Prayer

+ Cardinal George Pell,
26 Jul 2010

Prayer is not someone talking to himself, or herself more probably, because women are usually more religious than men.

This might be different in Australia where some evidence suggests that today young women are as irreligious as their male peers.  I suppose this is more likely when natural differences between the sexes are ignored or denied and girls are urged repeatedly to achieve like men.  But it would be a pity if fewer and fewer women were encouraging their husbands and sons to pray.

Most of us think of prayer as talking to God, but this is not the whole story.  Words can be a cover or a distraction, while our mind races along elsewhere.  More accurately prayer is opening our heart and mind to God, that Mystery of Love, Creator of the universe, who exists outside space and time.

People can encounter God in the strangest ways.  A woman without any religious allegiance told me that she sometimes goes to St. Mary's Cathedral in Sydney to sit there quietly.  Many more people pray than come to regular Sunday worship.

Caryll Houselander was an English poet who died in 1954.  She was also a master of the spiritual life, and a mystic, or person who experiences something of the grandeur and magnificence of God.

She told of a young woman a doctor asked her to visit once a week.  The girl had been in hospital for two years, suffering from a terrible nervous disease, attacks of St. Vitus' dance and violent palpitations.  She was only getting worse, and had no religion.  Her vague notions of God frightened and upset her.

Houselander gave the young woman a set of rosary beads.  She did not tell her to recite the customary prayers (Hail Mary and Our Father), but to use her own words or say nothing at all.  More importantly the young woman was told to imagine that she was holding onto God.

From that moment she started to improve, managing to escape from much of her suffering and self obsession and blossoming into an expansive and loving person.

Houselander had unusual gifts as she was very close to God.  We should not presume to imitate her, but prayer is powerful.

Jesus' disciples asked him how to pray and He taught them the "Our Father".  Off and on in the next few weeks we shall examine this most famous prayer.