The Necessity of Prayer

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One

Without Prayer, You’re Wasting Your Life

It’s a constant struggle to remember that what you can’t see, or touch, or taste is more important, more real, more permanent than what you can. We forget constantly, forget the soul is more important than the body, forget that heaven matters more than earth, that God’s opinion, and not public opinion or the praise we hear from others, is the crucial thing.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the struggle to remain faithful to daily prayer.

We always say, “We don’t have time.” What that means is that deep down, we think time spent on tangible, measurable projects and goals and responsibilities is more important than time spent on God and our own souls. Because that’s what prayer is. It’s time exclusively dedicated to God and to the perfection of your soul. 

And you can’t see your soul, and you can’t see God, but in the long run, the part of you that you need to worry about is your soul, and the only thing you need to worry about reaching is God.

Which means, if you’re not praying, if you’re not dedicating time to God and to raising your soul to Him, then, actually, you’re wasting your life.

Two

The Perfection of Your Soul

Your body is going to die, but your soul can’t. It is immortal. And the state of your body at death won’t determine your eternal salvation. But the state of your soul will.

And if you’re not taking time every day to talk to God, ask what He wants from you, and compare yourself, your actions, and motivations and feelings with the teachings of Jesus and His way of life…then your soul is going to be in bad shape. And the scary thing is, you won’t even know it. 

People who don’t pray never realize what bad spiritual shape they’re in, because they never take the time to reflect on the Gospel, which always reminds us how terribly we fall short of the perfection we’re called to.

When we don’t pray, our ignorance of our own soul leads to devastating complacency. Teresa of Avila says, “Although it seems to us that we have no imperfections, yet when God opens the eyes of the soul as He is wont to do in prayer, then they appear plainly enough”

In other words, if you don’t pray, you will end up lying to yourself, and deceiving yourself. But if you do pray, if you meditate every day and you really try to listen to the Lord and His will for you, you’ll come to know yourself in Christ. You’ll know what you need, and what you have to do. 

And you’ll receive the grace from God to do it.

Three

Knowledge of God

You simply can’t get to know anyone if you don’t spend time with them. And you can’t love someone you don’t know. This is why so few people love God. Because so few people know Him. Because so few people are willing to spend time with Him.

If you don’t put consistent time in, every relationship will cool, or even fall apart. It’s true of your kids. It’s true of your spouse. Lack of time invested is probably the top reason for estrangement of friends and family. People who don’t spend time together get to the point that they’re indifferent to the other person. And then it’s a short jump from that to the point of actively not liking the other person.

We will become estranged from God if we don’t pray. It will begin with indifference, and it might lead to the scary point that you actually become averse to God, and to the things associated with God.

The great danger is that, when you dislike being with God in prayer or Mass, it causes you to, well, dislike God. To have an aversion to God so that you don’t choose to be with him. But what happens when you die? Will that aversion suddenly change? No, it causes us to look at God and say, “That’s not what I want.” And we turn and walk away into Hell.  

The primary business of life is to grow closer to God so you can delight in His goodness forever in the next. If you don’t pray, you are setting yourself up to get this life and the next totally backward. Which means, if you don’t pray, you’re fundamentally wasting your life.

Four

Without prayer, you have no assurance you’re not screwing everything up

Without prayer, even our good actions and impressive achievements become suspect. How do we know even our well-intentioned projects and commitments aren’t fundamentally misguided? Maybe the thing we think is really beneficial to the world and the Church is actually, from God’s point of view, horribly counter-productive. Or maybe the thing that you regard as a distraction is actually, from God’s point of view, your main opportunity to make a difference for good.

How can you know? You can’t really. But if you pray, then you are synching yourself up with God’s communication. It invites the spirit into you every day so that he can move you in ways you’re not even aware of. Prayer gets you on the divine wavelength, under divine influence, so that whether you feel it or not, the Holy Spirit is able to guide you so you can contribute to God’s work instead of getting in the way.

So if you want your life to really make a difference for good, then you need to pray. Otherwise, again, there’s a good chance that all you do with your life will be wasted energy. Or worse.

Five

Not praying = being utterly clueless about everything that matters

Imagine you’re on a plane, something has happened to the pilot and co-pilot, and now for some reason, you have been given the job of landing the plane full of people. You have no idea how to fly a plane. You have no idea what all the dials and gauges and switches mean. And not only your life, but the well-being of a lot of other people is on the line.

Imagine the one thing you do know how to do is to call the air traffic controller. If you get in touch with them, they can give you directions for getting to the airport, and how to land. They can light up the part of the runway you need to aim for. They can even, let’s say, activate certain automatic pilot settings that will make your job infinitely easier.

But instead of contacting them, you say “I don’t have time for that. I have to figure out how this plane works.” 

It’s not going to happen. Better to put yourself in more capable hands. 

That’s like when we decide not to pray, when we decide to try to figure out and get it all done on our own, instead of getting the help and guidance we need so everything doesn’t crash and burn.

So don’t skip prayer. Make that the staple of your day. Make that the foundation of your life.

And invite someone else to prayer!