Trouble praying-Why?

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Why does it take 30 minutes to pray The Lord’s Prayer, scared? Are you feeling that you must feel intense love for God as you pray this wonderful prayer or your words are not going to be heard? I’ve prayed it with no feeling at all of love that I was aware of – just my own need. That’s sufficient. I think that’s why the Lord gave it to us to have and use. Just say the words when you cannot feel anything. God knows what’s in our hearts, right? So he understands.
 
It took 30 minutes because first I forgot the words, then remembered some, forgot the rest and I had to start again, then became upset and nothing would come. Finally I mumbled my way through it. I was even tempted to look it up in the hymal to make sure I had it right. I just can’t pray. I had to complete it as part of Penace, so I would have taken 2 hours because I had to do it. It is done.Regular pray is not something that I can do. I can’t even talk to God, nothing. That is why I know that I am at the end of the line.

scared
 
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scared:
It took 30 minutes because first I forgot the words, then remembered some, forgot the rest and I had to start again, then became upset and nothing would come. Finally I mumbled my way through it. I was even tempted to look it up in the hymal to make sure I had it right. I just can’t pray. I had to complete it as part of Penace, so I would have taken 2 hours because I had to do it. It is done.Regular pray is not something that I can do. I can’t even talk to God, nothing. That is why I know that I am at the end of the line.

scared
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Hello there Scared…perhaps God is calling you to a different way of praying by denying you the satisfaction you once found in prayer as you used to pray. It is not that you do not want to pray, but you cannot (pray in the way you are used to). I feel sure you would find it helpful to talk perhaps to an Order Priest, brother or sister (or here we have trained spiritual directors who are lay people. I reside in South Australia)about your difficulty and you may well discover that your difficulty is no real difficulty at all…simply asking a change of perspective and attitude from the known to the new. From the old and familiar to the new and entirely unfamiliary.
The very fact that you are posting here what you are indicates from the tone of your posts that you do want to pray but no longer know how to pray and fear that you are in some way remiss and loosing. This is not necessarily so.

In the meantime, Scared, I will endevour to go off and find some sort of spiritual work that may help you to insight that God just may be calling you to a different way of praying and explain with some clarity for you…I hope!

I shall return!..😃

Regards - Barb:)
 
Hi there Scared…I have returned as promised and armed I HOPE with some assistance for you.

First is taken from the Catholic Catechism. See link:

http://www.catholic.net/RCC/Periodicals/Faith/1112-96/catech2.html
2731 Another difficulty, especially for those who sincerely want to pray, is dryness. Dryness belongs to contemplative prayer when the heart is separated from God, with no taste for thoughts, memories, and feelings, even spiritual ones. This is the moment of sheer faith clinging faithfully to Jesus in his agony and in his tomb. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if dies, it bears much fruit.” If dryness is due to the lack of roots, because the word has fallen on rocky soil, the battle requires conversion.
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My next website addresses directly the difficulties one can experience in prayer such as you have described. For information on the site from which The Fifteenth Maxim on Difficulties in Prayer is drawn go to link:

http://www.theworkofgod.org/index.htm
(The above link gives you information on the site only.)
For the actual essay on Difficulties in Prayer go to the link in the quotation box below.
Fifteenth Maxim – Difficulties in Prayer
SPIRITUAL MAXIMS
John Nicholas Grou S.J.
[translated by a monk of Parkminster] ‘

http://www.theworkofgod.org/library/Spir_Max/Maxim_15.htm
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Here is a brief quote from the above essay:
By pure faith I mean that state in which one serves God without any pledge or assurance of being pleasing to Him. This state is extremely painful to self-love, and so it must be since it is meant to undermine it imperceptibly, and in the end to destroy it so far as is possible in this life. If we were to enter suddenly and without preparation a state so crucifying to nature, we would not be able to bear it, and we would soon be repelled and give up all idea of leading an interior life. And so God, with infinite wisdom, arranges for this transitional stage, and the soul is not weaned until it has achieved a certain growth. And although God may afterwards keep it in an habitual state of privation, yet He tempers its rigours by frequent tokens of His love. The soul, on its part, long remembers the first graces God bestowed upon it, and this remembrance serves as a support in times of desolation. Besides, this state of pure faith has its degrees, and one only arrives at the final stage after many years.
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I hope the above may prove of some help to you in insighting that your difficulties in prayer may well be simply change in the way you are called to pray.
I pray that The Lord will guide and enlighten you and lead you “on ways that are level and smooth” (Divine Office)…
“Every day as long as each day lasts keep encouraging one another” (Introductory Prayer to the Divine Office)…

And from Scripture: “As gold is tested in fire, so the servants of God are tested in the crucible of suffering”.

Regards Barb:)
 
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