Learning to Pray
A Guide for Everyone
By James Martin
Category: Religion & Spirituality | Reading Duration: 22 min | Rating: 4.1/5 (202 ratings)
About the Book
Learning to Pray (2021) unpacks one of the most important yet misunderstood aspects of spiritual life: prayer. What’s the purpose of prayer? How do you pray “correctly?” What should you expect when you pray? These are just some of the questions that often stand between believers and this deeply rewarding practice. And there’s no better way of answering them than by looking back through the different styles and rituals of prayer found in the Christian tradition.
Who Should Read This?
- Believers struggling with prayer
- Agnostics and skeptics with an open mind
- History buffs
What’s in it for me? Discover the power of prayer.
Why pray? It’s a deceptively simple question. Virtually all Christian theologians argue that prayer brings us closer to God, but after that it’s largely a matter of interpretation. Some emphasize friendship; others focus on awe and reverence, or love and intimacy.
As we’ll soon see, this open-endedness can be liberating. It means there isn’t a “wrong” way to pray – how you pray depends on who you are and what you’re seeking. But how should you begin to acquaint yourself with prayer and establish its place in your life? Well, a good way to start is by looking at how Christians have approached prayer throughout history, which is just what we’ll be doing in this summary.
Along the way, you’ll learn - why prayer is for everyone;
- how thinkers from St.
- Augustine to St.
- Teresa of Ávila understood prayer;
- how to handle the emotions you encounter while praying.
Let’s face it: prayer can be daunting.
Chapter 1: Prayer is for everyone.
If you’ve never prayed before, you might not know where to start or what to expect. And if you have tried, you might have come up against the most common stumbling block of all – the feeling that you’re not doing it “correctly. ” But here’s the thing: like swimming or riding a bike, praying isn’t something you just do spontaneously. Whether you’re an ordinary person or a holy individual like Mother Teresa, prayer is something that has to be learned.
The good news is, everyone can. The key message in this blink is: Prayer is for everyone. Everyone is capable of praying – the author believes that devoutly. But he also knows what it’s like to struggle with prayer. While he grew up with religion, true spirituality played a limited role in his early life. His family went to church on Sundays and said grace before meals.
The kids attended after-school religious education classes. But neither God nor their relationship with him were discussed very often. There was something missing; God was present, but he felt distant at the same time. In short, the author didn’t feel like he had a personal connection with God. This sense shaped his understanding of prayer. Until his late twenties, he only prayed when he needed help.
If he approached God, it was to ask for an “A” on a test, a home run in Little League, or a raise at work. Now, there’s nothing wrong with asking God for help – that’s a natural and deeply human instinct. But our relationship with God can also be richer and more profound. But how? The author discovered the answer to that question after joining the Jesuits, a Catholic religious order, when he was 27. After entering the Jesuit novitiate – the period of training novices undergo before taking their vows – he realized that there wasn’t a single “correct” way of praying.
In fact, there were hundreds of different ways of praying, and just as many ways of understanding prayer. Praying, in other words, is flexible. That’s because, above all, it’s about developing your personal relationship with God. It doesn’t have to be formulaic for the simple reason that your relationship with God isn’t formulaic.
Prayer really is for everyone. To grasp this aspect of prayer is a truly life-altering experience. Prayer is universal – something anyone can do. But what is its purpose?
Chapter 2: Praying fulfills our deepest needs – and God’s desire to have a relationship with us.
In other words, why should we pray? Here’s one answer: because God wants to know you and have a relationship with you. Your desire to pray is proof of this. But how can you know that’s what God wants?
Well, the fact that we have an urge to pray says something about how God made us. Deep within, there’s a natural desire to communicate with God, and this desire is fulfilled by prayer. Put differently, God created us in such a way that we are drawn to him. The key message in this blink is: Praying fulfills our deepest needs – and God’s desire to have a relationship with us. Leading a spiritual life is a kind of quest. It begins with a sense that there’s more to our existence than we can see or grasp – that there’s something greater out there.
We feel restless, and this causes us to seek answers. With these answers we hope to find completion and fill the hole in our hearts. Only God can fill this void. As the fourth-century Roman theologian St. Augustine put it, our hearts will remain restless until they find rest in God. So how do we find God?
Through prayer. Prayer is the means by which we establish the relationship with God that both our human nature and God himself desire. This is the first answer to the question “Why pray? ” We pray because we have to – because it is part and parcel of being human. Praying answers the human longing for the divine which completes and fulfills us. Another answer to that question is that we are in need.
No life is completely free of problems; there are always hardships and difficulties. In such moments of need, there is nothing more natural than turning to our Creator for help. Prayer also helps us. Think of physical exercise for a moment. If you never get off your couch, you get out of shape. As a result, you pull more muscles when you are active, and your cardiovascular health declines.
Neglecting your relationship with God has a similar effect on your spiritual health. When you don’t spend intentional time with God, you’re likely to feel more irritable, be less grateful, and – most importantly – lose touch with the deepest part of your own nature. This ultimately erodes your sense of purpose in life.
Chapter 3: Prayer isn’t always deliberate.
Seventeenth-century French playwright Molière wrote many plays, but one of the best-known is a comedy called “The Middle-Class Gentleman. ” In the play, a character called Monsieur Jourdain hires a tutor to teach him the kind of things gentlemen are supposed to know. During one lesson, Jourdain’s tutor explains the difference between prose and poetry. Jourdain is amazed.
For more than 40 years, he exclaims, he has been speaking prose! But what does Monsieur Jourdain have to do with prayer? Simple – just as he spoke prose without knowing it, we often pray without realizing it. The key message in this blink is: Prayer isn’t always deliberate. Since prayer answers a deep-seated human need, it’s not surprising that we often pray without being aware of it. Even many people who don’t formally pray still ask God for help in moments of need – for example, think of short, spontaneous exclamations such as “Help me, God!
” or questions like “God, are you even there? ” Your mind might not recognize this as praying, but this longing for help is the way your heart prays for you. Contemplation can also be a form of unconscious prayer. Imagine reading an inspiring story in the newspaper about a woman who has given up everything to work in a refugee camp. After finishing the article, you find yourself lost in thought and dwelling on her generosity. Or say that over lunch, a coworker tells you about how he cares for a parent with dementia.
Later, as you drive home, you’re struck by his selflessness. In these moments, you’re reflecting on the goodness of God’s creation, which is a kind of prayer. So, too, is the admiration of nature. To be dazzled by the intricate beauty of a rosebud in spring and ponder how it came to be is to enter into dialogue with God. Frustration can also bring us nearer to our Creator. Sure, you might think you’re doing pretty well – you have a decent job and love your family.
But is that really all there is to life? Why are you here – doesn’t God have a plan for you? Musing over these kinds of serious questions is another way of praying. It seems that we can be surprised by God’s closeness and drawn into communion with him at virtually any time and in any place. But what about formal prayer? As we’ll soon see, there are just as many ways of praying deliberately as there are of praying spontaneously.
Chapter 4: Prayer is an “approach from below.
There are almost as many ways of defining deliberate or “formal” prayer as there are theologians and spiritual writers. A good place to start, however, is with one of the most influential definitions – one which goes back to St. John Damascene, a monk who lived in Syria in the eighth century. Today, it’s part of the official teachings of the Catholic Church.
Prayer, as St. John said, is the “raising of one’s mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God. ” When we pray, then, we are reminded of our position in the cosmic order – below God, to whom we aspire to raise ourselves up. The key message in this blink is: Prayer is an “approach from below. ” As theologians influenced by St. John sometimes put it, prayer is an approach from below.
Why? Well, when St. John talks about bringing your mind and heart to God, he deliberately uses the verb “to raise. ” When you pray, you’re addressing the Creator of the Universe. Your relationship with this being is inherently “vertical,” so prayer is how you approach the Creator “from below. ” St.
John isn’t saying that you should grovel before God, though. Instead, he’s emphasizing the fact that you’re talking to the Supreme Being – an important occasion which deserves awe and reverence. “Raising up” has another meaning, too. Imagine finding a baby bird beneath a tree. You search for its mother, but you can’t find her. Finally, you decide to take this vulnerable little creature to someone who can help it.
Standing in front of a vet, you cup the bird in your hands and raise it up so that she can inspect it. Similarly, when we pray, we are raising up our cares and sorrows so that God – our helper and healer – can examine them. “Request” is the second important verb in St. John’s definition. Asking God for help is both natural and human, but there’s a caveat to that. As St.
John notes, you aren’t asking for just anything when you pray – you’re requesting good things. Asking God to strike down an enemy may technically count as praying, but it’s contrary to the spirit in which you should approach prayer. So far, we’ve focused on what you’re doing when you pray. What, though, does God do – is he just silently listening to your requests? Not quite. God is an active participant in this conversation.
While some religious thinkers, like St. John, emphasize the approach from below, others focus on a different aspect of our relationship with God: friendship. Take St.
Chapter 5: Prayer deepens our friendship with God.
Teresa of Ávila, a sixteenth-century Spanish nun who believed that prayer is, as she said, “nothing else than a close sharing between friends. ” Praying, St. Teresa thought, is intimate and two-sided. We bring ourselves closer to God, but God reciprocates by drawing closer to us.
Teresa’s contemporary, the Spanish priest and theologian St. Ignatius of Loyola, agreed. As a result, he urged people to speak to God as one friend speaks to another. The key message in this blink is: Prayer deepens our friendship with God. St. Teresa and St.
Ignatius’s views are echoed in the work of later thinkers like the American theologian Walter Burghardt. In an influential 1989 essay published in Church magazine, he defined prayer as “a long, loving look at the real. ” When Burghardt says “the real,” he’s addressing the fact that God is the Creator of the universe and thus the source of ultimate reality. To look at the real, it follows, is to look to God, whom we, of course, love. But why should that look be “long? ” Well, Burghardt’s point is that friendships can’t be rushed.
Imagine catching up with an old friend over dinner. You haven’t seen her for a decade, but when you sit down, you say, “Sorry, I only have five minutes – start talking! ” Absurd, right? Yet this is how many people approach God. Just as you would with a friend, you have to spend a lot of time with God. This is why daily prayer is so important.
Even though it may only last a few minutes each day, regular prayer allows you to conduct a conversation that lasts a lifetime. The best part is that this conversation is cumulative – it gets deeper and richer over time. This shift is profound. At first, you might simply talk at God, for example by reciting rote prayers. Later, you begin talking to God in your own words. As the friendship deepens, you start noticing God’s responses – the way he manifests himself in your life.
Finally, you learn to be with God. Think of the way very good, old friends can sit with one another without saying a word. This familiarity and trust is the fruit of a lifetime spent nurturing your relationship with God. St.
Chapter 6: Prayer is love and intimacy.
Thérèse of Lisieux didn’t live long. Born in France in 1873, she died in 1897 at the age of just 24. But her brief life was unusually holy. As a girl, she spent a great deal of time meditating on St.
Paul’s image of the church as a body with a head, limbs, and a soul. Which part was Thérèse? She decided that she was the heart – the source of love and the foundation stone of her faith. Love was also central to her understanding of prayer. Awe, reverence, and duty, she believed, all play a part in prayer, but they’re not the primary motivation. What is?
Love. The key message in this blink is: Prayer is love and intimacy. For Thérèse, prayer is three things simultaneously. She called it “a surge of the heart, a look toward heaven, and a cry of recognition and love, embracing both trial and joy. ” Let’s break that down. Prayer is a surge of the heart because it is a spontaneous act.
Your heart cries out, overflowing, and you have to pray to unburden it. In helping you focus your thoughts and emotions, prayer is like meditation, but it’s also more than that. Most kinds of meditation look inward, whereas prayer is outwardly directed. As Thérèse puts it, when you pray, you look toward heaven – the seat of God. And what do you find there? In a word, yourself.
Here, Thérèse draws on Psalm 42, which says that “Deep calls to deep. ” This means that the deepest part of yourself calls out to the deepest part of the universe – God. This is why Thérèse calls prayer a cry of recognition; in prayer, your heart sees something that it recognizes and loves. The fact that you already know God is so important for Thérèse because it allows you to be unflinchingly honest. Of course, there are moments in everyday life when you reveal a great deal of what you feel. But it’s easy to still hold something back, even with partners, friends, or people – doctors, say – who come to know you intimately for professional reasons.
These barriers, however, break down the better you know someone. And who knows you better than God? This recognition, Thérèse says, is liberating. When you see that you are fully known, you can speak freely and openly about what moves you – about what saddens you, makes you happy, or challenges you.
Chapter 7: Praying is deeply emotional.
So far, we’ve looked at what a couple of different traditions say about prayer. What we haven’t discussed, however, is what many people just beginning their spiritual journey want to know most of all: What actually happens when you close your eyes and start praying? How are you supposed to feel? Should you hear voices or receive guidance?
How will you know if your prayer has been heard, let alone if it’s “working? ” It’s important to note that different people experience prayer in different ways. But there is one thing that nearly everyone will encounter: emotions. The key message in this blink is: Praying is deeply emotional. As we’ve seen, prayer is a dialogue with God. When you open your heart to him, you probe the depths of your being.
It’s hardly surprising that this relationship should involve intense emotions. Say you return from a funeral and pray for the person who has passed. As you ponder their life, you may feel overwhelmed by sadness. It’s the same with joy. If you’ve just gotten great news and sit down to thank God, your happiness will be magnified. Why is this?
Well, when you’re praying, you’re sharing your experiences with God. When you tell God about your joy, for example, you discover that he shares it. Think about how a child’s elation grows when her father invites her to recount the story of a great success, like hitting a home run. In the telling, her excitement deepens. God is your Creator, and you are his child. Sharing your joys with him makes them grow in the same way.
Some of the emotions that arise during prayer are easy to anticipate; others, however, may take you by surprise. Often, repressed negative feelings like anger, frustration, or disappointment can suddenly resurface when you open yourself to God. This can be disorienting at first, and the power of these emotions may be so great that you end up feeling blindsided. God is bringing these repressed emotions to light for a reason, though – he’s telling you that you’ve missed something important.
If God walked through your front door and said, “I invite you to think about this part of your life,” you’d pay close attention, right? Well, that’s just what he’s doing when he raises uncomfortable or difficult emotions when you pray. And that’s the most important thing to remember about prayer – you’re never alone. As you’ll soon learn when you start praying, God has your back.
Final summary
The key message in this summary: Prayer is daunting, but the fact that we feel the urge to pray reveals its purpose. That desire to pray is God’s way of drawing us toward him and fulfilling our need to be in a relationship with him. This need is so deep-seated that we often pray without even being aware of it – for example, by unconsciously meditating on the beauty of God’s creation. Conscious prayer, on the other hand, comes in different forms.
Some spiritual writers emphasize friendship; others focus on the awe we feel in front of God. But whatever form prayer takes, there’s one constant: it is a deeply emotional and enlightening process. Actionable advice: Ask yourself if the emotions that come up in prayer are rational. Negative feelings sometimes arise during prayer, and there’s a reason for that: God wants you to think about them. But emotions aren’t rational – they’re based on perception. To understand your feelings, you need to check on your perceptions.
For example, did your coworker really mean to offend you with that remark, or was it meant playfully? Before you know it, you’ll be one step closer to closure.
About the Author
Reverend James Martin is a priest, theologian, and the author of several New York Times best-selling books about religion, including Jesus: A Pilgrimage and The Jesuit Guide to (Almost ) Everything. A graduate of the Wharton School of Business, Martin joined the Jesuits at the age of 27. He is a frequent contributor to outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, NPR, and The Colbert Report.