For those who want to become God’s friends, prayer is undoubtedly the best way to progress in intimacy with Him. But must this dialogue with the Invisible be devoid of any external words?
“Let my prayer rise before you like incense,” beautifully says Psalm 140 recited at vespers. How can we better express that prayer is first and foremost an interior offering, an impulse of the soul, an invisible but real movement, materialized by the time and space granted to God? This is why prayer is most often a time of silence , conducive to intimacy and interiority.
Christ himself says it in his Sermon on the Mount : “When you pray, withdraw into your most secluded room, close the door, and pray to your Father who is present in secret; your Father who sees in secret will reward you. » ( Mt 6:6 ). The creator is therefore not so much desirous of outward manifestations as of a deep desire of the heart.
Protect yourself from a one-way dialogue
The silence of the soul in prayer is also a way of protecting oneself from a one-way dialogue. God being invisible, there is a great risk of speaking to him without leaving room for his otherness. This concern also finds the beginnings of a solution in the prayer of adoration, which makes it possible to make the presence of the Other real, or the reading of the aptly named Word of God. In silence , like the prophet Elijah, the friend of Christ thus discovers that the Creator is not seen in noise and fury but in “the murmur of a light breeze” (cf. 1 Rs 19, 12 ).
Silence or not, it is the desire of the soul that matters to the Lord.
As the Christian faith is always a crest, the psalm which follows the one cited above in the office of vespers is 141, the first words of which sound like a disavowal: “With full voice I cry to the Lord! With full voice I implore the Lord. » In an audience on prayer on April 21, 2021, Pope Francis drives the point home: “The first human prayer is always a vocal recitation”, before promoting the recitation of prayers like the Ave or the Father which “ take us by the hand.”
A gift from the Creator through his Church
Such a prayer is a good way for the successor of Peter to avoid falling into pride. In particular because they educate our relationship with God and remind us that it is always a gift from the Creator through his Church. This is one of the fruits of the liturgy which imposes on everyone a rite which models and objectifies the dialogue between God and men.
Silence or not, it is the desire of the soul that matters to the Lord. Although it is silent, the hypocritical and satisfied prayer of the Pharisee who “stood and prayed within himself” ( Lk 18:11 ) does not please Him who expressed his wish no better than on the Cross. from his merciful heart: “I thirst” ( Jn 19:28 ).
