When God loves you into being the unique person you are, that person whom you call “I,” He does not create you out of nothing and then look at you to see if He likes the looks of you. His creating and loving you are the same act of God and are infallible. He cannot dislike you in any way as the individual person you are, for your identity cannot be changed or destroyed. We can and do commit many sins and do many things which grieve our Lord, and we can and do build ugly shells around our inner self, but that self is still there under it all, coming from God’s creative love. . .
It is often said that God is closer to you than you are to yourself, and it is absolutely true. The God who is Love is closer to you than your thoughts about yourself and closer to you and more conscious of you than your very consciousness itself . . . and when I think of myself, I ought to become aware of God if I am really deeply prayerful.
It has been said [too] that all things were created for prayer, and it is our privilege to be, by our own prayers, the mouthpiece of creation in its relation to God. So there is nothing in all creation that we cannot bring into our prayer in one way or another.
It is a great help to our prayer if we can come to see deeply that all creation is “in Christ.” All was created for Him and in Him, and so in a sense the whole creation is a temple of God in which we are immersed in Christ. . .
All things were created for prayer, and because of the Mystery of the Cross and Resurrection, we can find food for prayer and for giving glory to God in all the joys and sorrows that we find on this earth. We can bring everything into the temple where eternity and time co-exist, brought together “in Christ.” . . .
I do not think that anyone who really seeks to learn how to pray well and deeply will end up using only one kind of prayer. There are times when they will, by God’s grace, be able to be silent and just hidden with Christ in God, doing nothing but listening to His silence with love and submission. But they will give plenty of time to vocal prayer, perhaps the Liturgy of the Hours, as well as private prayers. It is wise to be flexible about our prayer and prayers so that the Holy Spirit can lead us to pray as He wants and not as we want or as we have become accustomed to pray. Prayer grows and varies, and there is no fixed scheme of development that everyone can or should follow.
Whatever form of prayer we are engaged in, we should, of course, always be as deeply reverent and recollected as we can. We need as deep a sense of the Sacred Presence of God as we can have. Reverence in prayer is very important whatever form of prayer we use. The deeper forms of mental prayer, such as the awareness of God within our personal identity, depend on a very deep humility and sense of the Sacredness of God and His intimate presence. . .
I have mentioned various aspects of prayer . . . but the main thing is to realize that God is living in your living self and is there so intimately and deeply and all-embracingly that it ought to be very easy and very delightful to pray to Him or to let Him embrace you as you just thank Him in silent love and appreciation. We are in communion with God in our deepest self every moment, and to make this communion a conscious and chosen one is to pray. It is really the easiest thing on earth for anyone with faith in God and love for God.
