The art of constant and abiding prayer

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

 

WE have to learn this art of constant and abiding prayer since that is indispensable to us. We are meant to be praying always, just like what St. Paul told us that we pray without ceasing. (cfr. 1 Thes 5,17)

That’s simply because it is when we pray that we stay united, as we should, with God and with everybody else. It’s when we pray that we can manage to do things right. Without prayer, the only thing possible for us is simply to rely on our own powers that cannot go far before we go astray.

Christ himself has shown us the way. Even if he had to do many things, going to different and far places preaching, performing miracles, giving advice to his disciples, etc., he always managed to find time to pray. He attracted a lot of people who liked to listen to him and to ask for favors, and yet he managed to get away from it all from time to time in order to pray.

If he had to wake up early, way before dawn, to pray before going through a heavy day, we would do so. If he had to dismiss the admiring crowd to pray, we would do it. And especially when he had to go through his most agonizing passion and death on the cross, he managed to pray. There was nothing in his daily activities that prevented him from praying.

We should try to follow the example of Christ. For this, we have to strengthen our belief that we need to pray always and that doing so is actually practicable in all situations and circumstances in our life, in fair weather or in bad. God is always willing to give us all that we need in order to pray always. We just have to do our part.

We need to make some kind of plan for the day, week, month, etc. so that we can attend to all our concerns properly, always giving priority to prayer. It is important that we managed to have time for a serious and intimate conversation with God daily, since that would strengthen the spiritual and supernatural bearing we ought to have.

Let’s see to it that our prayer is a real encounter with Christ. Christ is everywhere, and more than that, he is always full of love for us. He is actually always intervening in our life. He can never be indifferent to us, even if we misbehave. In fact, it’s when we get into trouble, whether self-inflicted or otherwise, that he gets more attentive and solicitous to us.

We should just learn to be discerning of his constant interventions in our life. And that means that we should always try to have presence of God all the time, and through the things we do, get involved in or that happen and affect us, we should always try to see what God is trying to show or tell us.

Of course, for this to happen, we have to have that basic attitude of looking for him always so we can find him, and finding him we can manage to love and serve him, and out of that love, we can manage to love and serve everybody else properly.

We can use some vocal prayers for this, or some ejaculatory prayers to keep us in the state of prayer always.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com