Babble: some remedies

The student brethren of our province are running a great series on popular piety over at their blog, Godzdogz.

I particularly like this from the post of 22 January 2014:

“When you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words” (Matthew 6:7). 

[...] In moments when we can’t find words for ourselves (yes, even garrulous Dominicans find this happens sometimes!), we make our own these well-worn words [prayers like novenas and litanies] —with their repeated invocations and responses, tested in the crucible of centuries of Christian witness and endorsed by the Church. We insert ourselves into the community of saints whose names we invoke to pray with us and for us; we recognise that there are others who will say ‘amen’ to our prayers as we say ‘amen’ to theirs. So whilst I have to admit that there are times when I’ve neglected these traditional devotions—and it is certainly important to develop our friendship with Christ through mental prayer—it might be worth me pondering whether I’m more likely to babble like a pagan in my own extemporaneous prayers, or when I turn to these prayers recognised by the Church as a gift of Our Lord. 

Oh, yes, some days, I can babble like a pagan. Other days, I am reduced to a kind of mental silence. Well, no, not silence. Mental silence means you're dead. Dumbness, maybe? With inchoate mental rumblings signifying such a lot that I cannot pin down let alone find words for: needs, yearnings, certainty, doubt. No, definitely not silence! Cacophony.

But prayer is a two-way thing. It's not just me - Christ is the other half of the conversation. Sometimes I need to simply be in His presence. Just be. And listen. So I stop babbling and fumbling for coherence and just cling to the foot of the Cross.

But if I must have words in which to address the Lord, as we all do, and cannot find my own, I reach for the the old prayers and particularly the hymns I remember from childhood. And the Divine Office. In the Prayer of the Church, so many souls around the world are praying the same words alongside me, words provided to me by patriarchs and prophets and preachers of the Word, the great communion that is the Church through the ages. And we join the wonderful Communion of Saints, souls gone before us now enjoying eternal bliss in the vast love of the Almighty. All these people come to my rescue. When I cannot, they can!

And of course I run to Mother, 'The Lady of the house' as my old teacher used to call her. I grab my Rosary. 'If you really want a chap to do something for you,' she'd tell us, 'get his mother to ask him for you.' Well, it worked in Cana.

Above all, it comforts me to remember that 'the Spirit prays within me'. All that is needed is for me to plead my great need for His Grace, and He comes. I don't always feel it, but I do believe it, with all my heart. Deo gratias.