by Daniel S. Trout
(Note: this was originally published in the Sword and the Shield of St. Alban’s Anglican Cathedral)
The Church is saved by prayer and the greatest of saints are those that immerse themselves in its transforming power. I don’t suppose that such a statement is entirely original, and yet I hope that it is not, nor would ever be viewed as such. For nearly two millennia, Christians in all times and places have been illuminated by the reality of prayer’s redemptive energy. Scripture frequently likens its nature to incense, a purifying grace that ascends from the flame of our Spirit-anointed inner man and lifts us beyond time and space into the mystery of heaven’s glories. There are, of course, many forms of prayer and the art and language of prayer have been carefully refined since the Church’s Pentecostal inception, but any offering we make, no matter how rudimentary, participates in the great tapestry of prayer that transcends any individual effort. Prayer is our life. It is the sustenance that carries us on this pilgrimage through the wilderness of the world.
Thus, we must never abandon this necessity or write ourselves off because we think our paltry attempts inadequate. Any endeavor on the human level will always be insufficient: we are all finite, fallible and too distracted and selfish to ever submit anything to God as perfectly as we wish. Nevertheless, it is prayer that God desires because it is prayer that brings us into his fellowship; without this communion, we will never really know him and remain forever outside of Eden. With this perspective, it almost seems silly to ask, “Why pray when God knows already?” Contrary to our media-soaked modern age, prayer is not principally a communication of information. Of course, God wants us to tell him things, be it a petition, an intercession or a simple praise, but prayer is so much more than disclosure. Christians with the most mature prayer lives would confess that prayer is not about the one praying, anyway. Instead, prayer is the union between the Spirit within us and God’s own eternal presence on the other side of the sensory realm. This may seem disturbingly mystical to our contemporary ears, but Scripture itself testifies: “for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Rom. 8:26b). Prayer is not dependent on our abilities or our worthiness at all, but on the initiative of God’s grace inside that accomplishes more than we possibly can on our own efforts. It is simply our duty to cooperate with it, to make ourselves fitting channels—temples, as St. Peter envisions—for God to unite us to himself that he might be “all in all.”
But how does one reach this state of spiritual compliance? Again, it is not of our doing, but God’s transfiguring work on us as we submit to his service. For the Church, this service finds its heart in the liturgy; particularly in the Eucharist wherein we are grafted ever-more intimately into Christ and offered with and through him. All our prayer should be an outgrowth of our prayers in the Mass, extending beyond the parish walls into every day and every place until our lives are saturated by prayer. The Daily Offices are the best place to begin, and from there moving on to even deeper levels of intimacy. The only way to grow is to listen and follow, for he will surely bring near the salvation of those that offer truly, and he will bless those churches most committed to being formed by prayer in his Holy Spirit.
