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Rote prayer gets a bad rap. We are given to believe that there is nothing so bad as saying a fifth Hail Mary in a row without quite having a heart overflowing with devotion, when one might instead be — say — making a common duty into a prayer, exploring a traditional meditation, or some such thing. And why not? ‘Words without thoughts never to heaven go,’ as that, ah, devout king says in a certain theatrical production. It’s useless praying away, multiplying words with an empty heart, thinking that a few more times through a long and ornate paragraph that even we aren’t paying attention to will act an incantation, winning us God’s favor and with it, maybe, a nice run of luck.
But is that all there is to it? The image of the devout ancient filipina tearing through rosary 8 or 17 before cutting ahead of you for communion, or the cruel eyed unreconstructed monk scrupulously reading his office while living a pharisaical and joyless vocation? I hardly think so.
Most of us aren’t quite living lives to the point of parody. We have ordinary concerns and typical failures, and in fact our lives are so humdrum — our spiritual lives, at least — that it surely does sound good, this tossing off of all that dull praying for something a little edgier, a little more fun. Something that will set us apart — not something hokey like centering prayer, mind you, but at least a little St. John of the Cross, a kind of praying suited for sophisticated spiritual people like us. And of course, true union with God is never humdrum, and when (if!) we become saints, we may well expect our prayers to burn our tongues with a charity hot as jalapenos. In the meantime, though, is it really so bad, saying day seven of a lengthy novena for a sick friend, even though we’re tired and having trouble reading the words blurred by sleepy eyes? In fact, for many of us, I would contend this sort of devotion is the heart of what we must do to teach our souls to trust God.
What is the first command God always made of His people in the old Testament? To sacrifice. To take a perfectly good animal — the best, in fact — that could be food, milk, hide, and money, and burn it up. A sacrificed animal was utterly destroyed, and it took a long time to build the altar of sacrifice too — time that could have been usefully spent, I don’t know, gutting a Philistine or at least composing a psalm. But God wanted sacrifice first, and even though they were accounted useless once they got routine, or if they were done with a wicked or impassive heart, He didn’t revoke their necessity until, of course, He Himself died in sacrifice.
We don’t have to burn our animals anymore, but what is sometimes forgotten, I think, in all this otherwise very good and fruitful talk about sanctifying work and making the Liturgy meaningful and prayerful and what not is that prayer is our sacrifice. To be close to God, to show that we trust Him, part of what we do is take a chunk of time each day and try to pray in it. We shouldn’t be doing this because it feels good, or because we learn new things, or even for emotional satisfaction — at least, not primarily. We should be doing it because God gave us everything, our lives and minds and world, and — like the Hebrew bull-burners of old — part of how we remind ourselves of that fact is by “wasting” a bit of it by giving it back to God in a way that only God can receive: by rendering it useless to any Earthly purpose. And that can be done any time, and in most states of mind. Time given to God is always good and graceful for us, even when we waste it and don’t really pay as close attention as we ought, so long as we’re giving up our own wills and doing some ridiculous thing — like kneeling uncomfortably in an ugly chapel or reading those long ornate passages that we can’t really get emotionally moved by — because it helps us to sanctify that space of time, to give it up to God.
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
Ambrosius, a couple of things came to mind as I read your excellent post.
First, that all religions have taught and encouraged the repitition of rote prayer as a means of entering into a relationship with the divine. Buddhists and Moslems have their prayer beads even as we have our rosaries and chotkis. This form of prayer is common and well practiced because of its simplicity. How often do we, when all else fails, pick up the beads and reach out to God? In the midst of anguish and turmoil we turn to the beads not only for our Mother’s help, but also precisely because it takes no thought, no book, no ceremony. Whether it is the Rosary or the Jesus Prayer, (or any other) the rote prayers we say become more and more a part of our very being. They enter deeply into our hearts and souls.
To illustrate: A man was standing on a bridge preparing to jump. In his pain and agitation he couldn’t think, couldn’t talk. The police on the scene called a priest, for the man himself was a priest. He began to repeat over and over “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death. Amen.” After a while he climbed back over the railing to safety. Later when asked by the priest what he had been saying he said, “I could think of nothing. No words would come. Then I saw the rosary in your hand and all I could do was repeat over and over ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners.’ And Mary gave me the courage to live.” His rote prayer saved him.
The other thought that came to mind is that we feel as though we have to be constantly engaged in prayer, that our minds must be on the prayers. This is the ideal, but it’s a rare grace to accomplish this. What is important, as St. Alphonsus tells us, is that we set aside the time to pray and are faithful to it. We designate the time as God’s time and offer it as a sacrifice to Him. Sometimes it will be full of insights and consolations. Other times it will seem as though all we did was realize we were distracted and turn our thoughts again to God. As long as we offer the time to God and return our minds to Him when we realize we are discracted then our prayer is fruitful. Why? Because we were faithful, we offered it all to God, and we did our best. And we know we did our best if we keep returning to God when we realize we are distracted.
All the saints prayed with rote prayers. Many also rose to the prayer of union. But they didn’t abandon rote prayers. It was only with the reformation that this way of praying was equated with hypocracy. Clearly the protestant reformers did not understand that Jesus, as a Jew, was a rote pray-er. Let us never abandon this form of prayer which is good for the body as well as the soul, for it calms and relaxes us and disposes us to the Holy Ghost.
The other issue, of course, as both of you have touched on, is the way in which these rote prayers place us within the community of saints. Not that we ourselves are saints, but how can we not be doing something graceful (as Ambrosius so aptly put it) when that same Ave that drops thuddingly off our flawed lips flowed like honey off the lips of St. Thomas and St. Francis, etc. etc.
Like the liturgy itself these prayers our our birthright in the new birth in Christ. This neo-Protestant post-conciliar focus on engagement or “Pentecostalism” is pure self-deception.