If you are like me, you may find it hard to stay focused when you pray. I start out with all the right intentions. I put myself in a prayerful position, turn off outside noise as best I can, and center my mind and heart on the conversation I want to have with God. I usually start out well and I believe my heart remains in the right place, although my mind often wanders. So, an article I read recently by Blessed Humbert of Romans (c.1200-1277), in the Magnificat monthly devotional, has helped me feel better about what I might believe to be my prayer ‘disabilities.’ Considering that he lived eight hundred years ago, we can be comforted to know it is not just a contemporary issue!
He quoted St. Isadore who said, “Prayer is of the heart, not of the lips.” Then continued to write, “For God does not attend merely to the words of the one beseeching him, but he looks rather on the heart of the man who prays. So the man who does not have his heart in his prayer takes away from the prayer what is best in it.”
He continues advising on those times when our hearts lose their focus too: “It should be known that even when, from human weakness, someone cannot have his heart firmly in his prayers, he should not for that reason grow weary of praying. Even though a poor man may not be continuously crying out, he nevertheless moves the master of the house to have pity on him simply by his bodily appeal as he sits there at the gate all day long. When there was a meritorious intention at the beginning of the prayer, the whole work that follows is meritorious, even if one is not always actually thinking about it.”
Being too overly critical of what we might see as prayerful shortcomings can discourage us from praying, whereas it seems only logical that a God that gave us a curious mind will be understanding to our temptations to follow it. Sometimes He may even be guiding our prayer in a direction we didn’t intend – to a place we would never have dreamed of going.
Scripture: Read Romans 8:26. What stands out?
Call to Action: Rather than focusing on your own agenda and rote prayers, allow your prayer time to be lead, as per St. Paul, by the Holy Spirit’s intercession and “inexpressible groanings.”
