Prayer

It was a big moment for me when I realized that prayer wasn't something I was doing.

I think that when I was first a Christian I had this idea that I had to work hard at prayer in order to "get" the grace (read: will power) to live a Christian life.

So it was real good for me to hear a spiritual director tell me that I should always be careful to express my gratitude for the grace of prayer.

It is the Holy Spirit who prays in us. In fact, prayer is the ordinary way we are touched by the joyful, dynamic life of the Trinity.

We are baptized into Christ's death and burial. In Holy Communion we become what we receive, the body of Christ, suffering and risen in the world. Our prayer, then, is the prayer of Christ to the Father, and this we call the Spirit.

As we pray the psalms, the prayer of the Israel of history becomes the prayer of the body of Christ, the Israel of God. As we pray in silence, we enter into the original silence in which the Word is eternally spoken by the Father.