Let Us Pray

Our sixth grader’s basketball games in our little Christian league always began with a prayer. Players, coaches and officials gathered at the center of the court and recited the same prayer each week from battered pieces of paper that were collected to be used again the following week.

But at one away game last season, somebody forgot to pack the prayer papers. There was a moment of stunned silence before one of the coaches on the opposing team volunteered to lead an extemporaneous prayer.

“It’s a good thing we’re playing a Baptist school,” I whispered to the parent sitting next to me, “or we would have been here all day.”

It’s no secret that many lay Catholics in the United States are uncomfortable in the role of prayer leader. Usually, if a priest, brother or sister is present, we are happy to take a spiritual step back when it’s time for group prayer, hoping that the spiritually educated will take the lead.

Earlier in this school year, I helped out in our eighth grader’s religious education class. Prayer was the topic. The students were to compose brief prayers of thanks, praise or supplication. The kids did not seem to know where to start. “Thank you, God” was about as far as we got.

I wish I could have seen into their hearts. Is there a time of turmoil more intense, more stormy, than the year when we are 14? When one is transforming into a being that one barely recognizes in the mirror, growing out of control, about to leave the childish world behind? I would imagine that there are plenty of spontaneous prayers offered in the daily life of an eighth grader: pleas for understanding, for help, for relief, for joy.

But when it is time to express that out loud, we falter. People might think we’re stupid, or too holy, or not holy enough. We’re not worried so much about what God might think, but we’re mightily worried about how we look before others.

“Teach us how to pray,” the disciples begged Jesus. Two thousand years later, we are still asking. There have been many arguments among Christians about the proper way to pray. Some believe that only extemporaneous prayer is valid. Others find great beauty and meaning in words that have already been written.

The greatest unity will come not when we finally find the perfect words to express our every thought before God, but when we can come to an open appreciation of how others choose to express their spirituality. When we can appreciate every form of prayer, no matter how simple or how ornate, and find in it another path to the eternal light, when we can recognize in each other the same seeker who dwells within our own heart, then we can come before God as one, a people united in prayer.