My story is not unique. Like many others you may have heard of, getting a PhD in the history and theology of the Early Church led me back to Catholicism. But I couldn’t have guessed back then that in the second half of my career, those same studies would lead me deeper into prayer. And so, after taking Early Latin Christology and Trinitarian Theology about as far as I could take them, I was left with a burning question, and a deep desire to find the answer:
How did the Church Fathers teach the laity to pray in the early and medieval Church, and what was the private devotional life of the laity like, outside of the liturgy?
That research led me to write Praying Like the Early Church: Seven Insights from the Church Fathers to Help You Connect with God, and the companion volume, Praying the Psalms: The Divine Gateway to Lectio Divina and Contemplative Prayer.
In the process I realized that, even though I had busted many of the Protestant myths about Catholicism in general, certain myths about prayer had lingered in my mind. Myths such as the idea that somehow it’s better not to prayer repeated prayers, or that it’s better to pray in your own words than in the words of Scripture and Tradition, or that God will only answer your prayers if you tell Him specifically what you want, as though you’re giving Him advice on how to take good care of you.
I had to bust these prayer myths as well. Thus, in the latest installment of my journey into devotional prayer, I offer my new book, Praying the Wisdom: Inspired Prayers for Lectio Divina and Contemplative Prayer. Here are some insights on how to speak with God through Scripture:
1. Direct the Verses to God
Often we talk about praise and worship as though they are basically synonymous, and that’s not wrong. But one way to think about the difference between praise and worship is that praise has to do with speaking about God to others; it is a way of giving testimony to the greatness of God and the blessings of being in relationship with Him, but it is speaking of God in the (grammatical) third person, as in the line: Praise the Lord, for he is good; for his mercy endures forever (Ps. 136:1). It’s a beautiful line of inspired Scripture, but if you are talking about God, you are not really talking to God. This kind of Scripture can be used for Lectio Divina, but only in the sense of listening to God, not speaking to Him.
Worship, on the other hand, is more specifically directed toward God. When we worship, we address God in the (grammatical) second person, as in this line: You, Lord, are a shield around me (Ps. 3:4). Now, with this kind of passage from Scripture, we can read the text and truly say it to God. Reading becomes not simply praising but truly praying. These types of Scripture passages are actual prayers, directed to God in the grammatical second person.
2. Practice Lectio Divina
To pray with these verses, begin by simply reading them through—if not entirely, then perhaps only a section. After you’ve read a prayer, or a section of a prayer, reflect on what parts are most relevant to you or what specific lines jump off the page as having a special significance for you.
If it doesn’t seem as if there is anything in the prayer that speaks to your situation at the moment, try to remember a time when it did—maybe you can thank God for not being in the situation now. Maybe you can turn part of the prayer into the past tense and then turn the whole thing into a prayer of thanksgiving.
Don’t be afraid to change the tenses of the verbs in your mind (after all, the rabbis who translated the Hebrew into the Greek Bible of the apostles and Church Fathers did!). Also, you should feel free at any time to change “me” to “us” and include your family or other loved ones in your prayer. There are times when the Hebrew has “me” and the Greek has “us,” so there is nothing wrong with making the prayer more about your family in your mind. Bring them with you to God in prayer. In fact, when you are praying for people, it’s good to name them in your mind, so if the text says, “Lord, protect the innocent,” feel free to name the people you are concerned about.
I encourage you to read the whole section over at least a few times, going right from the end back into the beginning. But after doing that a few times, narrow it down to 2–4 lines, and pray those lines, speaking them to God. Highlight or underline the lines that speak to you most. Pray those that speak to your situation.
Use a journal to write out shorter versions of the prayers, or your own prayers based on the ones from Scripture and Tradition. Record answered prayers and other things you’re grateful for, or write down what’s making you anxious.
3. Practice Breathing Prayer
As John Cassian wrote of the psalms:
Take into [yourself] all the thoughts of the psalms and begin to sing them in such a way that [you] will utter them with the deepest emotion of heart, not as if they were the compositions of the psalmist, but rather as if they were [your] own utterances and [your] very own prayer and [you] will surely take them as aimed at [yourself], and will recognize that their words were not only fulfilled formerly by, or in, the person of the prophet, but that they are fulfilled and carried out daily in [your own] case. …For if we have experienced the very state of mind in which each psalm was sung and written we become like their authors, and…we remember what has happened to us and what is happening in daily assaults. (Conferences 10.11)
Following the Church Father’s advice, pick two lines and pray them as a breathing prayer. Praying breathing prayers means that you would not be praying them out loud, of course; you would be only thinking them. Pray the first line as you breathe in and the second line as you breathe out. Pray with the same speed as you would normally breathe when relaxed.
This will help you slow your prayers down so you aren’t rushing through them. Your body will relax, and your prayer will be in sync with your breathing, and with that, you will be entering into the first layer of contemplation. Do this over and over—but not to the point where the words lose their meaning.
This is not a “mantra”; you must really pray the words and truly mean them every time you pray them. If you get to the point where your mind wanders or the words lose their meaning, that means it’s time to change it up and start the process over again. Eventually, your breathing prayers will become pure adoration.
And so, I have spent the last several years in my own personal devotional time going through hundreds of verses from Scripture, praying them over and over, and have made a new translation of them, taking into account the Hebrew, Greek (Septuagint), and Latin texts.
Incidentally, if you have both Praying the Psalms, and Praying the Wisdom, then you have pretty much all the prayers in the Bible, and then some! Praying the Psalms includes all the sections in the Psalms prayed directly to God (minus a few), and Praying the Wisdom has all the other prayers in the Bible, as well as prayers from other ancient writings held as sacred by the early Christians. (I didn’t include the Our Father in Praying the Wisdom because that prayer gets its own whole chapter in Praying Like the Early Church.)
My own petition right now is that these prayers will help you go deeper and find the joy in praying the way your ancestors in the Faith prayed.
Bonus Content
Here is a sample of one of the prayers in Praying the Wisdom. I invite you to use these verses to practice the prayerful tips discussed above.
Job’s Prayer of Confession (Job 42:1–6)
Father, I know that You can do anything
And that nothing can stand in the way of Your will
For who can hide his thoughts from You?
Even if someone should refrain from speaking
He cannot think that he hides from You
What he was going to say
When I spoke, I spoke of things
Too great and mysterious for me
And I did not know what I was talking about
But let me speak now, Lord
And hear me
I am asking You to teach me
In the past I knew about You only by hearsay
But now I know You from experience
Therefore, I am ashamed of myself
And I disown the person I was before
And I confess that I am nothing
But dust and ashes
For more of these prayers from Scripture, read Praying the Wisdom: Inspired Prayers for Lectio Divina and Contemplative Prayer, from which most of this article was adapted.
Photo by Manuel Chinchilla on Unsplash
