Sr. Wendy Beckett - Artist and Spiritual Guide

The following is taken from Sister Wendy Beckett's book "Sister Wendy Beckett on Prayer"

Do you want to pray?

One year- I forget the details- the Lenten sermons at St Patrick’s in New York were given by a famous Jesuit who took prayer for his theme. He was much admired, but the compliment that stuck in his memory was that of an old priest who seemed to regard the very number and length of his sermons as constituting, per se, a sort of brilliant tour de force. ‘Because as you know, Father’, he said, (dropping his voice conspiratorially) ‘prayer’s the simplest thing out.’ I hope the famous Jesuit did know, because the simplicity of prayer, its sheer, terrifying uncomplicatedness, seems to be the last thing most of us either know or want to know.

We can do anything except actually praying

It is not difficult to intellectualise about prayer. Like love, beauty and motherhood, it quickly sets out eloquence aflow. It is not difficult, but it is perfectly futile. In fact, those glowing pages on prayer are worse than futile; they can be positively harmful. Writing about prayer, reading about prayer, talking about prayer, thinking about prayer, longing for prayer and wrapping myself more and more in these great cloudy sublimities that make me feel so aware of the spiritual: anything rather than actually praying. What am I doing but erecting a screen behind which I can safely maintain my self esteem and hide away from God?

What do you really want?

Ask yourself: what do I really want when I pray? Do you want to be possessed by God? Or, to put it the same question more honestly, do you want to want it? Then you have it. The one point Jesus stressed and repeated and brought up again is that, ‘Whatever you ask the Father, He will grant it to you.’ His insistence on faith and perseverance are surely other ways of saying the same thing: you must really want it, it must engross you. Wants that are passing, faint emotional desires that you do not press with burning conviction, these are things you do not ask ‘in Jesus’ name’; how could you? But what you really want, ‘with all your heart and soul and mind and strength’, that Jesus pledges himself to see that you are granted.

He is not talking only, probably not even primarily, of ‘prayer of petition’, but of prayer. When you set yourself down to pray, what do you want? If you want God to take possession of you, then you are praying. That is all prayer is.

God wants to love us and give us God's self

The astonishing thing about prayer is our inability to accept that if we have need of it, as we do, then because of God’s goodness, it cannot be something that is difficult. Accept that God is good and that your relationship with Him is prayer and you must conclude that prayer is an act of the utmost simplicity. Yet so many people seem to feel that there is some mysterious method, some way in that others know, but they do not. ‘Knock and it shall be opened to you’: they seem to believe that it needs some sort of Masonic knock and their own humble tapping will go unnoticed. What kind of God thinks of tricks, lays down arcane rules, makes things difficult? God wants to love us and to give us Himself. He wants to draw us to himself, strengthen us, and infuse His peace. The humblest, most modest, almost imperceptible rubbing of our fingers on the door, and it flies open.

Nothing more to say

Prayer is the last thing we should feel discouraged about. It concerns nobody except God- always longing only to give Himself to us in love- and my own decision. And that too is God’s, ‘who works in us to will and to effect’. In a very true sense there is nothing more to say about prayer, ‘the simplest thing out.’

Questions for Reflection

What does the prayer mean for me?

Who is God for me?

What does God see, when God is looking at me?

Does anything I have read above resonate with me and my experience of prayer?

Margaret Silf - Come to rest in God

The following is an extract from Margaret Silf's book TASTE and SEE: Adventuring into Prayer

Prayer is God’s initiative, not our achievement. It is about listening, more than about talking. Prayer is more about receiving, more than about asking for. It is about coming to rest in the direction of God.

St Teresa of Avila and Prayer

St Teresa compared prayer in a person’s life to watering a garden. Just as there are many methods of watering a garden, there were many forms of prayer. As a child she liked to pray the rosary, which she was taught by her mother. As a young person she found that vocal or saying prayers helped her to focus her attention on God.

She often found later in life that to begin reading a book helped her to focus her attention on God. She loved nature and she found that contemplation on any one of the beautiful things of nature helped her to focus on the power and the grandeur of God. She read the lives of the saints and had a particular devotion to Mary Magdalene, Martha and Mary, and Joseph.

The Catechism - Prayer

Catechism ; No.2559

‘Prayer is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God.’ But when we pray, do we speak from the height of our pride and will, or ‘out of the depths’ of a humble and contrite heart… Only when we humbly acknowledge that ‘we do not know how to pray as we ought’ are we ready to receive the gift of prayer’.

Be Still in Prayer

The following is an extract from "God in all Things" the sequel to "God of Surprises", by Gerald Hughes SJ

No one is able to pray! Prayer is a surrender of our whole being to God, so that God may be the God of mercy and compassion to us and through us. Too much conscious effort can kill prayer! Prayer is about letting the Spirit of God pray in us. The Spirit who lived in Jesus, and raised him from the dead, now lives in us.


Prayer is about being still, so that we can become more perceptive and more responsive to God. In prayer ‘Heart speaks to heart.’ God, who is love, speaks to us, and we speak from the heart to God. Our prayer does not have to be articulate, well phrased or eloquent, but it must be sincere, honest and without pretence. Prayer may be groans and grumbles; it may be ‘ahs and ‘ohs’, or it may be wordless; but it must be ‘me’. Each person is unique in the sight of God and for this reason there can be no single way of praying. The simper the prayer, the more honest and heartfelt, the better it will be. The Psalmist tells us to ‘Be still, and know that I am God’ (Psalm 46:10)

Stillness is important in prayer so that we can become more aware and sensitive to the promptings of God within us. The English cartoonist Calum specialised in God cartoons. God was usually portrayed as a tubby figure, resting on a cloud, his head haloed, hands joined on his large tummy. He would be looking down on earth and commenting on what he saw and heard. In one cartoon God is observing choirs down below singing hymns of praise and he remarks: “I’ve had a fair amount of adulation in my day’” During Church services I often imagine Calum’s God addressing the congregation and saying, ‘ For heaven’s sake, shut up and stop trying so hard; be quiet and listen for a change’!

To what kind of God do we pray? Our idea of God is derived from our life experience. For those of us who are brought up with an awareness of God, this usually means that the idea comes first from our parents, then from siblings, teachers and preachers. We tend to create a God in our own image and likeness, or in that of our Church or our nation. We can therefore have some very fearsome images of God! In this way we have managed for centuries to justify killing one another, each side in war claiming to be fighting ‘Pro Deo et Patria’- ‘For God and Country’. This same habit of creating God in our own image and likeness has also enabled us to foster suspicion and hatred against people of other faiths or of none, and against Christians of different denominations. We convince ourselves that we are being loyal servants of God in attacking God’s ‘enemies’ and suspecting the worst in them.

We need to be still in prayer, so that God can teach us who God is, as distinct from us teaching God how God ought to be! It is good to begin every prayer with, at least, a short period of stillness, even if only, for a few seconds.

Week 2: Eileen O'Brien - On Prayer

What is Prayer?

Prayer is personal to each one of us. If we were to ask ourselves what prayer means to us, I suspect we would come up with a definition that was different from everyone else. This I believe is a good thing. Below are what some people have said or written about prayer. I offer it here in order to stimulate our thinking about what prayer means to us.

Jesus Christ

“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do for they think that they will be heard for their empty words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Pray then in this way:
Our Father in heaven,
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily
bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our
debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.” (Matthew 6:5-14)

Friars Walk - St Mary's Priory, Tallaght

photo: Joe Cullen