How to Pray

… we do not know how to pray as we ought,
but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.
(Romans 8:26)

I was sure I didn’t know how to pray. Others described a “method” that I simply couldn’t grasp. This was dreadful! Prayer, after all, is the first essential in how to grow in intimacy with God, how to grow in knowledge of God.

Thank God, I had a spiritual director who rescued and calmed me. He told me how an elderly nun had described her prayer: simple, heartfelt, personal, loving and direct. It was something like this:

No, I don’t know how to pray:
How to sit at attention,
My senses in suspension.

One must not move,
One must not slouch.
Say politely, “I praise you!”

This is God, after all, and not
Your next door neighbor.
He won’t favor a lowly dot
of nothing.

No, I don’t know the words
To that hymn the angels sing
Everlastingly around the throne.

No, we have no words,
And none are even too many!
So we just look,
And smile at each other.

I carry Him,
And He carries me
All day,
All night.

No, I don’t know how to pray:
How to sit at attention,
My senses in suspension.
How to sit still and simply say:

“I love you.”

Author: Rosalie P. Krajci

Rosalie P. Krajci, Ph. D., is a Benedictine Oblate of Mt. Saviour Monastery in Pine City, NY. She is retired from two careers: as a language teacher and as a consultant in human resources management. Her third and most rewarding career is as a spiritual director and freelance writer. Rosalie and her husband Tom raised seven children. Now widowed, she lives in the Finger Lakes area in upstate New York. View all posts by Rosalie P. Krajci