Those who love each other, speak to each other

Prayer is a dialogue of love
 
On many occasions, when I offer reflections on prayer, I invite my audience to raise their smartphones. Then, I let them into a little secret. Those who you call or text most often are those who you love the most. To love one another means that you make time to speak to one another.
 
This dialogue of love varies in many ways, according to what is happening at any given moment.
 
Circumstances, family situations and work environment, even your own physical, mental or emotional state, can affect your prayer life.
 
During a calm, quiet and peaceful morning, before the frenzy of the day begins, we can take a moment to respond to God’s call in Psalm 46, verse 11: “Be still and know that I am God!”
 
During a crisis or emergency, where there is no peace and quiet, we can cry out to God with the words of Psalm 88, verses 2 through 5: “Lord, the God of my salvation, I call out by day; at night, I cry aloud in your presence. Let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry. For my soul is filled with troubles; my life draws near to Sheol. I am reckoned with those who go down to the pit; I am like a warrior without strength.”
 
Our loving dialogue with God will vary in intensity, emotion, urgency and in many other ways. This is normal in all relationships; the tone and content of our conversations will vary, but the great thing is that we are talking to one another. God speaks to us in our hearts and through the Holy Scriptures and many other ways. We speak to God through our many and varied prayers, especially the celebration of the Eucharist – our greatest prayer.
The wonderful opportunity to pray is a gift from God that is born from our covenant relationship with him and that intensifies the bond of loving communion with God when we our hearts are totally his and not divided by sin.
 
At times, prayer can be easy, but it also can be difficult. It is so easy a child can do it. It is so difficult that it takes a mystic and saint to explain the very depths of it.
 
Because the dialogue of love with God can be so difficult, the Lord sends us his Holy Spirit to help us. Saint John Paul II speaks of this in his encyclical on the Holy Spirit, “Dominum Et Vivificantem.” I would like to end this column by inviting you to pray the Lord’s Prayer and reflect on some lines from paragraph 65 of this encyclical.
 
“The breath of the divine life, the Holy Spirit, in its simplest and most common manner, expresses itself and makes itself felt in prayer. It is a beautiful and salutary thought that, wherever people are praying in the world, there the Holy Spirit is, the living breath of prayer. … Prayer also is the revelation of that abyss that is the heart of man: a depth that comes from God and that only God can fill, precisely with the Holy Spirit.
 
Our difficult age has a special need of prayer. … recent years have been seeing a growth in the number of people who, in ever more widespread movements and groups, are giving first place to prayer and seeking in prayer a renewal of their spiritual life. This is a significant and comforting sign, for from this experience there is coming a real contribution to the revival of prayer among the faithful, who have been helped to gain a clearer idea of the Holy Spirit as he who inspires in hearts a profound yearning for holiness.
 
In many individuals and many communities there is a growing awareness that, even with all the rapid progress of technological and scientific civilization, and despite the real conquests and goals attained, man is threatened, humanity is threatened. In the face of this danger, and indeed already experiencing the frightful reality of man's spiritual decadence, individuals and whole communities, guided as it were by an inner sense of faith, are seeking the strength to raise man up again, to save him from himself, from his own errors and mistakes that often make harmful his very conquests. And, thus, they are discovering prayer, in which the ‘Spirit who helps us in our weakness’ manifests himself. In this way, the times in which we are living are bringing the Holy Spirit closer to the many who are returning to prayer.”