Prayer draws people into conversation, friendship with God

“For little kids, I would say it is lift­ing your mind and your heart to God,” said Redemptorist Father Paul Coury, former director of the Redemptorist Renewal Center in Tucson.
“You pray to God. You have rote prayers and you pray. I did that for most of my life. Then when I entered seminary, I still did them.
“We went from shrine to shrine at night,” he recalled. “We prayed to Mary. We prayed to (Redemptorist Founder) St. Alphonsus Liguori. We prayed to Jesus. We prayed to God.”
“People hold on to their traditional prayers because they feel so comfort­ing,” he said.
Is that all there is to prayer?
“Jesus says in the Gospel ‘I call you “friends” now, you are my friends,’” Father Coury added. “There has to be a point where you move to a higher consciousness.”
Having a “friendship” with Jesus moves prayer to a different level, he said. “St. Theresa of the Little Flower said that prayer is having a conversa­tion with God who is your friend. Jesus is your friend. It’s experiencing the presence of God, the presence of Jesus in your life. How do you experience that? Where is it?”
That higher level, or more intimate conversation with God, is contempla­tive prayer, Father Coury said. It can take people down paths, literally and figuratively.
Rote prayer – into which can fall sacramental, ritual and devotional prayer – also leads people down paths, but sometimes those paths lead to dead ends. “It happens when (people) realize they are walking a path and the path becomes empty and it doesn’t work anymore. They feel dry, dried up. They don’t feel like God is speaking to them anymore, like a dark night of the soul.”
“Why is God not with me?” is a common question people ask, he said. “‘Why is bad stuff happening in my life? I don’t know why. I can’t under­stand it.’”
“You try to tell them, ‘Things are passing away, but something else is be­ing born. Something else is coming up there. Something is calling for attention in your life,’” Father Coury said. “It’s a transition they need to do to (achieve) a more connected spirituality. You connect with God around you. Jesus Christ is here. His presence is here in the world you see. How do you experi­ence it?”
Many people – lay and clergy – travel to Redemptorist to find that experience.
    “I have one sister who comes here every year,” he said. “She would just sit outside and listen to the birds. (That’s how) she felt God’s presence.”
    Father Coury recalled a story told by Trappist monk Thomas Merton. “He said (that) every morning when he went out before sunrise, he would notice that the birds would be yelping, but then right at sunrise, the birds would become absolutely still. Then the sun would rise and the birds would start talking again.
    “He said that what happens there is the birds stop for a second to get their instructions from God for the day and then they share it with each other.”
    Father Coury called it “that sense of the connectedness, of being quiet, that says ‘Lord, I’m here for 10 minutes and this is your time, speak to me.’”
After 10 minutes, ask, “‘Well, did God say anything to me?’ Give God a chance to dialogue with you,” he said.
    Every person is different and God speaks to them at a different pace. “You can’t plan it,” he said. “When people come in for 10 weeks of sabbatical, usually by the time it’s over they come to a deeper place of prayer and connec­tion with God. But it happens for each of them at a different point.”
Some people find it by retreating to a quiet place in the surrounding desert, Father Coury said.
    “They will go there and sit quietly and just feel God. It becomes their place.”
“Another thing that happens is that they decide to let go,” he added. “Usu­ally when (lay people) come here, they are in a transition. They are used to having a job where people call them all the time and needed them. All of a sudden, they realize that people aren’t calling them. They are not needing them. They are not wanting them any­more. Then, what do you do? They start quietly reflecting on that. They try to get themselves connected to others.”
God also can speak to people through their dreams, Father Coury said. “Our Scripture is full of people who are dreamers. Peter said when he stood up at Pentecost, ‘God’s spirit has descended upon us’ and he repeat­ed Joel, ‘Young men will see visions and old men will dream dreams.’ You get back into that inner world of how God speaks to you on inner levels.”
Father Coury said that people have an “inner level” where God resides. However, over the course of time, “it’s been surrounded and dulled by the incessant activity of mind, always thinking about ‘I have to do this and do that.’”
“You don’t pay attention to (that desire to converse with God). You don’t have time,” he said. “You have all these layers that have squashed it in there. How do you break through those layers that have been established around this great core of spiritual wealth so that it floods out?”
Quiet listening is necessary for entering contemplative prayer, Father Coury said. Scripture “doesn’t say, ‘Come to the desert and you speak to God.’ It says, ‘Come to the desert and I will speak to your heart.’ So, the idea is let’s be quiet, open your heart and see what God has to say.”
Not everyone needs to engage in contemplative prayer, Father Coury said. “Everyone needs to find their own path. When they come to a place like this (Redemptorist Renewal Cen­ter), you try to encourage them to be on a pathless path.”
   “Just be present to how you are and ask God to come into how you are. See what God says to you.”
For instance, in “Spiritual Exercis­es,” “St. Ignatius Loyola said you read Scripture, you enter the scene, you are quiet and then you let God speak to you in the scene. Who you are in the scene and how you experience be­ing with God in the scene with Jesus, then, is how God is going to speak to you,” he said. “That means that you have to be still. Be quiet.”
    Father Coury said contemplative prayer is a matter of personal prefer­ence. “(Cistercian) Abbot (Thomas) Keating said you can’t do more than 20 minutes. ‘I’ve been at this for 66 years and it’s a struggle being quiet. Your brain is going, you have grocery lists and all this stuff.’ He said, ‘20 minutes is all I can do.’”