“Prayer Is a Way of Life”
North Carolina Catholics talk about Lent, prayer and seeking a closer relationship with God
By Rich Reece
“Live the Gospel without compromise by doing the duty of the moment and little things out of love and by living a life of simplicity. When it comes to Lent, it’s hard to improve on that.”
The speaker is Theresa Davis of Madonna House in Raleigh. Along with Echo Lewis and JoAnne DeGidio, she has offered a “prayer listening house” in Raleigh for more than 30 years.
Madonna House is an apostolate founded by Catherine DeHueck Doherty in Canada in 1947. Its members are lay men and women and priests dedicated to loving and serving Christ through promises of poverty, chastity, and obedience. At the request of local Bishops, they serve throughout the world in missionary field houses such as the one in Raleigh.
The women of Madonna House pray together and separately, liturgically and contemplatively. In addition, they are a house of hospitality where lay Catholics come each day to pray and to talk and to seek prayers for their intentions. Theresa refers to this aspect of their service as a “chitchat apostolate.” “Our foundress said the most effective apostolate is the chitchat,” she says. “A lot of things take place over a cup of coffee and a plate of cookies. It’s so simple, yet people may end up talking about the deepest things in their hearts.”
In the season of Lent, when the Church calls Catholics to prayer, fasting and almsgiving, does life at Madonna House change? “You don’t notice Lent so much in the way of sacrifice,” Theresa says, “because we live very simply all the time. Lent for us is an inner thing; perhaps we’re quieter. You also notice that the prayers change.”
Each day during Lent, the women pray the Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian: “O Lord and Master of my life! Take from me the spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power, and idle talk. But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant. Yea, O Lord and King! Grant me to see my own errors and not to judge my brother; For Thou art blessed unto ages of ages. Amen.” The prayer speaks of the four negative elements of the human spirit and asks for four positive qualities to counteract them. Following the prayer, the women meditate on these qualities.
On Fridays in Lent they pray the Acathist Hymn, an Office of Praise to the Blessed Mother with roots in the Byzantine Rite.
On the property at Madonna House there are also several small hermitages, called poustinia, available for those who wish to spend a day or a few hours in prayer and contemplation. Many visitors come to the poustinia during Lent.
So prayer at Madonna House is constant, both in and out of the season of Lent. And that’s the way prayer is supposed to be, Theresa explains. “What’s important to realize,” she says, “is that everything we do is a prayer. Every duty of the moment for any of us needs to be a prayer.”
Father Michael Proterra, S.J., Parochial Vicar at St. Raphael Church in Raleigh, says that Jesuit founder St. Ignatius of Loyola would agree. “Ignatius, like most of the great spiritual thinkers, sees prayer as a way of life. He described the Jesuits as ‘contemplatives in action,’” Father Proterra explains. “Prayer is not something you say. It’s something you do. Whatever we are doing, we are always looking lovingly at Jesus. My relationship with Him makes my action a prayer.
“Another way of saying this is that prayer is any experience that facilitates an interpersonal encounter that centers a person in God and generous service of the neighbor.”
Ignatius’s retreat book, the Spiritual Exercises, is how Jesuits learn to pray. Throughout this work, Ignatius instructs the student to “meditate” or “contemplate” or “consider” events in Scripture. In the first lesson, Fr. Proterra explains, Ignatius invites us to consider this: We are created to know, love and serve God, and our neighbor. Everything that helps us to do that is good; what keeps us from doing it is not.
Part of the Spiritual Exercises involves Lectio Divina, a meditative reading of Scripture. “You take a passage and read it,” Fr. Proterra says, “and when something suggests itself, something jumps off the page at you, you pause and pray about it. You can put yourself at the center of the passage, imagine the words of Mary, for instance, ask about her feelings. At the end of this meditation you consider how to continue this prayer in the world.”
An Ignatian retreat can be a one-time or repeated experience of a few days or a long retreat of 35 days. Fr. Proterra has directed Lenten and Advent retreats with groups of 30-50 lay people. He suggests several steps to prepare for doing the Spiritual Exercises, whether in a short or long form. 1. Become a regular Mass attendant. 2. Recognize the desire to delve more deeply into Scripture, not simply for the sake of knowledge, but in order to become closer to God; 3. Notice the need for deeper prayer, “not because I like saying lots of prayers, but because this is who I am,” a person in love with God; 4. Recognize a need to be more generous to others; 5. Find a director, then make a retreat.
The Ignatian method of prayer doesn’t change during Lent, Fr. Proterra says. It remains lectio divina, meditation and contemplation. But the Scripture passages used, following Jesus from Nazareth to Jerusalem and His Passion, the Way of the Cross – these can all, like fasting and almsgiving, be an opportunity to grow closer to God during Lent.
Family prayer with five children ages 8 and under would seem to be a far cry from the quiet of an Ignatian retreat. Like Ignatius, however, and like the women of Madonna House, Matt and Sarah James understand that prayer is more than words.
“We try to work on human virtue,” Sarah says, and Matt agrees.
“Consistency of life,” he says. “We want the kids to know that we’re all called to be saints. Prayer isn’t just something you say, then go out and do whatever.” Both parents stress, and the older children are beginning to understand, that a prayer life involves being charitable to one another. “They understand,” Matt says, “that there is such a thing as sin, and that we need God’s mercy and need to stay close to Him and the Blessed Virgin Mary.”
Every evening after dinner, Matt and Sarah will gather with Patrick, 8; twins Peter and Michael, 5; Helen, 2, and six-month old Danny. The children find their parents’ laps and prepare for quiet time and the offering up of everyone’s daily work.
“We’ve gotten a little more disciplined as the kids are able to understand,” Matt says.
“But,” Sarah smiles, “don’t expect to see everyone kneeling in silence with eyes closed and hands folded.”
The family prays the Rosary, and they pray for the seminarians of the Diocese of Raleigh by name. The boys know all the names, and they have met some of the seminarians personally. Sara’s brother is in the seminary for the Diocese of Charleston, so the Jameses are particularly aware of the importance of vocations to the priesthood.
Each child has a special day, when he or she leads grace before and after meals. “They say it aloud,” Matt explains, “and they know that when they pray aloud they are leading us, so they need to say it well.” In the prayer after meals they also pray for the dead. Fr. James Dull, the recently deceased Parochial Vicar of their parish, St. Catherine of Siena, continues to be a part of their prayers.
This year the family has added a short examination of conscience and Act of Contrition to their evening routine.
“Prayer gives us some structure and routine,” Sarah says. “It helps get us through the day. And we want the kids to understand that every part of the day should be offered in prayer.”
Last Lent the Jameses joined extended family – add seven more children -- and tried to do the Stations of the Cross at St. Catherine. “We decided that would work a little better at home,” Sarah smiles. “And it does. We’ll hang up pictures so the kids can focus, and pray the Stations that way.”
During Lent the children are also encouraged to do small sacrifices, which they write down on purple pieces of paper and have present during prayer.
“The bottom line,” Matt says, “is to help the children be aware that they are sons and daughters of God.”
Perhaps, for all Catholics, examining, remembering and nurturing that relationship is the most important goal of the prayer, fasting and almsgiving to which we are called during the sacred season of Lent.