The basis of Christian prayer (II)
We concluded last week’s article on Christian prayer with one of the qualities of true Christian prayer, namely the glorification of God. True Christian prayer seeks the glory of God and not the vainglory of the one who prays. In other words, to pray means to magnify the Name of God and not our own name. St Ambrose, commenting on the spirit-filled song of praise that Mary addresses to the Living God (cf. Lk 1:39-46), says that to magnify the Lord in our prayer does not mean that we add anything to God, but that we let God be great in us. To magnify the Lord means that we do not magnify ourselves, our own name, our own ego; that we do not spread ourselves and take up more space like the peacock, but that we give God room to be great in our lives. It means to truly become what we are: not a self-enclosed monad that displays nothing but itself, but God’s image.
To magnify the Lord means to get free of the dust and soot that obscures and begrimes the transparency of God’s image in us and to become truly human, by pointing exclusively to God. This is essentially what prayer is. It signifies the human person’s true exodus from himself, in such a way that there is a transition from our own will to the union of our will with God (a union of two wills). The Common Eucharistic Preface IV of the Holy Mass teaches us that God has no need of our praise, yet our thanksgiving is itself His gift. Our prayer adds nothing to His greatness but makes us grow in His grace. In other words, when we pray, we are not doing God a favour. We are only really helping ourselves. Without prayer we cannot live!
A third quality of true Christian prayer is that prayer is a dialogue. Prayer is developing an intimate relationship with God. This relationship is friendship. It is not a parasitic relationship in which the parasite feeds off on the prey. Prayer is a symbiotic relationship. In prayer, we express our friendship with God. One of the essentials of true friendship is communication. This is not a oneoff thing, what we do only when we are in need. And afterward we forget about God until we have another request to make. When a young man and a young lady are intimately in love, they express this love through verbal and nonverbal communication. In prayer, Jesus shows his intimate union with the Father, and that is why the disciples were so moved with his act of prayer that they ask Him to teach them how to pray.
Prayer is not monologue. It is a two-way dialogue: “I speak, God listens. God speaks, I listen.” This means that in prayer we must be patient to listen to God. Many Christians think that prayer is just about pouring our hearts before God and walking away. Christian prayer has a listening key. The Christian who prays must develop a loving relationship with God that has a capacity for silence and solitude. It is in this atmosphere that we can hear God. A great saint once said that, “The beauty of prayer is not that God will hear us, but that we will finally hear God.” We have to also add here that dialogue is not quarrel. It is not shouting or howling at the top of your voice. Many Christians think that their prayers will be heard by how loud they voice the words. They seem to act like God is deaf and can only hear their prayers when they shout at the top of their voice. That is why it is a common feature of Nigerian Christian prayer to find people who are praying sweating profusely like a bucket of water was poured on their bodies.
When you ask such Christians why they pray in this way, some of them answer by quoting a statement of Jesus, “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence and violent men take it by force” (Mt 11:12). On this point, they are fundamentally mistaken. If only they knew the context of that statement of Jesus. Prayer is not a violent act neither is it combative. We are not fighting or wrestling with God when we pray. Two lovers do not express their intimacy by shouting at each other. In fact, it gets to a certain point where the two lovers dispense with words in their communication of intimacy. They just look at each other and smile without saying any words. This is the level where the mystics are in their friendship with God. Prayer is a loving relationship with God. If we think that God will hear us only when we shout, where do we think our voices can go? Can it pierce beyond our rooftops? Prayer is an act of love. Those who love God don’t shout at him. When God revealed Himself to Prophet Elijah, it was not in the strong wind or in the earthquake or in the raging fire that Elijah found God. He only heard the voice of God in a gentle breeze (cf. 1 Kgs 19:11-13).
It is on account of this that Jesus says, “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. Truly, I tell you, they already have their reward. But when you pray, God into your inner room, shut the door and pray to your Father, who sees in secret. And your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not babble like the hypocrites, for they think that their prayer will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him” (Mt 6:5-8). In this teaching, Jesus has distilled the fundamentals of Christian prayer. We are not to be like hypocrites whose prayers are for their own vainglory and ego satiation. Prayer is not babbling. In this light, we see that much of what we call Christian prayer in Nigeria is simply noise pollution.