In his letters to the early churches St Paul urged his readers to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5.17) and to “persevere in prayer” (Romans 12.12).
So what does it mean to pray without ceasing? It might bring to mind spending the whole day on your knees focused on silence, somewhat impractical with jobs and families and meals to prepare. But this sets up a false dichotomy between praying and living.
Maybe a change of perspective would help, a metanoia if you like. Instead of viewing activity as the norm and prayer as something we need to fit in, see the prayer as the underlying state of being, a connection with God that is at least as constant and essential as breathing and a beating heart.
Everything comes from that connection with God and a state of rest. Imagine a door with a closing mechanism. For a time it is held open to allow people to pass through, then let go and it gently and automatically closes to its resting state. Or imagine the end of a long and busy day. You get home, shut the door, put the kettle on, sink into an armchair with a nice cup of tea and ah! You sigh deeply and feel your shoulders relax. Just so our awareness of our connection with God (note the awareness, not the connection itself) might be interrupted by activity as we go through our day, but whenever there is a pause we return to awareness.
Hold the door open for too long or never let it close, and the closing mechanism gets over-stretched or rusty. The muscle of returning to awareness needs to be strengthened with regular time set aside for prayer and deliberate practice of the presence of God.
To paraphrase Thomas Merton, acquire too the agility and freedom of mind to find light and warmth and love for God everywhere you go and in all that you do. Learn how to pray in the streets or in the country, or when you are waiting for a train or in a supermarket queue. The Jesus Prayer that I wrote about last month is one way of practising God’s presence that sinks into the unconscious and becomes continual prayer.
We can learn to start each activity in God: “every time you begin a good work, you must pray to God most earnestly to bring it to perfection” (Rule of S. Benedict), and we can learn to pray while the hands and body are occupied, when cooking or cleaning or changing a nappy or hanging out the washing, and indeed to do everything for the love of God: “it is not necessary to have great things to do,” said Brother Lawrence. “I turn my little omelette in the pan for the love of God.” More on finding God in all things next month.
