Learning to Pray at Liturgy

As the parish gathers for Sunday liturgy, we have a wonderful school of prayer. One can speak about prayer. One can read about prayer. Yet the way to prayer is to pray within the Christian Assembly, which is the worshiping community. Sunday offers us the opportunity to do or make Eucharist, i.e., to give praise and thanks to our Father in Christ. At the same time, we bring our prayers of petition looking for the action of God in our world.

As worshipers we learn to pray by doing. We learn that the first step of the process is that both personal prayer and communal worship is by invitation of the Father. We are called and we are gathered as members of the Body of Christ. It is in Christ that we make intercession before our common Father. Prayer is gift and prayer is response.

Centrality of the Word

As we enter into the Liturgy of the Word, we hear God’s word of invitation. It is the Word which calls us together, where we learn to read, proclaim, and respond to the presence of the Father. Scriptural prayer is word which is human and divine. One hears and discerns the Word in the context of the human family, our history, and our personalities.

The readings demonstrate that “faith comes through hearing." The Word is filtered, as it were, through human voice and sounds. It is further revealed in our mind’s understanding. The Word is spoken for this community and in this place and at this time. The Spirit moves powerfully among and around us.

Central to the liturgy of the Word--and to all prayer--is the listening response. After the proclamation and hearing of the Word, the believing community is called to be still, to be quiet, and to listen. Silence is more than a luxury. It is, rather, essential to the experience. The word in the silence continues to move and speaks to our minds and hearts. We are moved to understanding and to affective response. In short, we are called to relationship.

The challenge to prayerful worship is to be still. It is to be focused physically, emotionally, and spiritually. The worshiper is called to attentiveness and to the inner motion of God’s actions. Cellphones are the metaphors of our spirituality and its challenges. We need time alone with God, the focus and center of our lives. We need time for re-creation and transformation, away from our daily business and distraction. Like our phones and beepers, we need to tune out our worlds and tune into God-with-us.

Noise, motion, and childcare within worship, while certainly understandable, hinder us at prayer and are obstacles to spiritual growth. While obviously in relationship in the community and to our family, each believer, nonetheless, needs personal and intense time with God. Prayer time becomes this transforming and powerful movement to conversion.

All Things in Christ

As we move to the Liturgy of the Eucharist, we find ourselves bringing all things, our lives and hopes in Christ before the Father. As gifts of bread and wine are carried and presented, they are preamble to yet a more wonderful presence of Christ among us. The temptation is to focus on the bread and wine, on our selves, our work, and our personal and community needs. These are the beginning of where Christ’s presence begins to show itself.

The challenge of prayerful worship is to allow the context of God’s saving and faithful deed to be the context of our lives. We listen and respond to how God is in his fidelity to us. Our prayer is be thankful and gathered into the transforming presence of Christ in the eucharistic bread and wine. The Spirit moves us to be communion, to become that which we eat and drink. We are in Christ before the Father.

Prayer and Mission

Prayer and liturgy ends with being sent as Christ before the world. They end with the Kingdom being proclaimed to others. We become the Body of Christ, food and drink for others on their journey to the Kingdom.

CDH