Edited by Jamie O’Brien
In an interview with The Record Magazine, Aquinas College Director of Spirtuality, Dr Andrew Kania explained that the sheer breadth of the history of Catholic prayer life, as daunting as it is to study, has a number of central characteristics that can be selected, and expanded upon, in order to illustrate interesting avenues by which to enrich our understanding of an individual’s journey into God, through prayer.
What does it mean to pray without ceasing?
St Augustine of Hippo, the great doctor of the Latin Church, once wrote that when we sing in praise of God, we pray twice.
Perhaps, says Dr Kania, the most fundamental facet of Catholic prayer life is the unequivocal belief that God exists, and more than this, that God wants to be a part of the life of each person that He has created.
“The purpose of the Creation of the world, is to express the love of the Creator for everything that He has created,” Dr Kania said.
“This love calls the person into a relationship with the Creator; yet still more so, with all of Creation.”
Now with regard to the individual, whether or not they perceive a relationship, or want to be in a relationship with the Creator, is a different story, from whether God exists and longs to love the individual.
Dr Kania explained that, while a child can disown their parent, this action does not in any way preclude the necessity for their parent having existed.
“In what should be the best case scenario, the relationship with God, should be not only an extension, but more so a macrocosm of the human parent child relationship.
“Few parents wish to bring into this world a child, that after having loved so much, they then abandon.
“To the contrary, most parents enjoy seeing how their child grows, learns and develops; they also enjoy being loved by their child, and enjoy imparting their love to their child,” Dr Kania said.
God, notes Dr Kania, is seen in such a light by many of the spiritual masters of the Catholic Church.
Scripture is filled with the analogy of God acting not only as a human parent, but in a way far more committed than even the most loving human parent. (see John 14: 18 and Isaiah 49: 15).
“In fact this perspective of a parent to child bond between God and the individual was explicitly taught by Christ,” Dr Kania explained.
“We recollect how when the disciples requested to Christ that they be taught how to pray to God effectively, that Christ taught them not to spout forth meaningless words devoid of emotion or thought, but that they speak to God as ‘Father’.”
Christ provides a radical insight into prayer life by spelling out to his Disciples and those who follow, that God is as interested and attached to the individual, not only as a human parent, but even more so as an omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent parent.
“The Gospel of John explains that God knows, cares, and so loves the individual, that He has chosen to be one like us (cf. John 3: 16),” Dr Kania said.
“God provides us with our ‘daily bread’, as well as our spiritual food, and promise of a world to come, within the profound words of The Lord’s Prayer.”
The radical nature of Christ’s teaching should not be lost, continued Dr Kania, no matter how many times one has heard it taught.
“God walks with us and yet more, He is in us, and knows us more than we know our very selves. The nature of God and the human person is thus in the Catholic context, one of sublime intimacy.
Dr Kania says that we should pray with the same tender love as the child who reaches to touch his mother’s face while nursing at her breast.
“We should pray with the same faith as the child who trusts as his father holds the back of the bicycle teaching the child to ride,”
“We should pray with the same hope that the young adult holds in their heart, that they will return safely, as they look at their parents prior to embarking on a long journey.”
“We should pray thus with: faith, hope and love, acknowledging an inextricable bond between us and God – inextricable that is, only until we choose to break this bond, by sin.
“But yet still, our prayer life is always open to our Divine parent, even in our sinfulness, if we seek to open the channel of love calling on the Divine Mercy,” Dr Kania concluded.
From page 8 and 9 from Issue 6: ‘Prayer – What does it mean to pray without ceasing?’ of The Record Magazine