What is going on with my prayer life? Should I really just be sitting in silence?

Q: I am struggling with my prayer life. I go to my 30-minute prayer time and nothing happens. But I stick it out anyway, as best I can. It seems like sheer willpower (and invisible grace) against everything else. “Well, I have nothing better to do for the next 47 years, Lord. I’ll wait it out like this, if that’s what you want.” I am frustrated.

A: This is a great question, but it’s hard to answer without a bit more context. Let me give some short answers pointed towards some hypothetical contexts.

Let’s say you are a normal lay person, or even a young religious, who has recently discovered the reality of God’s love for you, maybe through a retreat or a parish Bible study that set your heart on fire. You now desire to develop a deeper prayer life. You start by setting aside time on a daily basis to spend just with God – your daily God-time. But when you go there, you find it hard to concentrate. It’s not so easy as when you were on retreat, for some reason. And even when you do concentrate, you don’t seem to hear God speaking to you – nothing seems to happen. What’s the deal?

The Liberation of Structure

In this case, the best thing you can do is to give structure to your daily God-time. Structure, in general, actually frees us for more meaningful activity, contrary to much of popular opinion. We can only be free to play a Mozart sonata once we have disciplined ourselves regarding certain structures of music. In personal prayer, having a structure frees you to allow the Holy Spirit to work in your soul however he wishes. You are not just looking and waiting for dramatic manifestations of the Spirit, which you may have had on retreat or at the parish activities. Rather, you use your mind, heart, and imagination to search for a deeper knowledge and experience of God. And Jesus made a promise regarding that: “Search, and you shall find…” (Matthew 7:7).

What structure should you use? Here no hard and fast rules apply. You can make up your own, get ideas from someone you respect or from your spiritual director, use structures, materials, and recommendations from other sources… The important thing is always to remember that no structure is perfect, and no structure will actually do your prayer for you. But by having a structure, you take the pressure off yourself, and free yourself to be open to whatever God may want from you. I highly recommend the structure explained and embodied in The Better Part: A Christ-Centered Resource for Personal Prayer. But other structures abound. The important thing is to start using one. You can adjust as you go. In any event, a key element for mental prayer, even for religious, is having some material that you can use to spark your reflection and conversation with Christ. I often recommend simply taking a good, solid, spiritual book (like This Tremendous Lover or I Believe in Love) and using the following structure for your daily God-time:

1. Recall that you are in God’s presence and ask him to bless your time together.
2. Read a short passage from the book.
3. Reflect on the passage: What does this really mean? What does it mean for me?
4. Respond to the ideas that struck you by speaking to God in your own words: thanking him, praising him, questioning him, asking him for grace…
5. Reflect on another passage…
6. Respond again…
7. Resolve, at the end of your daily God-time, to live out in during the day to come the insights that the Holy Spirit gave to your mind and heart during the prayer. Thank God for his blessings, and launch into the activities of the day.

If you begin following a structure in your daily God-time, and you still experience that “nothing happens,” then you need simply to persevere, and maybe experiment with other structures. Clearly, your soul needs to be disciplined and purified by ascesis (our own spiritual effort) in order for you to hear what God is saying to you. This ascesis may also necessitate some alterations in the habits of your daily life – use of mass media, rooting out of sinful habits, building in periods of silence… In such a situation, a spiritual director is of invaluable help.

The Case of Passive Purgation

A different case is someone who has been engaged in structured, daily mental prayer for many years, and how has no habits of sin or sinful attachments. This may be a lay person or a religious, and they have been traveling along the journey to spiritual maturity for many years, receiving plenty of guidance from competent spiritual directors. If someone in this situation goes to their daily period of mental prayer and “nothing happens,” it is most like a spiritual trial being sent by God. This trial requires the soul to throw itself into God’s arms, abandon the hopes of sensible consolation, and persevere in humble acts of faith, hope, and love, in spite of the seeming lack of reward. These trials are a preparation of the soul for greater intimacy with God, what’s called a “passive purification.” The Divine Doctor is operating on your soul while you are experiencing a kind of spiritual anesthesia. Take comfort from the example of the saints, keep doing your part, and trust that God knows what he’s up to – “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God” (Romans 8:28).

In any case, we all can use the reminder our Lord gave to his followers many centuries ago: “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up…” (Luke 18:1).

An interview with Father Jacques Philippe on prayer and “Time for God”

After all the interest generated by our recommendation of Father Philippe’s book, “Time for God,” we thought you might be interested in a recent interview with Father Philippe by Carrie Gress for Zenit.org. In this interview, Father Philippe discusses the simple precepts of interior prayer, common misconceptions and the fruit that can be expected when added to the sacramental life.

Q: You describe mental prayer or interior prayer as something that does not involve technique. How, then, does it work?

Father Philippe: It would be better to say interior prayer instead of mental prayer, because in our modern culture, the word “mental” is associated with thoughts — as something cerebral — whereas this form of prayer is more an affair of the heart, instead of reflection. St. Teresa of Avila said that it is not an act of thinking much, but of loving much.

Interior prayer is not a question of technique. It is not a process that can be controlled because it is a meeting with God, who infinitely surpasses anything we can achieve through our own efforts.

What must be essentially understood is that there is no method, but an interior attitude. For interior prayer, there are three principles: a true desire for God; the confidence that God will allow us find that which we are looking for; and finally, humility: To accept our poverty and to wait for the goodness and love of God in all things.

Q: What is the fruit of interior prayer? And why is it important? Isn’t adherence to the sacraments enough?

Father Philippe: Interior prayer permits the sacramental life to be more fruitful, more alive, more intense. It is important because it is there that we see and endlessly deepen the most essential dimension of Christian life: the personal relationship of trust and love that is established between God and each of his children, the reciprocal exchange where we give ourselves to God and where God gives himself to us. According to Pope John Paul II in “Novo Millenio Ineunte,” this reciprocity is “the very substance and soul of the Christian life, and the condition of all true pastoral life.”

Q: How does mental prayer differ from those who would wish to compare it to yoga or Buddhist practices?

Father Philippe: The fundamental difference is that it is a question of living and deepening the relationship of one person to another with God, and it is not solely to acquire the power to practice an interior or psychic state. The possibility of this interpersonal relationship is not founded on initiative or skill, but on God’s desire to reveal himself and to communicate through love. Moreover, God acts within the Holy Trinity revealed in the New Testament: Through Jesus and thanks to the action of the Holy Spirit, we can enter into communion with the Father.

Q: You describe mental prayer as “just spending time” with God, like two people in love would, but this can often feel like nothing is happening. Could something be happening interiorly despite the feeling that there isn’t? Or even during times when one is distracted?

Father Philippe: The life of prayer is much deeper than the intelligence or the senses can perceive. Even when prayer is poor and distracted, provided that it is made with sincerity and faith, God can communicate secretly with the soul. He puts into it the treasures of light and the power of peace that is often made manifest at other times in life instead of just during prayer itself. And if one perseveres despite times of aridity, there will always be moments when God visits and makes his presence felt.

Q: In today’s world, many people just don’t seem to have time to spend half an hour or an hour in silent prayer. How can it be fit in? Does it always have to be practiced in a church?

Father Philippe: When one activity is considered vital, we find time to do it. The fundamental question is “what are our priorities?” We must be convinced that God will give us a hundred-fold the time that we devote to him in prayer. If we give part of our time to God with fidelity and perseverance, even just a quarter of an hour ever day, our life will be more peaceful and more fruitful.

We can pray at a church, as there is a lot of grace when praying in the presence of the Holy Sacrament, but we can also pray in a corner of our room in front of an icon, out in nature, or even on the bus or the subway.

Q: Many people only want to pray when they have an interior prompting to do so. Why is this not helpful both in prayer and in arriving at true interior freedom?

Father Philippe: All love relationships need, in order to grow, a choice for fidelity. If a husband loves his wife only when he feels the spirit to do so, the relationship will remain superficial, on only an emotional level. Fidelity and perseverance allow love to move beyond merely the sentimental and to become something very beautiful and rich, a life shared, a mutual gift of persons, one to another.

In every love relationship there are times of crisis and difficulty, but if we persevere with fidelity, the love will become stronger and truer.

To purchase Father Philippe’s book “Time for God” and support this site, click here.

Seek Him – Find Him – Follow Him

Dan