Whenever you pray, go into
your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret;
and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. [Matthew 6:6]
My prayer partner is 80% blind and virtually lame, however she "sees" clearly in the spiritual realm and moves mountains through prayer. I call her Clara. Here is her advice on how to pray, as written in a letter to me:
"By Saturday I felt as though we had barely made a dent in hewing away the rock embedding [our intentions]. We have to keep on praying because as bad as the situations may seem, without prayer they will get so much worse.
"In recent years, I don't spend as much time on meditation as I used to, and I can feel the difference. As you already know, it's good to prepare for prayer by reading the Bible or from the lives of the saints, or for that matter, any religious writing which elevates the mind and lifts it from our worries. The next step is to pray with words, not too many, which make our intention clear to us. God already knows what is needed, but to receive His guidance, we can't be confused about the intention of our prayers.
"After the intention has clarity, we can use formal prayers, such as the rosary in which we pray the Our Father, Hail Mary and Gloria preceded by the Apostles' Creed. These prayers have been prayed for centuries and have the zeal of the saints and martyrs within them. Now when we have finished, there is one more crucial step, and that is meditation. Meditation in the Catholic world is the step before contemplation where God takes over and fills us with His wisdom and guidance.
"I find the best way for me to begin to meditate is to think of a Bible story where Jesus is always giving us a message. It can be anything of your choosing from Jesus walking on water to raising Lazarus from the dead. I don't use words in my mind, I just picture the scene, and breath slowly in and out. Now resting in the Lord and just breathing. You can start with 5 minutes several times a day or at least 3 minutes. Even if you feel nothing, you are allowing God to do His work in you. It is in silence that the clamor and worries of the world recede, and in that silence built on faith, the problems that we are praying about are dissolved by God.
"Some years ago, there was a missionary priest who wrote several books on prayer, fasting and meditation. I went to one of his services when he came to Philadelphia. He was an active mystic, and his rail thin appearance was in line with the fasting that he did. Now, I just remember that he was living in a monastery in California. For the life of me, I can't remember his name. But he explained how meditation prevents many calamities in our lives. When we trust in God and remove our worries from the situation but remain mindful that a solution must be found, our Lord takes over. Whether it was he or another priest, I remember how the priest related that he was staying with a family, and they were getting ready to take him to the airport. He told them that they couldn't leave yet, that he had to be alone to meditate. Had they left at the appointed hour, they would've been buried in a tremendous rock slide. As it was, they were all saved, and only the flight reservation had to be changed.
"While meditation isn't easy with young children, we have to practice it daily whatever our circumstances are. Playing an instrument requires practice, and meditation is the same. The more we do it, the easier it becomes. Meditation opens a path for God to communicate with us in our prayer intentions. His grace is always active, but we must be receptive in a clear minded way to receive it.
I hope that some of the above will be helpful. "
Love and prayers,
Clara
