Prayer Helps us Grow in Relationship with God the FatherRead Time 9 min

As Catholics, when we hear the word “prayer,” we often think about our rich liturgical tradition — the celebration of the Holy Mass, the praying of the Liturgy of the Hours, and the Exposition and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. The Church’s liturgy is the summit and source of our Christian lives.

Liturgy is a unique form of prayer — it moves us to remember and makes present to us the center of our faith — Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection. It expresses the mystery of Christ, as well as the mystery of the Church with its human and divine elements.

However, the spiritual life in the Catholic tradition is not limited solely to liturgy. The Catholic tradition is also rich in its diversity of personal prayer forms, expressions and devotions. The sacred liturgy does not exhaust all the activity of the Church. We Christians are called to communal prayer, of course, but we are also called to our “inner room” to pray to the Father in secret, and to pray without ceasing.

What is prayer? St. Therese of Lisieux wrote, “For me, prayer is a burst from my heart, it is a simple glance thrown toward heaven, a cry of thanksgiving and love in times of trial as well as in times of joy.”

We could say that prayer is always a response to God’s initiative. God speaks to us first, God speaks to our heart, the very center of our being. God communicates his love for us and his desire to enter into friendship with us. Our prayer is always a response to God’s divine communication. Eugene McCaffrey reflects on this in his book, “Patterns of Prayer.”

Fr. Ronald Rolheiser, O.M.I., in his book, “The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality,” writes about why we pray. He writes that within us there is restlessness, frustration and dissatisfaction. He writes that we are “overcharged with desire.” He calls this a “fundamental dis-ease,” which makes us incapable of coming to full peace in this life. Desire is at the center of our being, and lies at the heart of poetry, art, literature, philosophy and religion. Within us we encounter hunger, fire and longing. It shows itself sometimes in dissatisfaction and aching, and at other times in a pull toward love, beauty, creativity and a future beyond the limitations of the present moment.

In a very real sense, spirituality is what we do with desire. St. Augustine prays, “You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

Prayer is a way in which we channel our desire. The late Fr. Martin Pable, O.F.M. Cap., in chapter one of his book, “Prayer, a Practical Guide,” describes prayer in terms of hunger, a craving for something more.

What is it that we desire most? Even if we cannot articulate it, deep down, what we desire most is an intimate relationship with God. Christian prayer is always relational. We begin all prayer with the words, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

Our God is a relational God, a Trinitarian God. I have heard the relationship between the Persons of the Holy Trinity explained this way: The Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father, and the love between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit. Through Baptism, we enter into that Trinitarian relationship of love, and our prayer is a quest to grow in relationship with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Christian spirituality is, of course, Trinitarian spirituality. Our God is made known to us and is loved by us because of the events of salvation history. God’s initiative is the basis for the relationship between God and human beings. All elements of Christian spirituality — the celebration of Word and Sacrament, prayer, discipline and growth — rest on God’s initiative. In Christian spirituality, God is revealed to be the God of Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Christian spirituality is concerned with the invitation to participate in the life of God through communion with Jesus, the Incarnate Word, by the power of the Holy Spirit. The spiritual life develops through prayer and the cultivation of a relationship with God. Trinitarian spirituality entails greater attention to the dynamics that constitute a person’s relationship with self, others and God. This spirituality is especially attentive to relationships among human persons, and human persons and other creatures.

The Holy Trinity is the paradigm of human relationships. The divine Persons of the Holy Trinity exist in a relationship of interdependence, mutuality, equality, diversity and uniqueness. A Trinitarian spirituality is a spirituality of solidarity, which includes right relationship with self, with others and with God. It is a spirituality ordered toward God, who is our source and our end. It is a spirituality that is both contemplative and active.

A Trinitarian spirituality humbly acknowledges that our God is unknowable and incomprehensible. What we do know about God rests on how God reveals and manifests divine life for us in history, in society and in ourselves.

Prayer involves allowing God to change and transform us. Conversion is primarily the work of God, who offers us mercy and salvation. Our response in prayer helps us to acknowledge our sinfulness, to open our hearts to receive God’s mercy, to strengthen our desire to love God and neighbor, and to put our faith into action.

For us, Christ is the way of prayer. Our prayer is directed to the Father in the name of Jesus, and the humanity of Jesus is the way by which the Holy Spirit teaches us to pray.

Prayer is essential to Christian life. Jesus himself told his disciples, “Ask and you will receive; seek and your will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Luke 11:9-10) What could be more meaningful in life than to seek and find what our God of love, wonder, power and mercy has to offer us?