From the Editor Emeritus / John F. Fink
The battle to overcome difficulties in prayer
(Twenty-second in a series)
The Catechism of the Catholic Church
says that prayer “always presupposes
effort.” Then it’s even
stronger when it says: “Prayer is a battle.” We
have to fight constantly
against ourselves and,
as the catechism says, “against the wiles of
the tempter who does
all he can to turn man
[and woman, I
presume] away from prayer, away from
union with God” (#2725).
C.S. Lewis understood that. “Prayer is
irksome,” he wrote. “An excuse to omit it is
never unwelcome. When it is over, this casts
a feeling of relief and holiday over the rest
of the day. We are reluctant to begin. We are
delighted to finish.”
And he cites the following to show that
this feeling is universal: “The fact that
prayers are constantly set as penances tells
its own tale.”
Obviously, this isn’t as it should be. It
should be a delight to have a conversation
with God. Just to be in God’s presence
should thrill us. That is, after all, what we
are looking forward to spending eternity doing—living in God’s presence. Why does
it seem like a penance now and what should
we do about it?
The answer, of course, is that we haven’t
yet been perfected. After we get our
spiritual bodies, we won’t be afflicted with
all the stuff we have to endure with our
physical bodies, with all their limitations.
Now we’re preoccupied with finding our
physical pleasures, those things that delight
our senses. Once we have our spiritual
bodies we will no longer be concerned
about our physical senses.
Until then, though, prayer is a battle. The
battle is to confront the difficulties we
experience in prayer.
One difficulty is spiritual dryness when
our heart seems separated from God and we
have no desire for spiritual things. Many
canonized saints experienced dryness.
St. Francis de Sales wrote that if we
should happen to find no joy or comfort in
meditation to “open your heart’s door to words of vocal prayer.” In other words, ask
God for his help.
“At other times,” he wrote, “turn to some
spiritual book and read it attentively until
your mind is awakened and restored within
you.” And if this doesn’t work, he said not
to worry about it.
Spiritual writers identify another
difficulty in prayer as acedia, which is
spiritual torpor or apathy. This, I think, we
must overcome through willpower.
Another reason for difficulties in prayer,
of course, is alluded to in that quotation
with which I opened this column: the wiles
of the tempter.
Often, it is the devil who suggests that
we really would get more out of that
television program than we could from
prayer. He doesn’t have to tempt us with
sinful inclinations, just convince us that
something else is more important.
If prayer is a battle against the devil,
perhaps one of our greatest weapons is the
prayer to St. Michael the Archangel in
which we ask him to “defend us in battle”
and “be our safeguard against the wiles and
snares of the devil.” †