A Book Review… Praying To Become Saints

By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY

Prayer Primer: Igniting a Fire Within, by Fr. Thomas DuBay (Servant, Paperback, 188 pages. Available at amazon.com).

Fr. Thomas DuBay’s Prayer Primer: Igniting a Fire Within, is split into four parts, which cover the preliminaries to prayer, how prayer is meant to be a means of intimacy and union with God, how we should pray with the Church and in our families, and a final section on questions and problems.
The author begins by characterizing the state of inner emptiness which mankind feels without God — the sense that something is missing in our lives, and that this emptiness cannot be satisfied with purely material things. This is because we are made for the transcendent, for God, and our souls will ultimately be satisfied with nothing less than God, who is Everything. And since prayer is the means by which we commune with God, it is absolutely crucial that we pray well — this is the path to Reality.
As the author says, “Prayer life is . . . profoundly rooted in the needs of our human nature. Without it we are frustrated creatures.” The problem is that we do not realize what an unimaginable blessing it is that the God of creation, the Lord of all, should want us to communicate with Him, and has in fact revealed Himself in His inspired Word, and welcomes our response.
For Fr. DuBay, the end result of prayer well said, to the point where it becomes a consuming passion, is the saint, the perfected human being, and that is a state to which we are all called by God, to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. The saint is someone who because he or she loves God supremely, therefore loves everyone else too, even enemies.
God desires this communication with His intelligent created beings because He is pure love and wants to pour out His love on us. As the Catechism says: “Whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God’s thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him” (CCC, n. 2560).
And the deeper our prayer becomes, the closer we get to God and so become more like Him, as, in St Paul’s words, “we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:18)
As the author points out, though, to begin to pray in this way, we need to confess our sins and in sorrow return to our Father in Heaven in a spirit of conversion. We have to turn from our innate selfishness toward a love for truth, goodness and beauty — we need to make God, and not our own pleasures and whims, our focus.
Fr. DuBay’s approach is at times rather direct. He speaks of the need to accompany prayer with action, and drives this point home by saying, “If you are filled with pride and vanity, look upon Jesus spit upon, struck, whipped to blood, nailed to the cross for love of you. Pray about this astonishing example, and make some decisions about your life and priorities. Get busy now.”
In short, we must have a genuine desire to become better — a vague wish to improve our lives or grow closer to God is not enough.
But in praying, he also counsels that we should be ourselves before God, and not rely on techniques or methods of prayer, and that short but sincere prayers are very effective in making real contact with the Divine. What really matters is the quality of our prayers, rather than the quantity, but our prayers should be sincere, persistent, and trusting.
The best subject for prayerful meditation is the life and person of Christ, as found in the Gospels. More generally, the idea is to fill our minds and hearts with God both in His Word and in creation and so move on to contemplating the goodness and beauty of the Lord. As Fr. DuBay says: “Meditation developing slowly into contemplation transforms people from the inside out.”
Liturgical prayer, where we worship with others, is important, because we are social beings, and also because such communal prayer will nourish our own personal prayer lives. But it is also very important because the Mass is the high point of all prayer, and by participating in the Eucharist, we are joining in with Christ’s sacrificial act on Calvary.
We can also pray the Liturgy of the Hours, or at least a part of it, and this, the official prayer of the Church, is made up of readings from the Bible, including the Old Testament psalms, and hymns, antiphons, and prayers.
Prayer is obviously also very important in building up Christian family life, and indeed the family has been described as the “domestic Church.” Fr. DuBay has good practical advice for family prayer, and makes the point that the most important thing is for the children to see that their parents take prayer seriously. A prayerful atmosphere in a home makes for a happy family atmosphere in which everyone feels valued. He also advises that meditative prayer is something that can be taught to children.
He devotes a chapter to “Prayer in a Busy Life,” and argues that despite time pressures, providing our life is well ordered, finding time for prayer is perfectly possible and will actually enhance our personal and work relationships. We will become more loving, and so more effective in our day to day activities, and also more apostolic.
And in fact, in our overstimulated world, everyone needs times of prayer, healthy solitude, and silence. This means making an effort to get away, even if only for a short time, form the noise, bustle, and stress of modern life.
The ultimate aim of prayer is a state of constant prayerfulness, a state which grows gradually providing we are faithful and persevering.

Living More Virtuously

The final chapters have words of encouragement for those who don’t feel they are cut out for a life of serious prayer, and the author particularly cautions against judging the value of our prayers by our feelings or lack of them while praying.
Fr. DuBay tells us that we will know if our prayer is becoming deeper if we are advancing in humility, patience, love, purity, and all the virtues. That is, we should be living more virtuously, acting with more generosity in serving others, loving the Church more deeply, while at the same time living a more frugal, less selfish life, one which is more focused on the cross of Christ.
Thus is a very valuable book on prayer, one which is designed to guide the individual through the various stages of prayer to genuine intimacy with Christ. It gives much practical advice about prayer and how to go about it, and will be a valuable resource for anyone who wants to pray more effectively.

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(Donal Anthony Foley is the author of a number of books on Marian apparitions, and maintains a related website at www.theotokos.org.uk. He has also written two time-travel/adventure books for young people, and the third in the series is due to be published later this year — details can be seen at: http://glaston-chronicles.co.uk.)