More accurately, how did you learn to pray? How do you know if you're doing it correctly? Driving home from work last Friday with Christmas looming I started to ponder this question. After all, how we pray really depends upon how we perceived the lessons we learned from the adults in our lives. Those adults were all very intimidating. Priests, nuns, moms. dads, brothers, sisters - each intimidating to children in their own way.
I don't know about you, but I was a dumb little kid. I didn't realize how important prayer would be to me as an adult. This fact scares me now. It wouldn't surprise me if I never learned how to pray incorrectly.
Think about that for a minute. What a thing to fear! Maybe God would have answered more of my prayers if I prayed the right way. What scares me more is the notion that one day, when I will need it the most I'll say one whopper of a prayer and just like an overthrown pass from Joey Harrington to any receiver in the NFL, my prayer will sail a mile over God's head and land in the first row of Heaven Stadium!
Like everyone else, I learned to pray when I was too young to appreciate the skill. My Dad worked three jobs to send myself and most of my 7 siblings to St. John the Baptist Catholic School in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The bus dropped us off every morning in front of the church on Cross Street - just in time for us to attend daily mass before school started. It was pre-Vatican II, and all mass was spoken in Latin. A first grader at the time, learning meant memorizing - not understanding. We memorized the gibberish responses to the priest's incantations but not one of us understood it. The only prayer that I said to myself was simply to pray for mass to be over. After Vatican II, priests and congregation began praying in English. Ah yes.
"The mass has ended, go in peace." "Thanks be to God!" was my emphatic response. That I understood. Not a good way to begin a relationship with the Almighty.
Sundays weren't any easier. My mother would march all 10 of us into church, up the middle aisle, passing all of my friends and their families just to sit as close to the first row as possible. Later I learned that Mom did this in an effort to dissuade us from misbehaving, an effort that typically resulted in her embarassment. I was usually okay until the Homily. That's when the squirming began. The hard, dark oak pews were unforgiving to sit on, while the narrow space between each pew was confining. Elbow-to-elbow we smushed ourselves to fit all 10 of us together in a single pew. Not a good environment for learning to pray.
For our sakes, most of the prayers were already pre-determined, we just had to recite the Latin responses in close approximation. We still didn't know what we were saying, but our lips were moving and that counted for something. The only opportunity we had for actually reciting our own prayer was that 5 minute timeslot after receiving the Eucharist where we each kneel and digest the Body and Blood of Christ. I didn't know it was meant for personal reflection at the time. After all, what does a 5-year old have to reflect about? Candy? Playing a game of Pom-pom as soon as he gets out of his church clothes? You see, kneeling to me was, and still is, a very unnatural and uncomfortable action. It's hard on the knees and hard on the back, and seems to induce fidgeting in children. It seemed that I always finished swallowing the host almost immediately, and always before we returned to our pew. It wasn't until later that I learned that if I held the host in my mouth until I returned to my seat, eating it would give me something to do until Father's next prayer began.
It wasn't hard for Mom to sense that I was done kneeling - she could feel the vibration in the Kneeler that ran from one end of the pew to the other. She leaned over to me across my brother Mark's lap, grabbed my wrist tightly, and said very sternly "Straighten up and settle down!"
Funny thing about my parents when they spoke to us in church. Whispering never quite had the impact that was necessary to alter a child's behavior. What usually started off as a whisper, always morphed into a bigger, very characteristic tone that carried the intended message while staying low enough so as not to be heard by families sitting in front or behind us.
"I'm bored! I would stubbornly say in a voice as quiet as a brat can say. Trying to be productive my Mother then said in her muted church voice, "Why don't you pray to yourself?"
Pray? Maybe I could pray! But how and to whom? First of all, I need to make a Sign of the Cross. That's right! If a prayer is like a phone call to God, then A Sign of the Cross was like lifting the handset to get a dialtone. I could say a Hail Mary, but will God be upset if I pray to Mary instead? I could say an Our Father, but I never understood the words "hallowed" or give us this day our daily bread". Still its a popular prayer. I knew everyone said it - even Protestants. Somehow, saying just the conventional ones wasn't enough. Maybe an Act of Contrition? I never knew the words fully to this one though so it was probably better to leave it alone. Perhaps I could even talk directly to God without a scripted verse? I settled on a combination of conventional prayer and personal conversation. Letting the verbose portion of my monologue to God be the portion customized to meet the need of the day. Sometimes I would feel a little shiver up my spine when I felt emotional. I always took this as a sign that God heard my prayer. Of course, to end my conversation - that is, to appropriately "hang-up" on God, I ended my prayer with a Sign of the Cross as well.
Today I pray much in the same way. My parents have since passed on so the customized part of my prayer is to ask Mom and Dad how I am doing as an adult. This has been my technique whenever I pray, but they don't respond. Every now and again when I pray I remember that little shiver up my spine I used to get when I was a child. I still hope for it as an adult. However, I haven't felt that shiver in a long while.
