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In the beginning, prayer is agitated and silence is inwardly talkative. In the words of Peguy, we should not pray like geese waiting for their mash! Being emotional, man pours out all the contents of his mind; before he feels weariness from this monologue, the spiritual writers advise occupying his time in reciting the psalms and in reading. St. John Climacus condemns prolixity: “No affectation in the words of your prayer. How many times the simple and monotonous stammerings of his children move a father. Do not throw yourself into long speeches so as not to dissipate your mind in a search for words. A single word of the publican touched the mercy of God; a single word, full of faith, saved the good thief. Long-windedness and talkativeness in prayer fill the mind with images and distract it, while often a single word has the effect of recollecting it.”22.59 “It is not necessary to use many words; it is sufficient to keep one's hands elevated,” says St. Macarius.”22.60 In Chapter XX of his Rule, St. Benedict declares: “It is not in the abundance of words that we shall be heard, but by the compunction of our tears.” The Lord's Prayer is very brief. A hermit on Mount Athos used to begin this prayer at sunset and end it saying Amen to the rays of the rising sun. Talking is not the question; it is a question of fully living the entire worlds created by each word of our prayer. Great spiritual men are satisfied with pronouncing the name of Jesus, but in this name they contemplate the kingdom.
If a man understands this lesson, he rectifies his attitude, making it agree with the liturgical aspiration: “Make of my prayer a sacrament of your presence.” Man should lend an ear to the voice of God. St. Seraphim counsels: “We ought to pray until the Holy Spirit descends upon us... When he has come to visit us, we cease praying.”
With modern man the difficulty comes from the separation of the intellect from the heart, of knowledge from value judgments. Ancient tradition suggests: “In the morning place your intellect in your heart and remain all day in the company of God.” In other words, render the divided elements of your being coherent and thus regain integrity of spirit. An ancient prayer asks: “By your love, bind my soul,” that from the aggregate of my states of soul, a single soul may spring forth.
A serious deformation makes prayer the mechanical repetition of formulas and of texts that have been learned. True prayer changes into a constant attitude, into a state of mind that structures and molds our whole being liturgically. Here is seen the great truth that to have is still a symbol, the reality is to be. According to spiritual writers, it is not enough to have prayers, rules, habits; one must be prayer incarnate.22.61 It is in his very structure that man sees himself as a liturgical being, as the man of the Sanctus, the one who by his whole life and his whole being prostrates and adores, one who can say: “I sing praise to my God while I live.”22.62 To make of one's life a liturgy, a prayer, a doxology, is to make of it a sacrament of perpetual communion. “God descends to the soul in prayer and the spirit rises to God.”22.63
The elevation of man corresponds to the abasement of God. Léon Bloy tells of an old man who constantly walked bareheaded, for he always felt himself in the presence of God. A very expressive image of a prayerful attitude has become one's very life. St. Paul relates it to the act of faith. “Put your own selves to the test, whether you are in the faith; prove yourselves. Do you not know yourselves that Christ Jesus is in you.”22.64
Though it is an act, faith rejects all formalism which soon creeps into exterior prayers, into routine duties absent of thought, likewise into all tacit complacency in mystic experiences where man is too much present. “Prayer is not perfect if man is conscious of himself and perceives that he is praying.”22.65
Faith invites us to follow Christ naked even in his sacerdotal prayer which is the liturgy of universal intercession.