negotiables. We eventually learn that God is very patient with us. But in the end, God will have the last word. This is the ultimate reality for every human being. We are made to be one with God. This is our destiny. This is clearly the answer to the great human question, “Where are we going?” Most often, we have to learn that the hard way. Nevertheless, God’s desire for our whole heart is not going to change. God’s love is just too strong, too focused and too intense to let us get away. God made us to be loved and to be one with the mystery that is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. God will have it no other way, no matter how hard we try to distract and re-direct the program according to our self-interest.
All human effort to answer that basic inquiry of human existence will all fall short of God’s clear purpose. No matter how good they may appear, each and every human endeavor that does not include our destiny to be one with God will fall short. In one way or another, all these activities are based on the denial of death, a moment when we become completely out of control. For God, death is simply a change that opens to the everlasting love that God has determined for us.
The Gospels are filled with sayings that attack our very human tendency to compromise with this program of eternal love that God has established for us.
“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself take up his cross, and follow me.” (Mk 8:34)
“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.” (Mk 8:35)
“Whoever finds his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mt 10:39)
These sayings are just a brief sample of the multitude of similar statements that permeate the four Gospels. They ask a total generosity on our part. The jealous love of God is calling us into the divine mystery. This venture is the gradual, but unending, work of a lifetime. It is clear that God’s love is not a part time endeavor. When we begin a commitment to pray in a more serious manner, we should be aware that we are beginning a wonderful journey. In the end, with all its difficulties and complexities, it is all about love. God’s love of total generosity and supreme intensity transforming our love from its pettiness, brokenness and severely compromised generosity. It is long road of step-by-step effort that gradually leads to the freedom of being one with God. The first great obstacle is to not begin to pray with this new intensity. The second is to not understand that the true grace we hunger for is only possible when we continue the struggle to say yes to God. The Carmelite tradition is emphatic that all this is possible only with personal purification and transformation. This, in turn, can only happen through deep personal prayer that is an expression of the love in our heart.
II
Teresa of Avila tells us prayer is a conversation with someone we know loves us. Personal experience will show us what our difficulty in prayer is. It is overcoming our self-love to let our love of God rise to the top of our agenda. To do this we face the challenge of change, often deep personal change. Teresa says that prayer and comfortable living are not compatible. Prayer demands sacrifice that claims our time. It then confronts our lifestyle. Difficulties in prayer emerge from these very demanding personal challenges.
When we are praying, distractions are the most immediate obstacle. The direct answer to distractions is to regain our focus. This is done by returning to the text or to our prayer word, the mantra. This is all part of the battle of prayer. The ego sees prayer as a life or death issue. Life for the ego means to be in control. The Spirit is calling us to let go, to accept our poverty and surrender to God.
The root of distractions is this conflict of the ego and the Spirit. The distractions will not go away completely until God takes over within us in the development of deep contemplative prayer. Meanwhile, we need to understand there is gold to be found in the struggle of our relentless flights of fancy.
On the conscious level, our struggle is between our ego’s unending quest for control and gradual submission to God. At a deeper level, God often uses distractions to surface issues and concerns that help us on the road to self-knowledge and humility. Frequently our prayer session seems like a total waste of time. However, battling distractions has a double effect. It is a beautiful invitation to embrace humility. Likewise, it often makes us aware of our inordinate attachments which are commonly the root of our distractions.
