Revolutionary Prayer
A woman’s nephew had been kidnapped. She joined with her devout family to pray intensely for his safety. They felt if they bombarded heaven, it would be granted because they had faith it was a just and selfless petition. They supported each other with the words of Jesus ‘ask and you will receive’. When the boy was murdered by his captors the shock and grief propelled her into a full-blown crisis of faith. She did not doubt God’s existence or angrily reject him: but how on earth could God in heaven have failed them? She realised that her understanding, both of God and of prayer, must be inadequate. She consulted a friend who said, ‘I can’t give you the answer but maybe another approach to prayer, that I follow, may help your faith grow as it helped mine. I do meditation: the prayer of the heart’.
There are innumerable valid ways of prayer. We pray in different ways at different times. Most temples, mosques, synagogues and churches, however, attract devotees who pray for what all humans desire, needs such as health, prosperity, children, longevity and escape from life’s problems. In other words, for religious people and others, prayer often means primarily praying for or praising God with an agenda. Doesn’t it seem odd that most Christians are not introduced or encouraged to explore the approach to prayer that Jesus selected when he taught on prayer on one momentous occasion and throughout his ministry?
Without this teaching it is hard to make sense of the nature and purpose of prayer or of the Gospel itself. Origen, in the second century, put it concisely: prayer in itself is good. It calms the mind, reduces sin and promotes good deeds.’ Good in itself, like loving, not transactional like negotiating. Many feel rejected when their prayer for something in good faith proves ‘ineffective’. But have we missed something about authentic prayer, something hiding in full view if only we have eyes to see?
Jesus delivered a revolutionary message that changes our essential understanding, not only of prayer, but of everything: life, God and human identity. Christianity is in crisis today and yet many Christians are seeking elsewhere in other traditions just what he taught without ever knowing that he did teach it. They see little evidence of it because it is painfully absent or even denied in the times of worship and education they encounter ‘in church’ where — surely — they should learn about it. There is at least one sermon, though, where you hear it loud and clear and can go back to listen to it again and again. The Sermon on the Mount, (Matthew 5–7) is a great text for a revolutionary Lent. It is his manifesto of spiritual, not ideological, transformation that shows him above all as a universal master of prayer.
His teaching on prayer is central to all Jesus teaches. He dismisses inauthentic, showy forms of prayer that offer only inauthentic, egoic or even congregational self-satisfaction. He describes the alternative when he says when you pray…pray like this. It is crystal clear. I will select some essential elements of his contemplative revolution.
Firstly, interiority. Go into your inner room, close the door and pray in the presence of the Father, the ever-present Source, whom you will find there. The Greek word for this inner space is ‘tameion’ which means a ‘secret’ — in the sense of mysterious — boundless dimension, literally a ‘storeroom’ of infinite and nourishing riches. Secondly, silence. Don’t babble on endlessly like the pagans who think the more they say the more likely they are to be heard. Your Father knows what you need before you ask. If we truly believe that, why in most Christian worship is there no deep silence, no pause to apply faith in his teaching? And where in religious education is a universal sustainable, practical introduction of how to pray as he teaches (with notable exceptions in contemplatively-oriented dioceses like Canberra and Trinidad).
Thirdly, he teaches us to develop equanimity of mind. At the time of prayer let go of life’s worries and anxieties rather than becoming fixated on them. To explain how, he points as does Laudato Si, to the contemplation of Creation in its rich beauty and transcendent wonder. Fourthly, attentiveness. Set your mind on God’s kingdom and all the rest will fall into place. How many Catholic schools have invited in secular ‘meditation’ techniques, suggesting a spiritual bankruptcy in knowing their own tradition. The heart of contemplation, because Jesus is a teacher of contemplation, is simple pure attention. For Aquinas ‘contemplation is the simple enjoyment of the truth’. Children, I know well, can meditate, love to meditate and ask for it.
Fourthly, he says, be in the present moment. Don’t worry about tomorrow. The ‘pure prayer’, of the inner room as Desert monasticism through teachers like Evagrius describe it, begins by simply ‘laying aside all thoughts’ which hook us to past or future. As we find that prayer is more than thinking or asking, we awaken in the moment of Christ. The scourge of stress and depression is healed by his promise of peace and joy.
Yet Christians — and other religious practitioners — often remain hooked on prayer primarily as petition and intercession. This can reduce it to an understandable but false consolation like buying lottery tickets. Of course, these forms of prayer can be valid. But, as St Augustine asked, why do we tell God our problems? To update him on something he might have missed? To change God’s mind? Does God change his mind? To bribe him to support us against opponents or to treat us as favourites? God has no favourites, St Paul says. In the same Sermon, Jesus teaches that God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Augustine concludes that we validly pray in this way to express solidarity with the suffering and to deepen our faith that God is, believe it or not, God.
I am not saying, therefore, that the approach to prayer that Jesus chose in order to illuminate his whole revolutionary process, excludes other forms of prayer. I have been having medical treatment recently and, when the nurses set up a new drip, I lift my hand to bless it and those caring for me. But all I felt the need to say — and I did feel it — is ‘your will be done’ and I feel wonderfully supported by the prayer of others.
Being hooked on prayer as only praying for is solved by the transformative experience of prayer as Jesus reveals it. His disciples once asked him to teach them to pray. A simple contemplative practice, of which there are many schools, is easily found. Julian of Norwich mischievously explained the problem like this: you ask for something. You don’t get it. God changes your will into His and then gives what you ask. Her deeper point is that prayer as Jesus teaches it, is transformative not magical: it changes us.
The Western Church is widely seen as moralistic and trapped in self-obsession. It is hard for people to believe that Jesus taught radical spiritual transformation, the glorious liberty of the children of God, human equality, the wonder of the human body, which is the sacred language of Christianity, and unity. We have lost the mystical dimension of the gospel, teaching it neither to our clergy nor our children. The Eastern Church is more mystical but its bridge between contemplation and action also needs repair.
Forty days is more than enough to discover why the teaching of Jesus on prayer — simple, radical and doable — is worth practicing. This Lent, why not build times for interiority, silence, equanimity, attentiveness and the present moment into every morning and evening? Our contemplative tradition will show how to use these times. Solitary, but never lonely, contemplation is the cure for loneliness because meditation, my own practice, reveals and realises the community we need. Find others you can join with in person or online. Two or three, as Jesus said, is enough for him to manifest himself and the inner and outer revolution he is leading humanity through. This means that the first sign of change in the prayer that Jesus taught is not in externals — that comes — but in the transformation of the person who prays.
The spiritual mothers and fathers of the Desert who knew this advised the best thing to pray for is simply the gift of prayer itself.
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Published in The Tablet, February 25th 2025
My book Sensing God: Learning to Meditate through Lent offers a daily way to learn or deepen your practice. It is also available as a download from: https://spckpublishing.co.uk/sensing-god
