Prayer, put simply, is the key to our salvation. The catechism states that “prayer is the encounter of God’s thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him.” This amazing quote expresses the innate beauty of prayer, a process in which we can talk to our Creator and our Creator can talk to us. God gives us the chance to have an actual relationship with him, isn’t that just amazing? But how can we expect to have a relationship with God and reach heaven if we don’t pray? Have you ever tried having a relationship with someone without any form of communication? It’s just not possible. Yet even with the obvious benefits, people struggle to integrate prayer into their daily lives. I think there are three main reasons why people, especially us young people, don’t pray. Firstly, we say don’t have time for it, but truly we don’t make time for it. It seems that in our modern world, everything is going a million miles per hour, and as soon as we finish one task we are onto the next, making it extremely easy to lose ourselves in all of the daily havoc. I assure you, however, that there is always a way to fit prayer into your day. I mean, how is it possible that we don’t have a few minutes a day to devote to the Lord, but we somehow find time to endlessly scroll through Instagram? The first step in surpassing this is to begin by praying only a few minutes a day, and slowly building up the amount throughout time. Eventually, you will find yourself creating more and more time to have meaningful prayer throughout the day. Secondly, we think we don’t know how to pray properly. As young adults, we constantly see ourselves as “not good enough.” We constantly compare ourselves to those around us, and when we see someone in extremely deep meditation or spontaneously creating a beautiful prayer, we believe that somehow our prayers aren’t good enough for the Lord. That though process is just so wrong. Just as God made each of us different, he intended for us to pray in our own special way, and I think a big mistake that adults commit is not teaching that to kids. There is truly no right way to pray. I recommend exploring different forms of prayer or even creating your own unique ways. Personally, I like to switch up my prayer styles depending on my mood. Sometimes, I pray the rosary or other common prayers, and other times I just have a conversation with God about the current events in my life. Not all prayers have to be long though. In fact, one of my favorite prayers is only 7 words long. I choose three phrases, for example “God, forgive me, guide me, help me,” and repeat them over and over while picturing Him committing the actions. We don’t really think of prayers like these ones as actual prayers, but they are. Prayers like these are especially helpful when you are short on time or when you are just experiencing a period of spiritual dryness. Now, just as an athlete has to practice his sport, you must practice your prayer skills in order to be able to fall more deeply into prayer. You can’t expect to pray like a saint without praying for your entire life just like you can’t expect to play basketball like an NBA player without practicing for years. Lastly, we stop praying because when we do pray, we don’t feel anything or hear anything back. In my life, I have only met a few people that have actually heard a direct response from God, but when we do hear about these stories, we are disillusioned by our lack of response. This feeling in itself is actually not bad, because it shows that we desire a relationship with God, but it usually damages our prayer life. By thinking that “God won’t talk to me,” we fulfill the belief by ourselves when we stop praying and shut off contact with God from our side. Worse yet is when we pray for something and our intentions aren’t fulfilled. It seems like God doesn’t listen to us, and makes us question why we bothered to pray in the first place. The fact is that God does talk to us, but just not in the way we expect. God usually presents himself in other people or in the events in our lives (usually in events we didn’t want to happen), and that makes it extremely hard to identify when he talks to us. This ability to see when God is responding to our prayers takes years and a whole lot of wisdom, and it is something that I am constantly struggling with. Brothers and sisters, I am guilty of every single one of these reasons, and I am sure that every adult that you look up to is struggling with them too. I’d even go so far as to say that most saints, if not all, have struggled with prayer at some point in their lives. The struggle of prayer shouldn’t stop us from praying. On the contrary, it should motivate us to pray more because it shows God how much we want to spend time with him. God bless you all, JP Lara
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AuthorYour confirmation teachers - Kathleen, Eric, Sophia, and Valerie, and with contributions from 410 alumni Archives
September 2021
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