September 17, 2013 – Catechism 2650 – 2662

I see the words “learning to pray” and it is in a section about the Holy Spirit is “living water” that we must drink. It made me think about whether we have to learn to drink or whether we just “know” and whether we can say the same for prayer. I think most children are born with the knowledge of how to nurse. Noah was good at it from the beginning. But Paul was not and for 2 months we really struggled with finding a way for him to get it figured out. I think there are many that feel prayer should almost always be impromptu and spontaneous and that it will come natural to anyone. But I don’t think that is the case. I think you have to learn to love the rosary, the liturgy of the hours, the Mass. These are all prayers that are learned.

As our boys get older, they move from nursing to sippy cups to straws to regular cups and someday glass cups. The same with prayer. The prayer you say as a 2 year old is not sufficient for a 10 year old, is not sufficient for a 20 year old and is not sufficient for 30 year old. We must learn to grow in prayer as we grow. I think when you look at prayer as “drinking” the living water of the Holy Spirit, that metaphor follows that we must learn to drink in different ways as we grow, so we must learn to pray in new and more mature ways as we grow.

I think the formal prayers of the Catholic Church are frowned upon, but when you dig into them and see how beautiful they are and how they have been developed over history and time, you see how arrogant a person would be to dismiss them as not necessary. It is the same arrogance we see from those that feel they can interpret the Bible better than any other person that has ever read it over the last 2000 years. The same arrogance that leads to a person starting their own church leads to a person saying the only form of prayer they need is what they can come up with on their own. I don’t discount that personal prayer is important, but it does take a maturity and a humility to pray formal prayers and allow God to work through these words.