This content has been archived. It may no longer be relevant
When I pondered this topic, prayer, the one word that came to me was “confidence.” You should have absolute confidence in your prayer.
Maybe you could spend more time on it. Maybe there’s room for improvement. Maybe you don’t pray as often as you should. But basically, when you pray, your prayer is prayer.
You should have confidence in that. There’s nothing wrong with prayer. It can get better, perhaps, but there is nothing wrong with it.
You don’t have to apologize for praying or for the way you pray, or set yourself up some way to make your prayer acceptable. Your prayer is acceptable because it is prayer.
This seems perhaps a simple thing or even a stupid thing to say, but it was a kind of minor revelation to me to recognize that, to feel that truth. It doesn’t need any justification other than itself. It’s good and God hears it.
If it’s prayer, he hears it, answers it, responds to it.
Excerpted from a talk at the meeting of the Madonna House associate priests, October 21, 1976.
