We are two days away from Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent, a penitential season in the liturgical calendar, “a period of preparation to celebrate the Lord's Resurrection at Easter,” in which we “seek the Lord in prayer by reading Sacred Scripture; we serve by giving alms; and we practice self-control through fasting” (USCCCB). Today’s first reading from the Letter of Saint James reminds us of the importance of prayer because prayer is a "vital and personal relationship with the living and true God" (CCC 2558).
St. John Damascene said that "[prayer] is the raising of one's mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God" (CCC, no. 2559, citing St. John Damascene, De Fide Orth. 3, 24). The hinge is, we “should ask in faith, not doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed about by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord, since he is a man of two minds. . .” Thomas Merton explains what it means to be “a man of two minds” in prayer, saying: “‘double-minded’ (or “of two minds”) [is] hesitating between the world and God. In this hesitation, there is no true faith. . . We are never quite certain, because we never quite give in to the authority of an invisible God. This hesitation is the death of hope. . . This hesitation makes true prayer impossible - it never quite dares to ask for anything, or if it asks, it is so uncertain of being heard. . . What is the use of praying if at the very moment of prayer, we have so little confidence in God that we are busy planning our own kind of answer to our prayers.”
In other words, let us not be like the Pharisees who “[seek] from [Jesus] a sign from heaven to test him” because our lack of confidence in God when we pray will cause Jesus to “[sigh] from the depth of his spirit”. Rather, let our prayer be a “a surge of the heart. . . a simple look turned toward heaven. . . a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy" (CCC 2558, citing St. Therese of Lisieux, Manuscrits Autobiographiques, C 25rr). As we prepare for Lent, may our personal relationship with God through prayer give us the strength and courage to “encounter various trials” in our lives with hope and respond with faith in God who loves us because we “know [in our hearts] that the testing of [our] faith produces perseverance” that perfects and completes us so that we lack nothing.
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