Talking with God

August 17, 2025: To all grandchildren, especially mine,

It occurred to me this morning that you might not know how to talk with God. The biggest problem people have when talking with god is that they know how to speak to God, but not how to hear the reply. It is not through a voice that you hear God speak, but through your heart, because it is the Paraclete that replies – the Holy Spirit – not some “voice” or “words” … well, it is words, but it is your words that must be interpreted in terms of what the Holy Spirit would mean in those words.

And that is the hard part. Hard because the Holy Spirit is speaking to us all the time, but we usually drown Him out with our thoughts, or other people's thoughts … or, one might say by Satan's thoughts – but that is to too easily mischaracterize it, and thus too easily dismiss it; such characterization is a way of ignoring the fact that our thoughts are are own. We are perfectly capable of thinking sinfully and seeing it as virtue. We can see sin by seeing ourselves, as a way of not owning it.

So how can we know what God's thoughts are? This matters, because the same is true when praying and when reading scripture.

God's “words” are characterized by one thing: love, which encompasses empathy, compassion, and mercy. If you read a scripture, and it does not embody love, then you are misreading it. And too often it is very easy to do that. Scripture was written by – and is read by – fallible humans who are very often filtering it, the Holy Spirit, through their own sinful nature and confused wording.

Likewise if you pray, and the response you get does not embody love, then you have been distracted from the truth.

The hard part in all this is that sometimes the loving truth is hard to bear for people who are not always humble or trusting in God. If you follow God, you will, all too often, discover that you are wrong. You will also at times face pain, or, in extreme cases, even death. It is not easy to listen to, or follow, God. God does not want us to face pain and death, and will at these times guide us to a self-assessment that might tell us, this is not the time or place to push this or that truth. But sometime it might tell us it is the time … the time to face our cross.

Normally, however, we are simply discussing with God, how to face our day and the tasks we must deal with during it; or perhaps, how to view some issue or idea. Never look to scripture to give you a clear-cut easy answer: that would simply mean you do not want to deal with what it might tell you. Always ask first for the truth, and if the answer does not reveal some aspect on love in that ituation, then the answer is false, or uncertain.

All too often it is uncertain. Many scriptural passages will leave you uncomfortable, or seem enigmatic. Generally speaking this means that something in your understanding is missing, and you must wait, hours or sometimes decades, for it to become clear – and it is possible that it never will become clear, and you must accept that you are not omniscient.

And - that - is - OK.

We do not always know what is going on. We will sometimes, all too often, contradict ourselves. Your mother knows, and I suspect is uncomfortable with the fact, that I pray the Rosary every morning. To her it is simply as string of memorized prayers to Mary. For some … for many … it might be, but that is not what is should be. The prayers without the meditations, is perhaps just a trite recitation of memorized prayers, engaged in for the appearance of piety, which has some spiritual value for some people. However, with the meditations, and used not as a ritual act but as a means of prayer, it is so much more. It is the petitioner (and I use that term loosely) interacting with God. It is a time to listen for what God has to tell you.

Moreover the Rosary is not primarily praying to Mary, it is entirely praying to God. Some words, such as the Our Father (aka the Lord's Prayer) are addressed directly to God. Others are addressed to Mary as petitions for her to proffer to God on your behalf. Why Mary? She is the mother if Jesus, she knows her failings, and the failings of any child, and any parent for that matter, who is growing, learning, and striving.

Yes they are recited prayers, which are often criticized as being fake, unthinking, and therefore insincere prayers. Yet the same people who level these criticisms will, if they have children, teach their children to recite prayers before meals, at bed time, and such, and the Lord's Prayer in times of need, or at church. In deed, the Lord Jesus Christ gave us prayers to recite, in part so that we might learn how to pray.

Some of my favorite prayers, that remind me how to pray, are in the Episcopal Evening Prayer: Rite Two, especially:

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love's sake. Amen.

But there are other prayers too, which I embrace and try to pray often, because it is important to remember what is in them:

The Prayer of St. Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console,

to be understood as to understand,

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.

Or "Veni, Sancte Spiritus", or ("Come Holy Spirit"), a classic Catholic prayer, here sung at Taizé, as meditative prayer.. and often sung every day as a morning prayer hymn in more classical form at the Pink Sisters here in Lincoln  during Morning Prayer every day.

 a lassic Catholic Hymn, erere sung at zTaize  

Prayer, and scripture, are good and enlightening things, if properly and responsibly, engaged in. Improperly, and irresponsibly engaged, they can be devastating to our neighbors, to ourselves, and to God's Creation.