Lex Orendi Lex Credendi

THE LAW OF PRAYER is the law of belief.

The wisdom of prayer is found in the conviction not in our ability to ask but in the ability of the Divine Giver to provide. We must believe in the Giver and believe joyously for the Giver and His
Goodness is real and at all times able to respond. Most of the time in prayer, one does not know what to ask or what to say. It is in those times we should just plainly and simply and quietly believe in the Giver and His goodness being thankful for the opportunity to quietly appreciate His gift of Himself. So many times in prayer, the presence of God and the reality of His most intimate Truth is always reward enough that to ask for anything more seem naturally redundant and unnecessary. Therefore, believe when you ask in prayer that what you ask shall be provided for you trusting in the obedience of your faith in the love, mercy and loving-kindness of the Divine Giver Whose beneficent generosity is a mark of the greatness of His giving and you shall always be happy with what you get because what you always get is the Giver above His gifts.

It is never futile to practice how to pray knowing that God is God and man is man and so one is more or less always a beginner at prayer. But prayer without faith is futile and prayer that believes in the power of its own self is sinful, it is not prayer, it is pride. God knows when and how to deliver us. God reveals Himself in prayer as an answer to those who love Him by degrees that He has become for them their All and their Everything and to themselves in relation to Him, an utter nothing, and is joyously and willingly and thankfully content to being an utter nothing forever, knowing that this is but the way things ought to be, casting out everything and anything that can be cast out in the face of an infinitely lovable God.

So when one of our blessed confessors gives us a regimen of vocal prayers to say as our penance after confession, we should never again think of it - or any other good things of the faith - so ordinary as to overlook what is truly extraordinary in the quite ordinary things we do when it is touched by the invisible and enduring reality of the grace of our Lord.

Peace and Godspeed!