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The Catholic Telegraph
July 19, 2002We continue to read from the long section of Romans, stretching from the end of chapter three through chapter eight, that is concerned with the nature and the results of salvation. Salvation consists in living the life of the risen Christ. We have access to it through faith. Once we have been introduced into the state of being saved, we are free from the obligations of the Jewish law and from the demands of self-seeking. We are in a new relationship with God that enables us to call Him our Father in the same way that Jesus did and that invites us to look forward to a state of glorious and final fulfillment in the company of all creation.
In verses 24 and 25 of chapter eight Paul says that our longing for the final fulfillment of creation finds its validation in hope. Hope enables us to wait with persistence.
In this Sunday’s reading, Paul speaks of another element that is involved with our looking forward to God’s final gifts to us: the Spirit who prays in our hearts.
We are weak, the text says, and we don’t really know how to pray. We know we are supposed to be aching for final union with God, but we are not quite sure how to express our desires. (The text does not go into detail about why this is the case, but it would not be hard to think of reasons why we are inarticulate before God. Our human limitations, our association with sin, our orientation toward selfishness, our limited knowledge and experience of God, our natural desire to want to save ourselves without having to depend on God - any or all of these characteristics could make it difficult for us to communicate with God.)
To help us overcome these obstacles to communication, God gives us His own Spirit to speak through our hearts, to address the Father for us in ways that are too deep for human utterance. God is intensely interested in us, in our deepest desires, and is anxious to listen to the Spirit when the Spirit speaks through us and on our behalf. The Spirit can express what the Father longs to hear from all those who are saved ("the holy ones").
These two short verses teach us quite a bit about prayer. First of all, they suggest that our prayer is not supposed to be concerned only about our day to day needs, about the little things we think we (or those we love) have to have from God if we are going to be able to serve Him properly. Appropriate as prayer for such things may be, prayer also has to be concerned with ultimates, with the deepest meaning of our existence, with the final destiny toward which God is directing us. We tend to concentrate on immediate and superficial things in our prayer, "because we do not know how to pray as we ought."
But God doesn’t leave us to our own devices when it comes to prayer. God doesn’t sit back and let us figure it all out for ourselves. No, God’s very own Spirit prays with us and in us. Just as the risen Christ acts in us and speaks in us, so also the Spirit of Christ prays in us. We never have to count exclusively on our own spiritual resources and skills when we speak with God. We never have to address the Father alone. When we speak to God, we speak to Him with His own voice. We speak God’s language because God’s Spirit speaks when we pray.
This doesn’t mean that we don’t have to exert effort in our prayer or that we can expect the Spirit to do it all for us. No, we have to practice prayer, we have to get skilled in it, we have to train ourselves in prayer just as athletes have to train themselves in their sports. But our own efforts are not our only resources. Whenever we address our heavenly Father, the Spirit prays with us and elevates our conversation with God to the level of the Father’s conversation with the Son and the Spirit.
The liturgy gives us some good indications about what to pray for and how to pray. The prayers of Sunday Mass, for example, are quite general, yet quite instructive: "help us to know your will and do it with courage;" "show us the way to peace;" "help us to live in your presence;" "grant us an unfailing respect for your name." These are the things God wants us to desire. And how are we to pray for them? "Through our Lord Jesus Christ who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit." God is involved in our dialogue, not only by teaching us what to pray for but also by becoming personally involved in our expression of it.
All of this suggests that we have to leave room for God to be involved in our prayer. We have to allow Him to lead us in our prayer. We have to listen to what God says to us in our prayer.
Some years ago one of our priests asked to meet with me for a half-hour because he wanted to discuss his ministry with me. When he got to my office, he talked without stopping for forty-five minutes, telling me, among other things, that he was a skilled listener. I didn’t get to say more than a few words. By the time he left I was more than a little annoyed because I felt that he had used me to build up his own ego. I wonder if God might not feel that way sometimes about our prayer.
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Conversation Questions.
How do I know what to pray for our how to pray?
Do I leave room in my prayer for the Spirit to speak to and for me?
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