My 'Prayer-Jihad': A Crash Course in Prayer

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

“It is not particularly difficult to find thousands who will spend two or three hours a day in exercising, but if you ask them to bend their knees to God in five minutes of prayer they protest that it is too long.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (The Seven Capital Sins)

I wonder if being restless and making myself stay put and be still for an hour would be considered "agonizing in prayer"?  It's not that I don't want to pray!  But I don't always know what I'm doing and sometimes I agonize about that.  

When I stay for an hour, I agonize about whether I am praying in a way that is effective - I don't usually hear anything, even after I have let my thoughts finally settle down.  I am just grateful to be in G-d's presence, but I am not sure if my prayers are piercing heaven.  I literally get face down on the floor, then on my knees, then on the chair, then back on my knees, and I'm all over the place.  Even when I'm sitting still, my thoughts are bouncing off the walls like ping pong balls.  And to add to the effect, there is a camera in the chapel for security, so you always feel you are being "watched."

I pray the L-rd's Prayer, the rosary, the Jesus prayer, the Psalms, some scriptures, the Tabernacle prayer, and about the things that concern me, like what's going on in the world, or with people, or my life.  I write in my prayer journal.  I go around and pray the Stations of the Cross.  I sit in the back of the chapel, I sit in the front of the chapel.  I sit in the middle or on the side at the altar and under the portrait of the L-rd during his own prayer-jihad in the Garden of Gethsemane.  

I sit in front of the Tabernacle.  I even bring my small pillow and a blanket to camp out, or sit huddled through the storm in the middle of the night, imagining what it was like to be inside Noah's Ark.  I wrap my fingers around the tzitzit of a tallit.  I mostly want to get closer to G-d and learn to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.  I am restless and tired of my own thoughts until He comes!  

I especially like to walk and pray.  I hear others pray and they sound like true prayer warriors.  But I have no idea how to get there.  I want to be able to pray like the desert fathers and mothers who stayed in their cell for days, weeks, months, and went on long prayer walks in the desert.  Please L-rd, teach me to pray.  

I can say arrow prayers, I can say scripture prayers, I can read and pray the prayers of others, the prayers of the Agpeya.  I can be violently silent, but I haven’t been broken and truly and deeply effected in my prayers.  

Where are my tears for my condition, for man’s condition apart from G-d?  Where is my grief for the lost and those who are hurting and suffering, even though I care?  Why is my heart so cold and distant?  Where’s the fire?

I have a hunger and a thirst for G-d, and I am so grateful to have that.  I seek to humble myself under the hand of G-d, but where is the weeping and howling of St. Jakov/James?  Where is the red hot prayer of the righteous man Elijah?  Where are the wakeful prayers of Abouna (Father) Anthony (the Great), or the watchful prayers of Pope Shenouda III?  Or the confident, patient prayers of Abouna Andrew, my own priest?

I don’t want to live by bread alone, the things of this life, but by every word that proceeds from G-d's mouth!  Maybe this is how He learned to count the stars and know them all by name, by spending many hours in prayer, counting the stars with our names like His prayer beads.   The scriptures say that He ever lives to intercede for us in Heaven.

So if He is praying and I am praying, something should connect, which requires the Holy Spirit.

Please pray that G-d will grant me grace to grow in humility, in sorrow, in passion, in watchfulness, in wakefulness, and in the patience and persistence of effective prayer.  For now, all I have are beautiful examples, words on a page, and a heart that is willing.  Being willing is not enough, we must do.  

This is my prayer struggle, my jihad of prayer, and I am the only infidel.