Fr. Mike Schmitz: 2 Last Tips for Praying
(View segment from 4:22 to 8:11)
What does Fr. Mike teach us to be careful about when we are choosing 'what' to pray?
- Don’t try to do too much in prayer.
- When you do pick what or how you will pray, stick with it for a ‘season,’ a period of time where you commit to pray in a certain way.
Can you see a similarity between keeping a prayer practice for a 'season' and the participants of the eye experiment being asked to keep looking for 1 minute?
- In the eye experiment, the people had to focus in order to keep looking at each other for a period of time.
- In prayer, we need to keep communicating with God in a particular way for a period of time.
- Keeping consistent with a way of praying, allows us to focus on our communion with God, instead of on how we are communicating with Him.
- This is similar to the way a person with glasses needs to focus on looking through his glasses, instead of looking at his glasses.
Why is the 4th tip about 'Why we pray' the most important?
- Because we need to keep the goal of prayer in mind, so that we get out of prayer what God intends most for us.
- Sure, God wants to give us consolations and answer our prayers. But most of all, He wants us to have a living, loving relationship with Him.
- That intimate, loving relationship with Him is the only thing that will ever satisfy us.