Considering the situation our world finds itself in, and the immense challenges we face, we are invited to intensify our prayer life, to dig ever deeper into our inner resources, to seek contact with the presence of God in the depths of our hearts.
It’s not easy to persevere in prayer, to “always pray without getting discouraged,” as Jesus asks (see Luke 18:1). I’d like to make a few considerations that may help us, in particular by linking prayer to the virtue of hope, which is the theme of this Jubilee Year.
When I have to talk about prayer, I often develop the following idea: For our prayer to unite us with God, to open us up to the grace we need, it must be an act of faith, an act of hope, and an act of love. We can pray in many different ways, but what is ultimately decisive is not this or that method but the deep inner attitudes we bring to bear when we pray.
All prayer is fundamentally an act of faith: faith in God’s existence, in his love and goodness, and in the fact that he is worth our time. What really puts us in touch with God, and allows God to work in the secret of our hearts, is ultimately this attitude of faith, a faith that will sometimes be accompanied by sensitive graces, emotions, and lights given to the intelligence, which is obviously a good thing. But this is not always the case, and we sometimes have to exercise our faith in a dry, dark way. This should not discourage us: Even a very poor faith, if well determined, is enough to put us in touch with God and allow him to act in us. We can’t always see, feel, or understand, but we can always believe. In the end, faith gives us great freedom, the freedom to go forward in consolation and light, as well as in poverty and darkness.
Prayer as an Act of Hope
The second theological virtue is also very important in helping us to persevere in prayer. Whenever we pray, we are making an act of hope. We lean on God and confidently expect something from him: eternal happiness in the kingdom but also the support we need in this life.
The practice of hope in prayer is necessary in particular because, in every life of prayer, there is a certain experience of poverty. All the saints have experienced this. Prayer is a paradoxical reality. At times, it is richly rewarding: We are filled with love and happiness, experiencing a fullness greater than anything the world has to offer. But there are also times when we experience great poverty in prayer. There are several reasons for this.
The first is that prayer is not a technique. There are techniques in life that we can learn to master and that are effective. Drive a car, use a computer, and get the desired result. But that doesn’t exist in prayer. Of course, there are methods that can be useful, advice that can be put into practice, but there is no technique that makes me always sure of succeeding in my prayer and being satisfied with it. We remain dependent on God: Sometimes he makes himself present and speaks to me, touching me sensitively; sometimes he remains silent. You can’t manipulate God, you can’t force him to manifest himself.
The second reason is this: The more we enter into God’s light, the more we see our radical poverty. Prayer brings us deeper into God’s presence, into his light. This can sometimes be consoling and pleasant, when God shows us his tenderness and goodness, but it can also become difficult and painful, when this light reveals our wretchedness and shortcomings.
Let’s imagine a house under a bright summer sun, doors and windows closed, with only a small hole letting in a ray of sunlight. In this intense light, you can clearly see all the dust in the air that we don’t normally see. Something similar happens at certain moments in our spiritual life. God’s pure light highlights our misery, our imperfections, our sinfulness, of which we are not always aware. Sometimes we feel we’re going backward, worse than before, but it’s not that we’re going backward; it’s that we see more clearly in God’s light what we really are, what we still need to purify. And that can sometimes be very painful!
We can have this kind of experience. In my parish, where there is perpetual adoration, I can sign up on Sunday for an hour of adoration on Friday from 11 p.m. to midnight, looking forward to this beautiful moment of intimacy with Jesus. But by Friday evening, I’m tired; it’s been a hard week. I find it hard to collect myself, and the time for prayer seems interminable. On top of that, an hour before going to adoration I had an argument with my teenage son, and I’m still seething with anger toward him. The sweet moment of peace I had hoped for turned out to be a time of painful struggle! In the silence and solitude of adoration, everything that’s wrong in my life comes to the surface: regrets for the past, fears for the future, difficulty living in the present, negative feelings in my heart. And there’s no escaping to go online or chat with a friend—I’m stuck in the chapel for the hour I’ve committed to!
That’s when the practice of hope comes to our rescue! Practicing hope means saying the following: “Lord, I’m so poor before you tonight, I’m so miserable, imperfect, and sinful! But that’s not a problem because I don’t put my hope in myself, in my personal perfection, and in my spiritual successes. It is in you alone that I hope: It is you who will be my liberation, my salvation, my healing! I’m not relying on myself, but on your forgiveness and mercy! I’m not worried because I know that you didn’t come for the righteous but for sinners, you didn’t come for the healthy but for the sick! And the poorer I feel, the more I put my hope in you!”
Moments of great poverty in prayer are moments of grace because they are moments of truth and invitations to put all our hope in God.
Prayer is sometimes a time of happiness and thanksgiving, but sometimes it’s also the prayer of the poor crying out to God. St. Bernadette of Lourdes is thought to have said to someone: “You would like to pray like a saint, but I invite you to pray like a poor man!”
Scripture, particularly the Psalms, tells us time and again that the Lord hears the prayer of the poor: “This poor soul cried, and was heard by the Lord” (Ps. 34:6). God takes pity on him, hears his plea, and comes to his aid.
The prayer of the poor, made of humility and hope, crosses heaven and touches the heart of God.
We are reminded of the parable of the Pharisee and the publican in Luke’s Gospel, chapter 18. The Pharisee prays thus: “I thank you, Lord, because I’m not like other men, I’m not like that sinful publican; I fast, I pay tithes on everything . . .” The publican, on the other hand, stands at a distance, won’t even lift his eyes to heaven, and beats his chest, saying, “God, have mercy on this sinner!” Jesus tells us that it was the latter who was heard; he was justified, and when he returned home, he was forgiven and saved. The Pharisee, on the other hand, went home with his life unchanged.
Jesus invites us to make our prayer truly the prayer of the poor, of those who do not rely on their own merits but place all their hope in God’s mercy alone. I believe that this is a fundamental aspect of our spiritual journey. God progressively deprives us of any possibility of relying on anything other than his mercy. Our pride finds this hard to accept, but it’s a grace! It sets us free.
Moments of great poverty in prayer are moments of grace because they are moments of truth and invitations to put all our hope in God. He will know how to visit us, to give us his peace, his consolation, and his mercy. Hope does not disappoint!
These remarks can help us to persevere in prayer. If prayer were an exercise to be performed well, it would often be impossible. But if prayer is the offering to God of our poverty and powerlessness, if it is the cry of the poor, it is always possible!
It’s clear that, as soon as a person begins to pray sincerely, they are performing an act of love for God: They are giving themselves to him to love him with all their heart. This can sometimes be enthusiastic, sometimes dry, but it doesn’t matter. Prayer expresses and deepens our love for the Lord.
That said, we must not forget that, in the relationship between man and God, it is always God who loves us first, God who offers us his love. “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10).
If it’s important for our prayer to be an act of love toward God, it’s even more important that we know how to welcome the love God offers us. This is the most essential act of prayer: welcoming God’s love for us with trust and gratitude.
It’s not as easy as that: We doubt God’s love, we feel that we don’t deserve it, that we’re unworthy of it. We’re not convinced enough that this love is freely given to us, that we don’t have to conquer it or deserve it but must simply welcome it and so let ourselves be visited and transformed by it. By trusting in God’s love, we will gradually be able to love him with all our heart in return.
To pray is not first and foremost to do something for God, but first and foremost to receive, to welcome his presence and his love. We see prayer too much as just another activity, whereas prayer is essentially about welcoming God, who gives himself freely and gratuitously to us.
I’d like to give the example of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. From the moment she entered Carmel, her prayer life was often marked by great dryness, which she accepted wholeheartedly; she lived in faith. What’s more, she often fell asleep during times of silent prayer, the daily two hours of mental prayer, and the time of thanksgiving after Mass. Not out of laziness or indifference—she wanted to pray as well as possible—but Carmelite nights were short, and she was short of sleep for her young age.
Here’s how she humorously evokes this poverty:
I should be desolate for having slept (for seven years) during my hours of prayer and my thanksgivings after Holy Communion; well, I am not desolate. I remember that little children are as pleasing to their parents when they are asleep as well as when they are wide awake.1
This reflection contains a profound truth. Thérèse understood that what’s most important in prayer is not what I do but what God does. And God never ceases to love me, to communicate his love to me, whether I’m awake or asleep. Thérèse is not self-centered (concerned with making a beautiful prayer that satisfies her) but is receptive to God. This means trusting in God’s love for us and not being too preoccupied with ourselves. To pray is to let ourselves be loved in our poverty, in the hope that God will turn that poverty into riches.
Let’s do our best to be faithful to prayer and thus express our love of God, but let’s never be discouraged by our difficulties and poverties in prayer: They are normal and even beneficial.
Let’s make our prayer an act of faith, a humble acceptance of our misery combined with boundless hope in God’s goodness and mercy. This prayer will put us in touch with him, let him act in us, and gradually become the source of all the goods we need in this world. “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful,” says the Letter to the Hebrews (10:23).
1 Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (Word on Fire Classics, 2022), 165.
This piece is featured in the new Issue No. 23 | Prayer of Evangelization & Culture, the award-winning quarterly journal of the Word on Fire Institute.
Print and digital editions of the journal are included with membership. Learn more here.