Sometimes praying can be an arduous task, and indeed it frequently is! However, those who have gone before us have left us some aids that have helped them along the way and that could also help us in our prayer.
St. Ignatius of Loyola teaches us that to pray is to have a dialogue, a sincere and close conversation with a friend who loves us very much. It is to talk to Him and tell Him our things, our desires, joys, difficulties, projects, as “one friend talks to another”. To pray is to desire to put our heart in tune with that of the Lord and to ask Him how He sees us, what He sees in our life and our decisions. And to let him speak to our heart and breathe his word into our ears, so that our life may open up to our brothers and sisters and our desire to serve him in his mission of compassion may grow and be purified.
To pray is to converse with the Lord in order to offer, to place in his hands all that we are and all that we have, so that by receiving it he may dispose of it for our good and that of our brothers and sisters. The dialogue with the Lord is an encounter, where we exchange, we give of our own and we receive from Him, each one of what he has and can give. Encounters that help us to remain closer to Him and to know Him in His way of looking and feeling. To pray is to love, it is an exchange of love between the Lord and us.
To pray is to dialogue from heart to heart with the One who created us, who knows everything about us and wants so much to be with us. This dialogue is the expression of the love that the Lord has for us and the love that we can give him. Opening the doors of the intimacy of our heart also opens us to our brothers and sisters. Those who have met the Lord cannot remain closed in, but feel in their hearts the fire that burns and pushes them to burn and embrace their brothers and sisters with it.
We invite you to put into practice this close way of praying, to dispose of yourself to meet Him with trust and transparency, entering into a dialogue of love with the friend who loves you most and will always love you, so that you can go out to meet others.
Bettina Raed
Vice International Director
Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network