Today at Holy Mass Father Kirby at Our Lady of Grace gave a homily on prayer, and much of what he said reminded me of what my AA sponsor had told me some three decades ago. We are not supposed to pray for ourselves and what we want. God isn't a slot machine or a sugar daddy. Rather, what Father explained in his homily was very much like the way in which the 11th step in Alcoholics Anonymous is written:
Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for the knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Father gave the example of that great Patriarch Abraham who in his prayers to God made known his complaints. Father explained that when bad things happen to us, we don't complain to our enemies or to strangers. Rather, we complain to our closest friends for understanding and sympathy, and that is exactly what Abraham did. He was a friend of God and he made known to God his trials and troubles. Maybe that's all we have to offer right now, but if we pray consistently, then God can turn our complaints into thanksgiving.
That reminds me of something else early in sobriety. I would often complain to my sponsor about this, that and the other thing. I would ask him why all this "shit" was happening to me. Then he would say, "Be thankful that God cares about you so much that He is giving you all that Specialized High Intensity Training that you so desperately need. Now get on your knees in prayer and put some gratitude in your attitude. You didn't drink or drug today."
Father was far more diplomatic that my AA sponsor, and exhorted all of us in the congregation to begin small and spend perhaps just five minutes a day in prayer and make it a habit. Yes, while Father didn't directly speak about these, there are always the standard traditional prayers of the Rosary and the Chaplet of Divine Mercy and others. All of those are invaluable and should be regularly practiced. Lord knows that they have kept me sober through thick and thin when the proverbial poop hit the fan. But do I ever really talk with God as Abraham did? Or am I just mouthing the words in those rote prayers and not paying attention to what they really mean? Father ended of course with this excerpt from the Lord's Prayer:
Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo, et in terra.
Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.
That's the whole point of the 11th step in AA - not my will, not what I want because when I got what I wanted, I invariably got drunk. Rather, it's about what God wants and being grateful for that even if I may not like it.
UPDATE: I just finished the readings from the Liturgy of the Hours, and lo and behold, look at what I found:
| A letter to Proba by St Augustine |
|---|
| Let us exercise our desire in prayer |
|---|
Why in our fear of not praying as we should, do we turn to so many things, to find what we should pray for? Why do we not say instead, in the words of the psalm: I have asked one thing from the Lord, this is what I will seek: to dwell in the Lord’s house all the days of my life, to see the graciousness of the Lord, and to visit his temple? There, the days do not come and go in succession, and the beginning of one day does not mean the end of another; all days are one, simultaneously and without end, and the life lived out in these days has itself no end.
So that we might obtain this life of happiness, he who is true life itself taught us to pray, not in many words as though speaking longer could gain us a hearing. After all, we pray to one who, as the Lord himself tells us, knows what we need before we ask for it.
Why he should ask us to pray, when he knows what we need before we ask him, may perplex us if we do not realise that our Lord and God does not want to know what we want (for he cannot fail to know it), but wants us rather to exercise our desire through our prayers, so that we may be able to receive what he is preparing to give us. His gift is very great indeed, but our capacity is too small and limited to receive it. That is why we are told: Enlarge your desires, do not bear the yoke with unbelievers.
The deeper our faith, the stronger our hope, the greater our desire, the larger will be our capacity to receive that gift, which is very great indeed. No eye has seen it; it has no colour. No ear has heard it; it has no sound. It has not entered man’s heart; man’s heart must enter into it.
In this faith, hope and love we pray always with unwearied desire. However, at set times and seasons we also pray to God in words, so that by these signs we may instruct ourselves and mark the progress we have made in our desire, and spur ourselves on to deepen it. The more fervent the desire, the more worthy will be its fruit. When the Apostle tells us: Pray without ceasing, he means this: Desire unceasingly that life of happiness which is nothing if not eternal, and ask it of him who alone is able to give it.
