Why I Still Pray to Mary (and Other Saints)

It is no secret for readers of this blog that I am currently going through a painful and disconcerting discernment process of whether to stay with the Roman Catholic Church or join the Anglican Church.

This does not mean, however, that I don't have any spiritual practices that are considered "Catholic". Quite the opposite: I still find a lot of nourishment from many Catholic practices, from Eucharistic Benediction to prayers to the Saints.

Why Pray to the Virgin Mary When You Can Go Straight To Jesus?

I get asked this question a lot from my protestant brothers and sisters. At face value, this question makes a lot of sense. Why bother to go through an indirect route when you can have direct access to the Master?

This question, however, ignores the fact that prayer is also a communal practice, not just an individual practice between you and God.

The same question can be asked to the protestant who asks his or her friends to pray for a specially difficult or troubling circumstance. We see this practice as something natural. Indeed, many of us encourage this practice.

Individual prayer is powerful, but there is something amazingly powerful when a community gathers around and are united in prayer.

Our faith is not born and nourished in a bubble but it was taught to us in community. This community has a direct and spiritual connection to that great cloud of witnesses that goes back to the Apostles.

I just happen to believe that Mary and all the Saints are active members of my community, and that they are participants of the new life in Christ, since God is a God of the living and not of the dead.

When I pray to Mary, or to any saint for that matter, I am declaring that I'm also part of this greater community whose faith I inherited, and in doing so, I am asking them for prayers on my behalf.

I Also Pray to Mary When I Need Counsel & Comfort

Don't get me wrong, I also pray to Jesus and receive from Him counsel and comfort.

There are moments, however, when I pray to God and I feel dry. There are moments where I feel God is distant in my prayers. There are moments when prayer is not passionate and pious, but dry and monotonous.

We all have experienced this desert. We all have gone through this dark night of the soul.

I recently went through a brief period of dryness in my prayer life with God. I prayed and felt no connection. At some point I felt helpless and alone. I even felt like God was rejecting me.

At one point I got the sense that I should pray to Mary, asking for her counsel and comfort.

I did, and I felt this powerful and moving connection with her. I told her all my struggles. I told her to please pray for me. Immediately, this sense of darkness left me. I felt comforted by her. I felt the assurances of her prayers.

I understand this might be scandalizing to some of you, but I see it no different than going to a close friend during troubling and dry periods of faith, and receiving counsel and comfort from them.

I Encourage you to Try It!

I am not asking you to worship Mary or the Saints, but just ask for their intercessions! This is an ancient practice that can be traced back to the Early Church Fathers, and it is one that nourished me and even gotten me through some dry periods in my spirituality.

Holy Mother of God, pray for us, now and at the hour of our death! Amen.

So, Just How Important Prayer Really Is?

"Evening and morning and at noon, I will complain and murmur, And He will hear my voice." Psalm 55:17.

"Now when Daniel knew that the document was signed, he entered his house (now in his roof chamber he had windows open toward Jerusalem); and he continued kneeling on his knees three times a day, praying and giving thanks before his God, as he had been doing previously." Daniel 6:10.

So I'm really busy lately.

I have a part time job as an interfaith organizer for a non-profit. I love my job, but on most days I leave the office mentally exhausted.

On top of that I'm also part of an ecumenical missionary order where we do ministry among the immigrant population in Oakland.

Add to that wedding planning and you have a recipe for near burnout.

Unfortunately, my predicament is hardly unusual. In a culture that values productivity and achievements, most of us are probably overworked.

And then you want me to pray? Who has time to pray in a schedule like this?

That worked for people like Jesus and His disciples. And those monks who have nothing to do but pray and get a tonsure.

So just how important prayer really is?

I've been slowly convicted of the importance of prayer, especially during seasons where I divulged into undisciplined prayer. After this period of neglect and dryness, I would usually restart my prayer life, only to fall back again into a sparse prayer life once again.

I believe my undisciplined prayer life came from a lack of conviction of the importance of prayer. But before we go there, why is prayer so important anyways?

Relationship. It's all about relationships.

Christianity, in a way, is a right relationship to God and to others. We are connected to God through our work  of peace and justice and righteousness towards others, but also through a basic way of connecting to others and the Great Other: communication.

Take out communication and a relationship is severely damaged.

This relationship between us and God is described as a covenant, the culmination of which is a wedding feast. Can a marriage survive without communication? Can friendship thrive without contact and communication?

Communication is therefore, the bedrock of relationships. 

So, I also love eating. I mean, honestly, who doesn't? It's not like we ago around hearing people complain about how "we always have to eat and stuff".

So I eat. Three times a day. Most of us do the same, busy or not. 

My point here is not to go around making you feel guilty about putting up excuses for not having enough time to pray, and yet how we still have time to eat. I struggle with the same, so I hope I'm not coming across like a fanatic who makes Westboro's Baptists cringe.

My point simply is this: if we consider prayer vital, we would have no other option than to make time for it.

Not there yet? No worries, neither am I. My only hope is to inspire us to get there!

So for 2015 I have been trying to get there. First, I am trying (emphasis on the word trying) to get up early to set aside time for morning prayer and study. I have been more or less successful in this. The benefits for this are so great that I have decided to add more times of prayer.

It has always been my desire to have scheduled time for prayers. I'd love to be able to stop and practice morning prayer, midday prayer, and evening prayer.

The three times a day prayer has been a staple not only from early Christianity, but for Jews, as evidenced by the passages at the beginning of this post from King David and Daniel. In fact, this is still a daily practice of many Jews nowadays.

I feel God is calling me to lead this prayer life, and to make it a point that such life is possible, in the midst of the crazy business of life with family and all. No need to isolate from the world and into monasteries. 

This sounds really like an impossibility, but I'm determined to prove that is not. 

I have been practicing praying three times a day, using the Liturgy of the Hours, for this past week. It hasn't been easy.

Sometimes I have to pray evening prayer on crowded buses, while there is a lot of noise that can distract me.

Sometimes I have to leave my food to cool off for a while before I finish my midday prayer.

I have been using different liturgies as well. Sometimes I do a Celtic morning prayer, then use the midday prayer from the Common Prayer book, and finish with Vespers using the Catholic Breviary.

It is difficult, but I love it.

And honestly, relationships are difficult. It is probably the most difficult thing we are called to do.

And honestly, relationship with God is the one that is easiest for me to set aside, because I know how patient and merciful He is, and He will not simply smite me because I failed to pray one day. I know He is there, the great Initiator, calling me, always glad to receive me without punishment.

I take advantage of His grace, mercy, and love.

As I write this, it breaks my heart to admit it. I have taken advantage of His grace, mercy and love, and failed to give Him the attention and time He desires from me. This loving Father yearns to be with me, and I ignore Him today because I know He will be there tomorrow.

How could I have ignored you for so long, Love of loves? How many days did You patiently wait for me to return and how little regard you had for Your Majesty as you ran to receive me?

It breaks my heart. You never shunned me for being away. You never said "How dare you ignore me?!" All You did was receive me as if I had never failed. All You did was console me and dried the tears that this hurting world left me.

Oh dear Lord, may we never fail to ignore You!

Do you struggle to find time for prayer? If you have a family with kids, how do you find the time to pray? What are the ways you have managed to find more time with God?

Why I Love Liturgy (And Why you Should Explore it Too)

I'll be honest, when I was a little kid I hated anything that smelled liturgical. The same automated responses, the dullness of just going through the motions, and the never ending prayers that repeat themselves ad infinitum (dear Rosary, I'm looking at you).

It is kind of funny that I "ended up" here, getting all excited about prayer and the Divine Hour and stuff. Not only that, but now that I have given myself permission to explore and learn from different Christian traditions I'm totally geeking out with different liturgies.

So what the heck is wrong with me? How did this magical transformation took place? How did a self-described enthusiast and charismatic fell so madly in love with liturgy?

It's not like after my conversion all the sudden I enjoyed all this stuff. It was a slow process, one that took almost a decade after my decision to follow Jesus.

At first I was all into the charismatic movement, all dancing and crying and clapping and lifting my hands up kinda stuff. The music was loud and overtly emotional. I loved it.

Slowly, however, after having too many overwhelming emotions at services, your body and spirit needs a break. Yeah, I love Jesus, but I don't need to cry about it every Sunday to show it.

And then I took theology classes in a local Catholic church. They required all students to pray morning prayer before classes started.

I bought the Liturgy of the Hours prayer book and started praying every morning.

Slowly, its beauty started to reveal itself to me. I felt a sense of peace. The slow and contemplative rhythm of ancient prayer life started to take its effect on me.

Like many good things in life, liturgy is an acquired taste, but once your spiritual taste buds get used to it you will find deep wells of contemplation.

I see Liturgy as poetry. The rhythms required of it, the perfect balance of praying the psalms, antiphons and intercessions is an art in itself.

Poetry, unlike some prose, it's not something you can swallow like a burrito in one sitting, but it is something appreciated and savoured slowly, like a carefully crafted, multi-course meal. You ponder over each words (or bite) and begin to appreciate the intricacies and beauty of it.

Liturgy is prayer made art. It is our collective praise poem to God, where we gather to make something beautiful in honor of God.

Liturgy also connects us with the wider body of Christ. This is hard to describe, but after a while you start to feel connected with all the people praying the same prayers you are, in different tongues and on different parts of the world.

Liturgy is hugely helpful when words fails us. There are times in life where prayer doesn't come easy. Words won't just come out. Sometimes we need to ride an ancient wave and rest in its old wisdom.

Liturgy also brings us together in worship, where its prescribed nature levels the field among participants, and all, the shy and the exuberant, get to pray equally.

So if you feel that there is something missing in your prayer life I invite you to try it out! Thanks to the Internet, this is easier than ever. You no longer need to go to a book store, get intimidatingly big prayer books with 10 ribbon markers, and cry after 2 hours of figuring out how to pray like monks.

There are different liturgies available online, for free, where you can get your monk on.

Everything is set up for you in a linear way, so you don't have to figure out where the psalms for today are in the psalter, the appropriate antiphons for ordinary time vs. lent and a bunch of other stuff that monks and clergy learn to maneuver out of sheer necessity.

For heaven's sake there are even apps for it!

So here are my favorite liturgies you can get online and for free. Some of these websites have apps you can download, but not all of the apps are for free! I just access them through my web browser on my phone if the app is not free.

Divine Office: http://divineoffice.org/

Here you can get all the prayers for the liturgy of the hours that is used in the Catholic Church. There is an audio version of it, where you can follow along with the text.

Mission St. Clare: http://www.missionstclare.com/english/

This is more from the Episcopal/Anglican tradition, and it uses the Book of Common Prayer. They have hymns already recorded, which is a huge plus! The prayers are a little bit longer though, so only pray if you have the time for it. If not, then I recommend you make time for it!

Common Prayer: http://commonprayer.net/

This is my current favorite. It mixes different Christian traditions, and it has a slight social justice twist to it!

Northumbria Community: http://www.northumbriacommunity.org/offices/how-to-use-daily-office/

If you are more into the Celtic tradition, then this one might work for you!

That's it for now. Do you have other liturgies not listed here that you enjoy? What is your favorite way of praying?