More Thoughts About Prayer on This Summer Sunday

Summer Sundays can vary a lot. If the weather's great, perhaps we want to get out: the beach, a picnic or other outing with the family, maybe even a good round of outdoor exercise we never have time for during the week. If we've got a house with a backyard, maybe we're more sedentary. The classic hammock, tied between two trees elicits a pleasant, drowsy image.

This summer, we've had our share of extreme heat and humidity in our neck of the woods. In such circumstance, air conditioning will take precedence over hot and humid air for this hater of heat and humidity. A home project, a good book, a movie, listening to music, etc., all fill the hours both pleasantly and productively.

But whatever summer Sunday's bring, we never cease to recall that it's the Lord's Day. Assuming we don't have to work (which some do), whether we're more or less active, carving out some special time for God does seem appropriate, doesn't it? Indeed, that's why we've posted a bit about prayer on recent Sundays.

Prayer - along with quiet meditation - should be our most direct and simple "go-to" when it comes to spending time with God. Recent posts have shown us that prayer can and should be at its root simple. For example, we might just talk to God our Father, Jesus, our greatest Friend, and the Holy Spirit, Who constantly tries to turn our attention from this sometimes tawdry world to the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Indeed, anyone of us can have a simple conversation with God on Sunday - even if for a few precious moments, right?

So let's keep the momentum towards Sunday prayer going full steam ahead with some wise words from yet another great Catholic spiritual guide - Father John Grou. We've seen him before and likely will see him again, despite his having died in 1803. Anything I've read by him is fresh as if it not only written yesterday, but written just for me. I hope you have the same reaction to these comments from "The Heart of Prayer is the Prayer of the Heart."

“When you are praying, says Jesus Christ, speak not much, as the heathens. For they think that in their much speaking they may be heard. Be not you therefore like to them: for your Father knoweth what is needful for you before you ask Him. It is a fault, then, to use so much speech in prayer; and it must be a serious fault, since Jesus Christ takes so much care to warn us against it, and even likens those who pray thus to the heathen. Assuredly he could not express Himself more strongly. We should never have dreamed that such was the case, had not the Gospel made this definite assertion. This passage, therefore, contains an instruction of great importance for us if we fully penetrate its meaning. The heathen idea of the divinity was as low as it was false. They degraded their gods almost to the level of humanity, believing them to have no direct knowledge of the needs of those who invoked them; and they therefore had to use many words to explain their wants. They imagined too that these deities, being subject, like men, to passions and prejudices, were not always inclined to do good to their suppliants, and so they so used all their eloquence to influence and change their dispositions.

“Although Christians are very far from having similar ideas of the true God, Whose knowledge has no bounds and Whose goodness is infinite, it is a fact that their ignorance and foolishness sometimes leads them to deal with Him as they might deal with a man. In making their requests they describe their situation to Him at length, as though He did not know it; they explain their intention to Him with the utmost precision, apparently fearing that He may misunderstand it; they reproach themselves for omitting to mention a person or a circumstance, as though God, who reads the heart, could not supplement their faulty memory; they tell Him all their reasons, and enlarge on the motives most likely to touch Him, as if His goodness needed to be urged; and they rise from their knees quite satisfied with themselves, if they have talked much, insisted forcibly and repeated the same thing over and over again. It seems as if, like the heathen, they mistrusted God; and as though they could never inform Him of their needs sufficiently, nor do enough to dispose Him in their favor. It is not faith, nor is it even reason that governs such prayers as these; it is the work of the imagination and the senses. Uneducated persons, and women in general, are the most inclined to err in this way.”

So if a simple talk with God makes sense on this summer Sunday, Father Grou's the guy to set us straight as to exactly what that means or shouldn't mean. We don't need to get into a lot of detailed description about what we think, feel, need, desire. God knows us as those pagan gods never could. He knew us from the moment of our creation in our mother's womb. He's known us every second of every day since then. He knows us now even better than we know ourselves. It makes sense, doesn't it, that Jesus gave us the advice to "speak not much." What could we possibly say that God doesn't already know?

Take a few moments - or more if possible - to speak not much with God on this summer Sunday.

Happy Sunday!