265. Eleventh Thursday of Ordinary Time
Meditations no. 253 (unofficial computer-aided translation)
Vocal prayer as a channel for our conversation with God.
The spiritual training the Work gives us fosters our personal friendship with Jesus Christ. We are taught that we must be truly souls of prayer. Prayer is the basis for all supernatural work. With prayer we are all-powerful. And if we tried to do without it we would get nowhere at all. Provided we do it with love, any kind of prayer, whether mental or vocal, puts us straight in contact with our God and makes us know him better and love him more.
Vocal prayer is one of the channels for our relationship with God. We speak to God aloud, in words, so as to render him homage with our whole selves, our whole being, which is both soul and body, spirit and matter. Only in the context of that personal, one-to-one relationship which our Father has shown us, does vocal prayer takes on its true meaning. Ex abundantia enim cordis os loquitur, our Lord says - out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. Our vocal prayer is the overflowing of love - adoration expressed externally.
When we pray aloud, our mind and senses come together. Words and phrases sing the glory of our God. Words of praise and supplication rise up to the throne of the Most High. In very truth, preaches St John Chrysostom, you become a member of the angelic choir, companion to the archangels, singing together with the seraphim ⌠It is not men you are praying to, but God.
Our Father put it in similar terms when he wrote: A priest who was saying the Divine Office prepared himself for prayer in this way: âI will follow the rule of saying, when I start: âI want to pray as the saints prayâ, and then I will invite my Guardian Angel to sing the Lordâs praises with me.â Try this in your own vocal prayer, and also as a way of increasing your presence of God in your work.
We ought to love the set prayers used by the Church. Since all Christians are one in the unity of Christâs Mystical Body, liturgical prayer becomes the inner prayer of a soul in love. Your prayer should be liturgical, our Father tells us. - I would like to see you growing fond of reciting the psalms, and prayers from the missal, rather than private or special prayers.
What better prayers could we find to address to God, than those he himself taught us? That is the reason why prayer should accompany the reading of sacred Scripture, so that a dialogue takes place between God and man. For as St Ambrose says, âWe speak to him when we pray; we listen to him when we read the divine oracles.â
If we use these prayers we will be praying in the same words as the patriarchs, prophets, martyrs, and virgins of the Church: all the saints of the People of God. And among these prayers, which are part of the treasure belonging to the Church, the best vocal prayer of all is the one Jesus Christ himself taught us, as we are reminded in the Gospel of todayâs Mass. Pray, then, like this: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Paying attention to vocal prayers.
When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret ⌠And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Our Lord teaches us to make our prayer authentic, and to use both our head and our heart. And vocal prayer, no less than mental, is the raising up of the mind to God. Our vocal prayer must never be something purely external. Slowly. - Consider what you are saying, who is saying it and to whom. - For that hurried talk, without time for reflection, is just noise, the clatter of tin cans.
- And with Saint Teresa, I will tell you that, however much you work your lips I do not call it prayer.
Itâs not enough just to recite formulas. God detests worship that is merely external. These people honour me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me. Still, we have to recognize our own weakness and how easily we get distracted, so that we make a constant effort to mean the words we are saying. It happens to all of us. St Teresa herself said that sometimes she was as dry as a bone, and couldnât keep track of what she was saying even for the space of an Our Father.
Tell our Lord that Tell him: Iâm going to pray and I would like to do it well; I beg you to enlighten me and help me, so that I can realize what the Our Father is about. Then you start: âOur Fatherâ. And you stop to think for a bit what the word Father means. Think about what your own father is to you, and then think how, besides your father here on earth, youâve got another father in heaven: God. And so youâre filled with holy pride.
âOurâ Father. Heâs not just yours: he is ours, everyoneâs. That means that you are a brother or sister to all the other people on earth. Therefore youâve got to love people, youâve got to help them to be good children of God, because all together we make up the family of our Father in heaven.
âWho art in heavenâŚâ And you remember straight away how youâve heard me saying that heâs also in the tabernacle and in our soul in graceâŚ
Attention is the most important part of our struggle to say our vocal prayers well. That comes down to little details: pronouncing the words clearly, without rushing them, and avoiding routine even in our tone of voice. There has to be time for consideration, so that our words are accompanied by mental prayer and are the expression of interior acts, arousing thoughts and affections in us. If ever our conversation with God starts to seem arid, our voice and the phrases we say aloud will themselves be a vigorous spur to our devotion, strong enough to carry our heart with them.
St Cyprian teaches: When we start to pray, dearly beloved brethren, we should be attentive and put our heart into our prayers. All thoughts that arise merely from our earthly nature must be left behind, and our soul should be filled with the substance of our prayer alone. This is why the priest stops and prepares the faithful before saying the Pater noster âŚ
Let us therefore close the doors of our heart against the enemy and open them only to God. Let us not allow Godâs adversary any foothold in our heart, because by means of subtle images he often slips in and distracts our prayers away from God, so that we have one thing in our heart and another on our lips. Whereas if our intentions are true, it is just the reverse, for not only do our audible words pray, but our spirit and feelings are praying in them. What an insult it is to let yourself be distracted by profane thoughts when you are praying to God, so that what you are thinking is different from what you are telling God! How can you dare ask God to hear your prayer if you yourself donât attend to what you are saying?
Attentive prayer, with our mind set on the person we are talking to. Then our prayer can be confident, intimate, imbued with the Spirit of sonship, in which we cry out, Abba! Father!
The vocal prayers in our plan of life.
In our vocal prayers, in our participation in the liturgy, in the Rosary, and in the visit to the Blessed Sacrament, there is just one thing that should concern us: love. It makes no difference whether we feel like doing these things or not, or whether we are tired, or donât get any particular satisfaction out of them. The care we put into externals is the expression of the love with which we would want to be able to pray.
Our Father has told us: The Rosary is like a handshake or a greeting. How warm the handshake is depends on how much we like the other person. The external gesture, the words we say, are always the same, and have their own importance; but what counts is our love. Therefore it is not a question of making superhuman efforts to avoid distractions, but of fighting to cut them short and pray with greater love every day.
And in the visit to the Blessed Sacrament, the words we say should be an expression of our love for our Lord in the tabernacle, our desire to be always united to him.
The prayers we all say together also show the love we have for each other. The Preces raise up to God all the hearts in Opus Dei, beating as one. As we pray them we can feel our love for each other growing. We want everyone to be holy, and we see that our own sanctity is not a purely personal task but that we are journeying together, helping one another, so as to honour God in unison, as with a single mouth.
Have I said the Preces of the Work and the other vocal prayers calmly and with attention? This question, which we ask ourselves every week, can help us to examine our conscience now, so that we aim for more care day by day, shown in definite details. In our vocal prayers, as in everything else, we wish to offer our Lord something that is perfectly done, lovingly finished off, and pleasing in his sight. Anyone hearing us should feel helped to get closer to God by the way we pray, which should be filled with a spirit of piety and the consciousness of our divine filiation. Our Founder left us this advice: To avoid routine in your vocal prayers try to say them with the same ardour with which a person who has just fallen in love speaks⌠and as if it were the last chance you had to approach our Lord.
Our Founder had a text from Scripture put up in many Centres of the Work: omnes erant perseverantes unanimiter in oratione, all these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer. The text goes on: cum ⌠Maria Matre Iesu, with Mary the Mother of Jesus. We ask her to present our vocal prayers before God, and we turn to her very often so that she may bring us to God.