03.04. Learning To Pray

Learning to Pray Can prayer be learned? Is it not of the very soul of prayer that it shall be in the freedom of the Spirit?

John the Baptist gave his disciples a form of prayer, and the disciples of Jesus asked to be taught to pray. There were not many things they asked Him to do for them, and when they did, they were usually wrong. Would He have given them a form of prayer if they had not asked Him? Why did they ask? His own praying awoke within them a desire to be able to pray, and when they wanted to pray they found they did not know how. They felt the need of some ordered form by which they could speak out of their heart to God. They quoted John.

There are still disciples who quote John the Baptist to Jesus. Forms are easier than a creative spirit. Prayers counted on a rosary are easier than the prayers of a soul poured out in unrestrained speech to God. The Prayer Book helps the inarticulate to expression. Such praying may be perfectly sincere, and the devout may find in provided prayers a real help to devotion, and it may be that such praying may need to be learned at the feet of instructors. Indeed, that is the kind of prayer that needs to be learned. The rosary prayers are recited, and the Free Churchman seldom knows his way through Morning or Evening Prayers in the Prayer Book. All praying begins with forms of prayer. There is hardly a soul but remembers the simple, earnest prayers repeated at the mother’s knee with reverent wonder and joy.