After writing about doubts recently, I came to think of a related problem concerning prayer. What if you don’t feel like praying? I found this quotation from Thomas Merton that deals with the question.

“If we really do not feel like praying, it seems at least more honest to recognize that fact before God than to assure Him that we are burning up with fervor. If we admit the truth, we start out on a basis of humility, recognize the need for effort and perhaps we will be rewarded with a little of the grace of compunction, which is the most precious of all helps in mental or any other kind of prayer. Compunction is simply an awareness of our indigence and coldness and of our need for God. It implies faith, sorrow, humility and above all hope in the mercy of God.”*

To echo what I wrote about Doubs, people are sometimes made to feel guilty if they don’t always feel like praying. That’s wrong. People feel what they feel. It’s not what we feel, but what we do that matters. So, Merton encourages us to pray even when we don’t feel like it, but to pray honestly. “Lord, I don’t feel like praying right now.” It is an honest and humble prayer, and maybe it’s a better prayer than wordy professions that we don’t really mean.

Just pray no matter how you feel.

Read Matthew 6:5-6 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne

*Spiritual Direction and Meditation, pp. 80-81