When we feel helpless in our prayer

FEELING helpless in our prayer can come to us anytime. We

can experience such dryness that we would not feel the slightest need

for God nor the need to pray, to go and talk to him. Many times, we

would not know how to relate some situations of our life to God—like

our current concerns, problems, challenges, or just our usual work,

duties and responsibilities. We also can be hounded by distractions

and temptations.

  

            This is the time to act like those gospel characters—the

blind, the lame, the paralytic, the leper, etc.—who did their best to

get close to Christ, begging for help. “Lord, have pity on us,” they

would say. And Christ always attended to them. There were even times

when without being asked, Christ would offer his help.

  

            We should avoid allowing ourselves to drift away from God

when we feel empty in our prayer because without him, our condition

would just go from bad to worse. We should never waver from our belief

that we are meant to be with God always. So, even if we do not feel

any attraction to him in what is supposed to be our moment of prayer,

we should just persist.

  

            Let’s remember what Christ reassured us. “Ask and it will

be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be

opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds, and

to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Mt 7,7-8)

  

            Yes, we really just have to persist. This is the

expression and the power of faith, especially when everything else in

our natural powers—our intelligence, will, memory, imagination,

feelings, emotions and passions—fail.

   

            We should just humble ourselves to trust in the providence

of God so that we can still go on even if we feel dry and are in the

dark.

   

            A great man of prayer and a teacher of prayer himself, St.

Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei, had these tips to say about

how to handle those instances when we find ourselves helpless in our

prayer.

  

            -“Slowly. Consider what you are saying, to whom it is

being said and by whom. For that hurried talk, without time for

reflection, is just empty noise. And with St. Teresa, I will tell you

that, however much you work your lips, I do not call it prayer.” (The

Way, 82)

  

            -“You say that you don’t know how to pray? Put yourself in

the presence of God, and once you have said, ‘Lord, I don’t know how

to pray!’ rest assured that you have begun to do so. (TW 90)

  

            -“You write: ‘To pray is to talk with God. But about

what?’ About what? About Him, about yourself: joys, sorrows, successes

and failures, noble ambitions, daily worries, weaknesses! And acts of

thanksgiving and petitions: and Love and reparation. In a word: to get

to know him and to get to know yourself: ‘to get acquainted!’” (TW 91)

   

            -“‘Et in meditatione mea exardescit ignis. And in my

meditation a fire shall flame out.’ That is why you go to pray: to

become a bonfire, a living flame giving heat and light. So, when you

are not able to go on, when you feel that your fire is dying out, if

you cannot throw on it sweet-smelling logs, throw on the branches and

twigs of short vocal prayers and ejaculations, to keep the bonfire

burning. And you will not have wasted your time.” (TW 92)

  

-“You don’t know what to say to our Lord in your prayer. You can’t

think of anything, and yet you would like to consult him on many

things. Look: make some notes during the day of whatever you want to

consider in the presence of God. And then take these notes with you to

pray.” (TW 97)