(July 28, 2019) Lectionary: 111
Adults: Have your most recent prayers been prayers of praise, petition, or sorrow? Which kind of prayer do you need to practice more often?
Children: What are you most thankful for right now?
by Thomas Gette
Imagine going into work each day and never saying hello to any coworkers. Lunch is met with an awkward silence and no conversation. As the day continues, everyone attempts to do their projects without communicating. Finally, the day concludes, and everyone departs without a single word.
Aside from the obvious fact that it would be virtually impossible to get any work done without communication, it would make for a strange and awkward workday to just sit alongside people and have no interaction. There would be no friendship, no relationship, no planning, and no productivity.
This is true of any environment, whether it be a home, a school, or a sports team, but it is especially true when it comes to our relationship with God.
When we start our days without prayer and do not welcome God into our plans and ideas, our relationship with God becomes awkward, the way it would for the people in the silent office environment. Sure, the day will still go by, but it will become very obvious that something is missing and everything is affected by the absence.
In the busy-ness of life, it is easy for prayer to take a backseat. It is easy to think about the million things that need to be done and for our focus to be exclusively on them. That generally sets the tone for the day, and before we know it, we have gone through the day without much thought to prayer and centering our thoughts and decisions in God.
When I fall into this rut, I sometimes joke that my prayer life has been reduced to just randomly blurting things out at God. My prayer life becomes reactionary. Then my prayers are usually “Why?” or “Help!” or “I can’t stand this, Lord” or “This is frustrating.” But things get that way because I did not invite a healthy rhythm into my day in the first place. Prayer and God become afterthoughts instead of the strength that gets me through my day.
We all have a certain prayer type that we need to improve upon and, then, practice more often. Stereotypically, most of us remain in a cycle of petition prayer. We’re always just asking things of God as if he is a vending machine. We can bring greater meaning to our prayers of praise or sorrow when they are part of an ongoing conversation we already have with God.
Prayer takes on a new meaning when we learn to just talk and listen to God about all aspects of our lives. Doing so will bring greater meaning to our days. God won’t seem like such a stranger when we go to him not only with our petitions, but with our doubts, our fears, our joys and our gratitude, as well.
Thomas Gette is a family man with a passion for the domestic Church. He holds master’s degrees from both Franciscan University and the Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium.