The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [47]
THE EXAMEN IS AN easy way to discover God in your daily life. But as useful as the examen is, there is lots more to prayer than looking back over your day.
The best way for me to talk about prayer is to tell you something about my own first steps in the life of prayer, which might give you the confidence to start, or continue along, your own journey. Since I knew very little about prayer until later in life, it’s easy for me to sympathize with newcomers.
But, in fact, all of us are newcomers to prayer, because our relationship with God changes over time and is constantly being renewed.
CAN I ASK GOD FOR HELP?
When I was a boy, I used to pray a lot.
In the first grade, I used to envision God not as the Creator or the Almighty or the Supreme Judge but, as I mentioned, the Great Problem Solver, the one to whom you turned to fix things, to change things, or to help you out of a scrape. And since there were lots of things I wanted fixed (my baseball prowess, my trumpet skills, my math ability), I turned to God frequently.
It’s as natural to turn to God in need as it is for a child to ask a parent for help, or for an adult to ask a favor from a friend. Being human means being in relationship. Being human also means being in need. So being human means sometimes asking for help.
As a boy, my preferred method of asking for help from God was to repeat rote prayers, like the Our Father and Hail Mary, over and over, with the number of repetitions in direct proportion to the desired outcome. Nerves about a spelling quiz would prompt a Hail Mary as I walked to school. If I was worried about a Little League tryout or a big solo in band practice, I would pray many Hail Marys. The more I wanted something, the more prayers I said.
This type of prayer—asking for help—is called petitionary prayer and is probably the type of prayer with which most of us are familiar. Asking God for something you want is both common and natural.
Still, every form of prayer has its pitfalls. One danger of petitionary prayer is that it can remove from our spiritual lives an awareness of God’s freedom and may move into the realm of superstition or even magic. You might feel that if you pray a certain prayer, or in a certain way, or use a fixed number of repetitions, you just might be able to cajole God into doing something, to force God to respond. But prayers are not spells or incantations designed to “make” something happen. (Which was exactly what I was hoping for as a boy!)
Perhaps because of this fear of superstition, many people have told me they feel guilty when they use petitionary prayer. Or selfish. They say, “There are so many people in the world who need so much more than I do. How could I possibly ask God for something?”
Never Mind
One joke about petitionary prayer has a man desperately searching for a space in a church parking lot on a wedding day. As best man in the wedding, he can’t be late. “God,” he prays in desperation, “I’ll go to church every Sunday for the rest of my life, if you just find me a space!”
Suddenly a spot opens up. “Oh, never mind God,” he says. “I just found one.”
There are certainly many people who need things more than you (and I) do. But while it’s important to keep your own needs in perspective, it is impossible not to pray this way: I don’t know anyone who does not feel the need to call to God for help.
God, I believe, also wants us to be open about what we need. This is part of having an honest relationship with God. Let’s say that you’ve just lost your job or just received a frightening diagnosis from your doctor. How could you not cry out to God for help?
Petitionary prayers likely began as soon as human beings became aware of the limitations of their own existence. Their forms may have originated in some practices of prehistory—requesting favors from the various gods, deities, and spirits through prayer, ritual, and sacrifice.
But this does not mean that the modern believer should shun them: prehistoric petitionary prayers may simply reflect the inchoate human desire for relationship