countless opportunities. What are the most important things? What should compel our attention and what shouldn’t? What’s vital and what’s peripheral? Who wouldn’t want to know God’s answers to these questions?
It just so happens Jesus gave us a pretty clear answer. In Matthew 22:37–40, Jesus gave us the great commandment:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”
Jesus focused on what is most important: loving God and loving our neighbor. We love because God first loved us. As we experience His love we return that love. Then God impels us to love others, as He loves us. Our love extends outward, through the Great Commission given to us by Jesus to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” The Great Commission is the purpose of the law, and it’s as true for us now as it was for the people who first heard Jesus say it.
Here’s a suggestion. When life gets busy, and you feel pushed by too many demands and too much responsibility, remind yourself of the greatest commandment: love God and love others. We are called to love God above all things and love others like Jesus loves them. We do this by growing in relationship with God, and prayer is a vital way to grow in knowing Him.
Pray as Jesus Prayed
“What would Jesus do?” goes the popular saying. The Gospels give us a picture of Jesus as a man in constant motion, moving from place to place, healing the sick, casting out demons, teaching the people, and sparring with His enemies. But it’s also clear from the Gospels that Jesus prayed constantly.
Before He chose His disciples, “he continued in prayer to God” (Lk 6:12) all night. After feeding the five thousand with a few loaves and fish, “he went up into the hills by himself to pray” (Mt 14:23). The whole seventeenth chapter of John’s Gospel is a long prayer in which Jesus speaks to His Father intimately. In the Garden of Gethsemane He opens His anguished heart to the Father. We read that “being in an agony he prayed more earnestly” (Lk 22:44). At the very beginning of the Gospel of Mark we read, “In the morning, a great while before day, he rose and went out to a lonely place, and there he prayed” (Mk 1:35).
Prayer was a normal ongoing part of Jesus’ daily life. Jesus’ relationship with the Father was the most important thing in His life. Everything depended on it. To keep it strong, He spent much time alone with His Father in prayer. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “His words and works are the visible manifestation of his prayer in secret” (CCC 2602).
This intimate relationship Jesus shared with His Father is what Jesus wants for each of us. The disciples saw Jesus praying all the time, and He made it clear that He expected His disciples to pray. No wonder the disciples came to Him and asked, “Teach us to pray.” In Matthew 6, prayer is one of the practices He expects will be part of every disciple’s life. It is not optional. He doesn’t say, “If you pray,” or “You might pray this way if you have time for it.” He says, “When you pray,” do it like this.
“You must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when 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.
“And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” (Mt 6:5–8)
“Do what I do,” Jesus says. Shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. This is what Jesus did all the time: private personal prayer, protected time shielded from the gaze of others. Do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do. This is how Jesus prayed: intimate conversation with His Father where He opened the deepest recesses of His heart.
Jesus is more interested in the condition of our hearts than in outward signs of piety. Our motivation for praying should be the love of God; it should not be to impress other people (or ourselves). Prayer is the way we grow closer to God and hear His voice. Jesus is not saying that public communal prayer is unnecessary. He often prayed this way. He went to the synagogue “as was his custom” (Lk 4:16). He went to Jerusalem for the high feasts. Public prayer was a normal part of His life, and He expects it to be part of ours as well. But private personal prayer is essential too. It’s the lifeblood of our spiritual lives, as it was for Jesus.
There are many forms of prayer that the Church makes available to us. There are rosaries, novenas, inspiration from the saints, the book of Psalms, Liturgy of the Hours, prayer groups, and so on. We also have the source and summit of prayer and communion with God: The Eucharist and the liturgy of the Mass. What I want to share with you in this chapter is the value of daily personal prayer time where you are alone with God.
Jesus wants you to come to Him and learn from Him. He wants to teach you personally. We will learn about God by coming to Him, staying with Him, spending time with Him, listening to Him, and talking to Him. “Learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart” (Mt 11:29).
Pray in the Power of the Spirit
The joy of personal prayer opened up for me about forty-five years ago when I surrendered my life to Jesus as Lord. God’s love became real for me. I was overwhelmed by His goodness and renewed in the power of His Holy Spirit. I met a God who poured out blessings on me personally, forgave my sins, and empowered me to live a new life. While I had been raised as a Catholic, baptized and confirmed, as a teenager, I moved far away from living as a Christian. When I committed my life to the Lord Jesus, I experienced a baptism of the Holy Spirit that released the power of those sacraments to live a new life.
Shortly after this conversion experience, I went to a workshop on union with God in daily personal prayer. It changed my life.
One of the most important insights I had is that God wants a personal relationship with me. God loves me, Dave, a unique human being. He loves you the same way. He wants to know you, and He wants you to know Him. It’s perfectly possible to go through life with a distant, somewhat impersonal relationship with God. Many people do; I did before asking Jesus to be Lord of my life. When the Holy Spirit opened my eyes, I saw that my relationship with God could be something much more intimate than anything I had ever experienced.
Visiting your Mother
You develop a personal relationship with someone by spending time with them. If you meet someone you’d like to be friends with, you spend time with that person. If you are falling in love with someone, you go out on dates. You might follow friends on Facebook, but if they are truly good friends you also make sure you do things together like dinner or a ball game. It’s the same thing with God. To develop the relationship, you have to spend the time. That’s what prayer is—the time you and God spend together.
Spending the time is at least as important in a relationship as any specific thing that happens between two people. In fact, it’s probably more important. A speaker once said he compares personal prayer to the time we spend with a close family member—your mother, for example. If your mother lives nearby, you might visit her a couple of times a week. Occasionally you will have a deep conversation, but most of the time you will talk about family members, the weather, food, ailments, your work, and the sales at the mall. You might not be very interested in some of this chitchat; you might steal a furtive glance at your watch and wonder how soon you can leave. But something important is growing under the surface. Your bond with your mother is growing stronger and deeper simply by being with her. Intimacy doesn’t come through the chitchat; it’s coming through the time you spend together.
So the first step in personal prayer is taking the time. Go to prayer with the idea you will spend at least a certain amount of time with God. Find some time in your daily