Pentecost 2024 - Prayer is the Lifeblood of the Church

 

Homily for Pentecost Sunday

May 19, 2024

Prayer Is the Breath of the Church

 

            St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in his commentary on this Gospel, made an interesting connection between water and the Holy Spirit. When rain falls upon the ground, it’s always the same substance – H-2-O. But water “produces many different effects: one in the palm tree, another in the vine.” In the same way, the Holy Spirit is one Person of the Blessed Trinity, but He produces all sorts of different effects upon souls. He gives power to the words of preachers; He gives courage to those persecuted for their faith; He inspires deeds of charity; He helps us overcome temptation and desire holiness. But there is one aspect of the Holy Spirit’s effects that I want to focus on today, through a rather unlikely character.

            We read in the Scriptures that the Apostles received the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, but there was at least one other person in the room with them: Mary, the Blessed Mother. She received the Holy Spirit – but then what? She didn’t travel to the ends of the earth; She didn’t preach the Gospel to anyone; She didn’t die as a martyr. Rather, she spent the rest of Her earthly life in one thing: prayer.

            Prayer seems so insignificant sometimes, but it is truly the lifeblood of the Church – indeed, the lifeblood of life. Consider – if our body is healthy, we don’t pay much attention to our heart. We can barely feel it. But without our heart beating, our limbs wouldn’t move, our minds wouldn’t think, our bodies would quickly die. Likewise, prayer seems invisible, but it pumps the divine life of grace throughout the Church, as it were.

            One of the Holy Spirit’s main roles is to help us to pray. In fact, St. Paul reflects in Romans that “we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” It is the Spirit Who teaches us to pray, Who puts the desire for prayer in our hearts, Who prays in and through us.

            So what does the Holy Spirit want to teach us about prayer? Let’s dive into the three levels of prayer and see where the Spirit leads us into intimacy with God.

            The first and most basic is what we call vocal prayer. This is reciting pre-written prayers like Our Fathers and Hail Mary’s. It is a valuable type of prayer only if we actually mean what we are saying. It would be like a man reciting love poetry to his beloved. Even though he didn’t write the words himself, he is making the words his own. Likewise, a vocal prayer is only as good as the heart and soul we put into it.

            The second, deeper type of prayer is mental prayer. This is an interior conversation with God from the heart, with two parts. First, it means speaking to God in your own words, whether out-loud or in our thoughts. We can tell Him anything, as long as it is honest. We ought to ask for our needs, yes, but we should also thank Him, praise Him, tell Him how much we love Him, ask for strength to follow Him, say sorry for the times we have strayed from Him. In addition to speaking with God, mental prayer also involves listening to Him. We can do that by reading a spiritual book and thinking about how it applies to our life, sitting in silence and allowing Him to inspire thoughts in our mind, or through imaginative meditation. This is a prayer technique that uses our imagination to put ourselves in the scenes of the Scriptures. For example, we could use the story of the first Pentecost and put ourselves there: what were the Apostles feeling while cowering in the Upper Room? What did the tongues of fire look like? How were their hearts set ablaze once the Spirit descended upon them? What did it sound like to hear the gift of tongues? He speaks to us through the images He places in our imagination.

            The Rosary is a great example of a mixture of vocal and mental prayer. We recite the Hail Mary’s while putting ourselves into the scenes of Jesus’ life.

            The final and deepest type of prayer is called contemplative prayer. This means that we simply sit quietly in the presence of God, loving Him without words or images. This is purely a gift from God – it’s not a “technique” you can manufacture. We can open ourselves to the gift by trying to quiet our minds and hearts – one way to do that is through a prayer called hesychasm, which means we pray a short prayer over and over to calm our frenetic mind. The ancient prayer most used for this is the “Jesus Prayer”: “Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Many people pray that prayer over and over to achieve inner calm. But to be clear – prayer is not a technique, but a relationship with the Living God. If He wants to give the gift of contemplation and wordless love, He will do so. We can only open ourselves to His Spirit.

            The most important thing is not how you pray, but that you pray. A wise priest once told me, “Pray as you can, not as you can’t.” Some love the Rosary, some do Adoration, some walk in nature, some meditate on Scripture. As St. Jane Frances de Chantal said, “The great method of prayer is to have none. If, in going to prayer, one can form in oneself a pure capacity for receiving the Spirit of God, that will suffice for all method.” Half of life is just showing up, so by showing up to our prayer time, we are giving the Holy Spirit the space to move. Let’s be real – if you do not spend 10-15 minutes each day with God, you do not have a relationship with Him. St. Paul tells us to pray without ceasing – we don’t have a prayer life, as if prayer were something separate from our real life. Rather, prayer is real life. It’s learning to breathe the air of Heaven.

            When I sit down, let us take a minute of silence and really, really pray – maybe for the first time – speaking to Christ, listening to Him – and make the commitment to do it daily. For the Holy Spirit wishes to impart many gifts to His Church, but it all flows from the heartbeat of an intimate friendship with God.