Most of us pray as if we are actually speaking to God, slowly saying each word as if we are actually speaking. That seems to be a natural, and probably the best, way to pray. But, we may want to consider something else.
You know how we sometimes get impatient with people who are telling us what we already know? How much we wish they’d hurry up and finish telling us what we already know, rarely considering that we are going to reply with something that they already know as well as we know what they’re telling us?
Well, God loves us boundlessly, but we Catholic Fundamentalists can imagine Him saying, “Will you get on with it!?” when one of us goes on and on and on and on in our prayers.
Let’s imagine that we say a Novena for a person every day. We mention their name to God in the three prayers that comprise each Novena. We say all three prayers in each Novena nine times a day, meaning that we mention each name twenty seven times in each day’s Novena. If it takes a second to say each name as if we’re speaking it out loud, we spend almost half a minute saying the name in the 27 hourly prayers that comprise each Novena. What happens if we are praying for twenty people? That might take ten minutes a day. Would we be better off reading the names, rather than saying them, cutting the time by more than half? That way, we could pray for forty people in the same amount of time.
Does our request that The Loving Programmer provide each of those people with what we want for them, which usually involves asking Him to provide Programming Assistance to download salvation, health, prosperity, and joy in their lives and souls, mean less if we were to read their names in less than half the time, rather than say each one as if speaking it?
A silly consideration: Several years ago, I realized that my own “Rosary Production” would be vastly increased if, instead of saying five individual Rosaries, I would say each word in the Rosary five times. “Hail, Hail, Hail, Hail, Hail; Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary; full, full, full, full, full;” etc. While I don’t remember exactly what the increased speed with which the Rosaries could be said was, I vaguely remember that it was possible to say five Rosaries in the time that it would have taken to say three or four in the conventional manner. But, when interrupted, it was almost impossible to remember where I was in the process, so I went back to the traditional way of saying them.
When thinking about these somewhat related issues, one may consider that no matter how fast we pray, even with computerized, digitized compression, no human will ever be able to pray as fast as God can listen. And, we know that The Church has never advised us to take speed-talking or speed-reading classes that would let us cram ever more names into our prayers and finish with them in record time.
No religion, with the possible exception of Buddhist “prayer wheels” placed in windy locations for faster turning, has developed “Prayer Olympics” where believers would see who could get through the most Our Father’s in the shortest time. As we consider the lunacies involved of relating to God as if we’re in a continual show-off state of arrested development, (“Look Ma! No hands!”) we see that we should pray reverently. He is not as interested in the quantity of our output as in the sincerity of our requests that He help us, our families, our friends, and our neighbors. And, He knows that we are programmed to re-program ourselves, barring the occasional “I’ve seen the light!”, at surprisingly slow speeds.
It may occur to some that an easy way to pray for lots of friends and neighbors is to ask God to bless all the people in, for instance, the phone book. Blessing all those people would be pretty easy for the same God Who has, after all, lovingly and kindly programmed each person in every phone book with every single individual aspect, skill and characteristic that each one of them possesses.
It’s something we should do.
If every believer in Chicago, for instance, would hold, point to, or think of the three or four inch-thick Chicago phone book and ask God to bless all therein, further requesting that He inspire them to work successfully to save their souls, it can’t help but do some good.
In that case, it would be better to ask Him to bless, protect, save, and prosper every person within, rather than slog through and read off each individual name every month or so. He does, after all, already know each and every one of them. He knows where they live, and where they’re going. And, He doesn’t want us wasting our time telling Him too many things He already knows. So, phone book type praying is a good idea.
It seems clear from the Saints that prayer and humility go together. Just as the first must lead to the second, the second must lead to the first. After we experience the first and the second, we are led to awe.
