Some Practical Rules for Praying

I offer these "rules" for the use of those who seek to pray daily. They are not abstract principles; nor are they conclusions which are provable by some deductive method. They are simply a group of practical rules that experience teaches are helpful for those who want to pray. While I take responsibility for their formulation, I owe a deep debt of gratitude to others who have taught them to me.

1. Faithful prayer requires discipline. Saint Vincent alluded to this when he spoke of mortification as a prerequisite for prayer. It is important to fix a prayer time and to have a prayer place. Likewise, it is most helpful to go to bed at a reasonable hour if one is to rise early to pray. Today, when there are diversions that can easily distract us from prayer time (e.g., television, radio, films, etc.), one must often renounce some good, interesting alternatives in order to be faithful pray-er.
   

2. Mental prayer demands quiet. Naturally, an apostolic community cannot be completely cut off from its contacts with the poor, as is evident in Saint Vincent's conferences to the Daughters of Charity. Nonetheless, one should choose a prayer time when noise and interruptions are unlikely, when telephones and doorbells will not be ringing. That is one of the reasons why communities have traditionally chosen to pray early in the morning before the busy pace of the day's activities begins. Dietrick Bonhoeffer states: "Silence is nothing else but waiting for God's word."
   

3. It is important to be acquainted with various methods, by having, so to speak, a "prayer repertory." The four types of prayer described earlier in this article may be useful in this regard. Different methods will be appropriate at different times in life. We may find ourselves, at later stages in life, returning to methods we used earlier.
   

4. The pray-er needs to be nourished. Some of the principal elements in the diet are the reading of sacred scripture, good spiritual reading, and, especially in an apostolic spirituality, live, reflective contact with Christ in the person of the poor.
   

5. Prayer should result in renewed self-definition. Through it, our values should become redefined and take on an increasingly evangelical character. Prayer should lead to continued conversion. It should result in acts of charity and justice. This is why Saint Vincent insisted on "practical resolutions."
   

6. The pray-er should not focus too much on what he or she says. What God is communicating is more important. In the long run, prayer is a relationship. While words have a privileged place in a relationship, nonetheless communication goes far beyond words. Some of its deepest forms are non-verbal. Those who are deeply in love can often spend significant periods of time together while saying very little. "Mere" presence is a sign of fidelity. Jesus, in fact, warns us against the multiplication of words in prayer (Mt 6:7).
   

7. Since we are needy, our prayer will often be one of petition, but it is very important that our prayer also take on the other biblical "moods": praise, thanksgiving, wonder, confidence, anguish, abandonment, resignation. Typically Christian prayer is filled with thanksgiving.
   

8. As Jesus recommends (Mt 6:10), we should often pray to do or accept God's will, however it might manifest itself in our lives. This is what Saint Vincent meant when he recommended indifference as a predisposition for prayer. This is especially important in times of discernment.
   

9. Since we are human, and therefore embodied, physical and environmental conditions can help or inhibit prayer. Images, candles, incense, the beauty of the setting, a tabernacle, lighting, music--all can be aids to our praying.
   

10. Distractions are inevitable, since the mind is incapable of focusing on a single object over long periods of time. When distractions are persistent, it is often best to focus on them rather than flee from them, and to make them a topic of our conversation with the Lord.
    

11. Sharing prayer can be very useful. Each of us has limited insights. We can profit very much from those of others. The faith-witness of others can deepen our own faith. This is surely one of the reasons why Saint Vincent encouraged frequent repetition of prayer. Though that practice became over-stylized in the course of the years, it can find many more flexible forms today.
    

12. Faithful praying demands perseverance. The search for God is a long journey, in which the pray-er climbs mountains, descends into valleys, and sometimes gets stuck on ledges. Saint Vincent encourages the Daughters of Charity by telling them that Saint Teresa spent twenty years without being able to meditate even though she took part faithfully in prayer (SVIX, 424). Sometimes we may feel that we are "wasting time" (SV IX, 50) in prayer, or we may experience long-lasting "dryness" (SV IX, 634), and be tempted to quit. We should resist the temptation. The journey will bring great rewards.
    

13. The ultimate criterion of prayer is always life: "By their fruits you shall know them" (Mt 7:20, 12:33, Lk 6:44). Unfortunately, experience demonstrates that some of those who pray quite regularly may be very difficult to live with. One might, charitably, say that they would perhaps be even worse if they did not pray! But at the same time one might legitimately ask if their prayer has any real connection with life. Ultimately, one cannot judge, in an individual case, what is really going on between God and a person in the depths of his or her being. But one can surely conclude, in general, that there is something very much wrong with prayer that does not result in change of life.
    

"Let us give ourselves to God," Saint Vincent says repeatedly to the Vincentians, as well as to the Daughters of Charity. He has deep confidence in God, whom he sees both as father and mother, into whose hands he can place himself and his works. The journal written by Jean Gicquel recounts how Saint Vincent told Frs. Almeras, Berthe, and Gicquel, on June 7, 1660, just four months before his death: "To be consumed for God, to have no goods nor power except for the purpose of consuming them for God. That is what our Savior did himself, who was consumed for love of his Father" (SV XIII, 179).

This great man of action was also a contemplative, caught up in God and consumed by his love. His contemplation of God's love overflowed into practical love for the poor. He encourages his sons and daughters:

Let us all give ourselves completely to the practice of prayer, since it is by it that all good things come to us. If we persevere in our vocation, it is thanks to prayer. If we succeed in our employments, it is thanks to prayer. If we do not fall into sin, it is thanks to prayer. If we remain in charity and if we are saved, all that happens thanks to God and thanks to prayer. Just as God refuses nothing to prayer so also he grants almost nothing without prayer. (SV XI, 407)