“Jesus told his disciples a parable about the need to pray always without becoming weary.” Prayer is an indispensable part of being a Christian and it’s something that we all need to incorporate into our regular lives. And of course we have some built-in prayer routines as Catholics, especially Sunday Mass and living life structured by participation in the sacraments. We have this wonderful treasury of structured, liturgical prayer to help keep us on track. But the Lord doesn’t tell us a parable about praying one hour a week and not getting too tired of it. He tells us a parable about praying always, without becoming weary. Since most of us, I suspect, are not called to be contemplative monks: what does “praying always” mean? The Lord is addressing this to everyone, not just to really exceptional prayer warriors; we’re not exempt from this message if we have a job, or a family, or a busy social schedule, or anything like that. We can and must foster in our minds and hearts real prayer: and that starts with an unshakable awareness of God’s presence. That default awareness that God is real and here and with me really is a prayer, and that sense of his presence should be there as the scaffolding underneath everything we’re doing. But you can’t just flip a switch and have that recognition of God’s love and presence. It does take work, and pretty constant and persistent work. It takes a regular, faithful routine of specifically dedicated times of prayer in order to create that foundation, to make that recognition of God’s presence immovable from our mind and heart. But it can be hard to know even where to start.
I picked up a book when I was in RCIA 20 years ago called “Prayer for Beginners” by a contemporary American theologian named Peter Kreeft, and this book has helped guide my prayer every day since. I do recommend reading this book, by the way. But what I want to mention today is that, he explains the basics of prayer using a little clever pun with the word “Rapt.” Of course, you can be “wrapped in prayer” with a “w”, but he means “Rapt: R-A-P-T, as in, “when you pray, do so with rapt attention.” But it’s acronym and mnemonic device: each letter stands for one of the four main types of prayer: R-A-P-T. Repentance, Adoration, Petition, and Thanksgiving. This is a great way to think about prayer, including personal informal prayer. We do these four things at Mass also, by the way, but this little wordplay has really helped me for all these years, because it’s such a good way to start knowing what things to have in mind when you’re trying to pray without a script. If you do 2 ½ minutes of each of those four dimensions of prayer, you will have done 10 minutes of excellent prayer. And that’s a very manageable way to start.
So, R-A-P-T. Repentance: because we all have things we need to turn away from, be purified of, ask God’s forgiveness for, and it’s not neurotic to pray about those things; in fact, we have to, because in order to do the other three kinds of prayer, we have to try to be as free from the chains that bind us as possible: so, Repentance, and we start there, just like we do at Mass. That’s R. Then there’s Adoration: worshiping God: just prayers like “I love you,” “I worship you,” “I acknowledge you for who you are.” Absolutely critical. Adoration is how we’re reminded of who he is, and how our relationship with him is truly ordered. That’s A. Then there’s Petition: it’s easy for this to become 100% of our prayer, but this whole “RAPT” thing reminds us that asking for things, even very good things, should really only be about a quarter of our prayer. But we should ask for things: things specific and things general; things about people we know, and things about people we don’t know; things about our closest family members, and things we only know about through the news. Petition. And finally, Thanksgiving. “Thank you, God.” Always such a wonderful place to arrive in the journey of prayer. Just, thank you. In general and in specifics. And as we talked about last week, it is such a powerful, purifying, and peace-giving type of prayer. Really intentionally returning with mind and heart to all the blessings of life, and thanking God for them. That’s T. Repentance, Adoration, Petition, Thanksgiving. Be “wrapped” in prayer, and pray with “rapt” attention. That’s helped me for 20 years. You do those things every day in your private quiet prayer, even just 10 minutes total, along with that indispensable scaffolding of the Christian life, namely Mass and the sacraments, you will pray always and even when life wearies you, you will not remain weary, because you will be able to maintain that unshakable awareness of the presence of Almighty God.