Prayer is a relationship with God. Relationship is a movement of mental energies, a movement of the union with God. There is no single way of relating to God.
As we know, to be human is not geometric, nor a straight line. Moods go up and down like atmospheric disturbances: now it’s cold, then hot; now cloudy, later sun, then rain. In this way it is the same for the human being: one moment content, then fearful, still later elated, then sad; poor sleep and he wakes up happy, sleeps well and he wakes up grumpy; when he has every reason to be depressed, he is radiant. There is no logic. The human being is strange!
Every soul suffers hesitation and perplexity on their path of prayer, in their ascension to God and specifically in their life of faith, because the mystery of prayer is to create movement in one’s faith.
Sometimes you cannot pray unless you are reading or writing. Sometimes when you are reading a prayer, the Lord is present so deeply that there is no will to say anything, just to be quiet in the Presence.
Other times, you maintain a strong expression while repeating the prayer with concentration and intermittency; here also you can arrive at a moment when words lose their intrinsic strength and you stay in silence, feeling the Presence.
It may be something else: after a few minutes of delicious prayer, you suddenly perceive that your interior is populated by tensions and worries. At that moment, you must exercise silence, to calm your state of being, and refocus anew.
When reading the Bible, read it slowly, try to understand what you read, listening to God as if He speaks to you person to person, as if pronouncing your own name. A delicious and intimate dialogue with God.
However, you need to become aware that prayer is a vital activity, and things in life are not learnt only by intellectual abstraction, but also by practicing them, living them. Moreover, we know that prayer is grace, but at the same time it is art, and like art, prayer is subject to the rules of methodical learning.
We want to bring the power of prayer toward a personal transformation and a specific commitment to the Church to evangelize. Hence, the Prayer and Life Workshops implemented progressive pedagogy, method, discipline and training and, above all, an intense practice.
Prayer is the fruit and expression of love and love has two faces: love of God and love of neighbour. In this way our commitment to our neighbour will ensure the authenticity of our relationship with God.
Excerpted from the interview with Father Ignacio Larrañaga, in Spain in 1991.
