Prayer for Busy People

I want to talk particularly to those of you who experience difficulty in finding time to pray.

In his book, Prayers of Life, Michael Quoist writes:

"And so all men run after time, Lord.

They pass through life running - hurried, jostled, overburdened, frantic

And they never get there. They haven't time.

In spite of all their efforts they're still short of time,

and a great deal of time.

Lord, you must have made a mistake in your calculations.

There is a big mistake somewhere.

The hours are too short.

The days are too short.

Our lives are too short."

That, I suspect, is the experience of some of you, if not many of you. Quite simply, there are not enough hours in the day to fit in all that has to be done - let alone to find the time to pray.

I recall a busy mother in my last parish who found this particularly difficult with two young children under five. In a brave attempt to find the time and solitude for prayer, she decided one day to escape to the lavatory. Hardly had she locked the door, than the peace was disturbed by a crying child knocking on it and demanding her attention.

Now it seems to me to be positively harmful to the spiritual life to exhort such a person to even greater effort by suggesting that she is not trying hard enough.

It is even worse to suggest, as do some books on prayer, that the time given to God in prayer is a reflection of our desire for God. In other words, if we really desired God, then we would automatically find the time.

Such ill-conceived advice merely reinforces the burden of guilt which is already being experienced for failing to find the time for prayer.

More than that, it can actually put people off prayer altogether.

Now, I want to suggest to you that, in many cases, it is not so much that one's personal timetable is at fault, but rather that one's image of God is at fault. As Kenneth Leech has observed: "So many of our difficulties in the spiritual life revolve around the 'God question' ".

For many people, God is somebody who is distant and remote. As a consequence, he is not particularly interested in our mundane, day-to-day existence. Just as a young child cries louder and louder and pulls at its mother's skirts to crave attention, so we tend to think that we have to claim God's attention by the quantity of our prayers. In other words, the more we pray and the longer we pray, the more God is likely to hear us. Thus prayer becomes an unconscious struggle to gain God's attention.

But that, my friends, is not the purpose of prayer. It is not about gaining God's attention. It is essentially the means we employ to express that permanent relationship of love which exists between ourselves and God.

Take for example the relationship of love between a husband and a wife. True, there may well be times when we seek to express that relationship in a long and intimate manner, such as a candlelight dinner on the occasion of a wedding anniversary.

But married life consists of much more than candlelight dinners!

More often than not, that relationship of love will find expression, quite naturally and spontaneously, as we go about our daily lives - helping each other with the washing-up, the cooking, the gardening, the decorating, the changing of baby nappies, besides sitting quietly side by side and watching television or listening to music.

In a similar way, our relationship of love with God should find expression, naturally and spontaneously, as we go about our daily life and not just be reserved for those rare moments of peace and quiet in our lives.

This is sometimes called "Arrow Prayers". These are short, sharp moments of recollection of the presence of God in the midst of our daily life.

Incidentally, such informal prayers were considered to be the norm in the early Christian tradition. In fact, it was not until the Middle Ages, when structured forms of prayer began to develop, that an excessive amount of time was required for prayer, and prayer became divorced from day-to-day life.

Take for instance the prayers of the early Desert Fathers. These were simple and brief.

Cassian, the fourth century monk, recommended the taking of a short verse of scripture which could be recollected constantly throughout the day.

He writes: "This you should write on the threshold and door of your mouth. This you should place on the walls of your house and in the presence of your heart, so that when you fall to your knees in prayer, this may be your chant as you kneel, and when you rise up from it to go forth to all the business of life, it may be your constant prayer as you stand".

Similarly, Abba Lucius, who got annoyed at those monks who tried to get out of work by practising lengthy formal prayers, writes: "I will show you how, while doing my manual work, I pray without interruption. I sit down with God, soaking my reeds and plaiting my ropes, and I say, 'God have mercy on me: according to your great goodness, and according to the multitude of your mercies, save me from my sins'." So he asked them (ie the monks) if this was not prayer and they replied that it was.

St Augustine, the fourth century Bishop of Hippo, in his letter on prayer to Proba, encourages "very brief quickly dispatched prayers".

St Benedict, the founder of Western monasticism in the sixth century, emphasised that one was heard by God, not because of the length of prayer, but because of the purity of heart. He writes: "Therefore, prayer should be short and pure".

In the sixteenth century, St Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits writes: "I look for God in all things and try to please him in everything I do". And Teresa of Avila happily declared that "The Lord is amongst the saucepans".

But, perhaps for me, the finest example of the sacrament of the present moment, which is what I am really talking about, is to be found in the seventeenth century Carmelite Brother Lawrence's little book, called The Practice of the Presence of God. Writing from his personal experience of working in the monastery kitchen, he says: "The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several people are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in a great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament".

Yes, God's presence can be encountered in the day to day life of your kitchen as much as it is in the church building.

This integration of day-to-day life with God is also found throughout Celtic spirituality.

To those of you who have difficulty in finding time for extended periods of structured prayer, I would say three things.

Firstly, don't feel guilty. Not everyone is called to the practice of long periods of structured prayer. It suits some people and it does not suit others. Some people have the time and others do not.

Secondly, I would remind you of the long Christian tradition which seeks to develop an awareness of God in the everyday activities of life and to use these as a means of expressing our love for God. In this, short prayers can be just as effective as long prayers.

And finally, don't get worried about becoming proficient through the techniques of structured prayer. Prayer is essentially about maintaining a living relationship with God in the here and now. It is not about methods.