Message from Fr. Darling

During Lent we practice our three disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. We practice them for six weeks so that the practice will make them perfect. The first of these disciplines on which we reflect is prayer.

We teach the children in our parish school that there are four types of prayer—adoration, contrition, petition, and thanksgiving. We teach them that prayer is “communicating with God.” We know that good communication involves both talking and listening. Sadly for how many people do we have just as poor listening skills when it comes to God as we do when it comes to other people? Numerous people that I have met over the years have simply reduced prayer to petitioning God for what they want, as if God were a genie in the bottle. The bottle sits on a shelf collecting dust until they want something at which time they take the bottle from the shelf, dust it off, and rub it summoning their God genie to come out of it. They demand of their God genie their one wish and then put the God genie back in the bottle and back on the shelf to collect dust until they want something once again. Frustrated with God they become as this type of prayer is fruitless.

Hence, during the season of Lent we go back to practicing that skill of prayer in order to get it correct. We remember that prayer is not just petitioning God for what we want, but also praising God in adoration of God’s kindness, asking God’s forgiveness for our sins and vanity, and giving thanks to God for all that God has given to us starting with our very existence on this planet. Also, we train ourselves to take the time to listen to God instead of us doing all the talking. How many moments do we have during the day to listen to God when we are doing mindless activities like brushing our teeth, taking a shower, driving the car, cleaning up after dinner, getting dressed in the morning, etc.? During Lent we can find all of these little bits of time we have and we can then train ourselves to listen to God at those times such that we can come to know God’s will and can then work to help make God’s will be done and God’s kingdom come. Then will our prayer lives become fruitful.