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After asking for some resources on prayer on a past Magic Monday, samchevre pointed me to The Catechism of the Council of Trent. Sure enough, despite its explicit Catholic Christian focus, I found a lot of good thinking on prayer as a practice, and I'd like to share what I thought were the most helpful takeaways for folks of any faith.
Asking for Things: Maybe the most common kind of prayer, the Council of Trent held that it was right and proper to ask God in prayer for anything it was right for folks to have. While it is certainly possible to ask for the wrong kind of things in prayer, and it takes some practice to ask for the right kind of things (more on both below), the evidence we have from just about every spiritual tradition that has recorded prayers shows folks asking the Gods for things that they want. If done right, this is not just a "gimme, gimme!" or a business transaction, but instead a way of acknowledging that you can't do anything in the world without your wider context and the help of the Holy.
Thanksgiving: Even if you are uncomfortable with asking for things in prayer, I think it's hard, if not impossible, to find anything wrong with prayers of thanksgiving. Even materialists acknowledge how worthwhile being consciously thankful is. Even more so than asking for things in prayer, giving thanks for what you have in this life is a good way to acknowledge that you are dependent on wider and higher things.
Bringing You Closer to the Holy: I think the biggest thing prayer does for you is to bring you closer to the Holy and open you up to its influence. However you pray, it's a way to take some time to think about and reach out to whatever you think of as Holy, and hopefully to listen for some kind of answer. Many spiritual practices can do this, but prayer has the strengths of being ready to do whenever and wherever you are, and being changeable to whatever your needs are right now.
Acknowledging Something Greater than Yourself: I talked about this in both kinds of prayer above, but most any kind of prayer leads you to acknowledge that you need the wider world and its God(s). Even for things you did "by yourself", you still have your parents, teachers, employers, and culture to thank, to say nothing of any Gods or Goddesses. While humility can go too far into abasing yourself or groveling, most of us can use a timely reminder that we are not an island and that the world has given us a great many gifts that we ought to be thankful for.
Giving a Gift: Prayer can also be a gift to the Gods, the same as incense or a candle or mead. The more care and thought you put into the prayer, and the better it is said, the better it works as such. This is the most helpful when you lack the means to give something else, but is still worthwhile even if you have all of the offerings you might wish for.
Helping the Dead: Most faiths believe that the dead can use some help in the afterlife, and that prayer is one way of offering that help. For Christians, you pray for souls in Purgatory, other faiths might pray for souls to learn the lessons of their past life as smoothly as they might so they can move on to another life, and so forth. Whatever you believe about the afterlife (well, I guess, unless you don't believe in one), it seems that prayer is helpful to those in it.
Prayer Works Best as a Habit: The Catechism talks about prayer as a "duty", not something nice-to-have or optional. I don't know if that way of thinking is true for all faiths, but I think it is very much true that prayer works best as a habit, something you do at least every day. Much of the good of prayer only seems to come when you have done it for awhile with unalike things going on in your life. From what I have seen, it seems best to find many little ways to bring prayer into your life - something to say when you wake up, when you go to sleep, before you eat, when you put on a worn holy symbol, and so forth, as well as a "main" prayer set aside as its own thing. Of course, all of this doesn't have to be piled on at once, as that's not how good habit-building works, but over time, adding such things helps to make prayer a given, rather than something that takes will and forethought.
Pray in the Right Frame of Mind with the Right Feeling: For Christians, the Council of Trent recommends that Christians go into prayer with 1) utmost humilty, 2) sorrow or regret for sins done, 3) a lack of unworthy feelings like wrath or pride, and 4) faith in God. Once praying, the prayer should be heartfelt, with the ideal being that you "pour out" what is in your heart and soul with great warmth. I feel like the strong weight put on humility and sinfulness may not fit with every other faith, but the heart of the thought, that you should put yourself in a frame of mind in keeping with what is best to your Gods and then pray earnestly and with true feeling, seems like a good one to me.
Ask for the Right Things: The Catechism gave what struck me as a remarkably good rede about asking for things in prayer. First, get in the habit of asking God(s) for all things that you want in your life. Second, practice only asking for things that bring you closer to God(s). This is a really good way to build habits - you start by harnessing your natural yearning to have stuff to get you to pray often. Hopefully, as you do this, you start thinking about and acknowledging the role of the Holy in bringing good things into your life. Having gotten used to thinking about God(s) shaping what comes into your life, you can more readily think about what kinds of things God(s) might most want you to do in the world, and you can start asking for that. Through this change, you learn to ask for the right things, which makes even your prayers asking for stuff into a way to come closer to the Holy.
Beware Prayer Becoming a Way to Do Unworthy Things: For all the good that prayer can and does do, it can also become hollow, or even worse, truly harmful. If you only say the words or go through the motions, not only won't you get much out of prayer, you might sour on it or even on the Holy. There's some place for "fake it till you make it" in any kind of habit building, but if prayer feels hollow for a long time, it's likely not doing you any good, and you might need to work out a new way of doing things. Still worse is if you let prayer become a tool for your pride - showing off, making a big fuss about how strong your belief is, or the like. The Council refers to Jesus's well-known rede to pray indoors, out of the public eye. I think there's a role for public prayer, but a good rule of thumb seems to be that if you only pray when others are watching, you're likely doing it wrong.
A Lone Sufficient Prayer Can Be Helpful to Have: The Catechism puts forth the "Our Father" as a wholly sufficient prayer by itself. In other words, as a Christian, if you only pray the Our Father, you're doing everything you need to do with prayer. Other prayers are helpful and do a lot of good, of course, but they say that you only really need this one prayer. I found this a highly interesting thought. I think it would be very helpful to look at your faith and ask yourself "if I could only say one prayer for the rest of this life, and I wanted to get at everything that is most important in my faith, what would that prayer be?" I think that most faiths likely don't have a ready-to-go answer the way Christianity does (perhaps the "Bond Among Druids" for Revival Druidry), but that writing it would be a worthy goal to strive for.
Some Hands-On Tips: The Council also gave a handful of more hands-on tips that I thought were helpful: 1) "Mental Prayer" (praying without speaking out loud) not only works, but is often best suited to sharing strong, deep feelings. That being said, praying out loud helps you stay focused and can be a spur to feelings of devotion. 2) Food and drink can make it harder to have the right mindset or feeling for prayer, so it might be best to pray without having eaten or had drinks besides water for some time. Fasting can also bring on an even stronger feeling for prayer. 3) Try to make your deeds outside of prayer line up with what you ask for in prayer. If you ask for help, but give no help to others, you shouldn't think that will work out well for you.
Edited 8 August 2022, 11:52 central time: removed "(1829)" from the link to the Catechism of the Council of Trent, as that is the date of the English Translation, but the Catechism was originally published in 1566, so that was misleading!
1. Kinds of Prayer
Asking for Things: Maybe the most common kind of prayer, the Council of Trent held that it was right and proper to ask God in prayer for anything it was right for folks to have. While it is certainly possible to ask for the wrong kind of things in prayer, and it takes some practice to ask for the right kind of things (more on both below), the evidence we have from just about every spiritual tradition that has recorded prayers shows folks asking the Gods for things that they want. If done right, this is not just a "gimme, gimme!" or a business transaction, but instead a way of acknowledging that you can't do anything in the world without your wider context and the help of the Holy.
Thanksgiving: Even if you are uncomfortable with asking for things in prayer, I think it's hard, if not impossible, to find anything wrong with prayers of thanksgiving. Even materialists acknowledge how worthwhile being consciously thankful is. Even more so than asking for things in prayer, giving thanks for what you have in this life is a good way to acknowledge that you are dependent on wider and higher things.
2. Outcomes of Prayer
Bringing You Closer to the Holy: I think the biggest thing prayer does for you is to bring you closer to the Holy and open you up to its influence. However you pray, it's a way to take some time to think about and reach out to whatever you think of as Holy, and hopefully to listen for some kind of answer. Many spiritual practices can do this, but prayer has the strengths of being ready to do whenever and wherever you are, and being changeable to whatever your needs are right now.
Acknowledging Something Greater than Yourself: I talked about this in both kinds of prayer above, but most any kind of prayer leads you to acknowledge that you need the wider world and its God(s). Even for things you did "by yourself", you still have your parents, teachers, employers, and culture to thank, to say nothing of any Gods or Goddesses. While humility can go too far into abasing yourself or groveling, most of us can use a timely reminder that we are not an island and that the world has given us a great many gifts that we ought to be thankful for.
Giving a Gift: Prayer can also be a gift to the Gods, the same as incense or a candle or mead. The more care and thought you put into the prayer, and the better it is said, the better it works as such. This is the most helpful when you lack the means to give something else, but is still worthwhile even if you have all of the offerings you might wish for.
Helping the Dead: Most faiths believe that the dead can use some help in the afterlife, and that prayer is one way of offering that help. For Christians, you pray for souls in Purgatory, other faiths might pray for souls to learn the lessons of their past life as smoothly as they might so they can move on to another life, and so forth. Whatever you believe about the afterlife (well, I guess, unless you don't believe in one), it seems that prayer is helpful to those in it.
3. How to Pray
Prayer Works Best as a Habit: The Catechism talks about prayer as a "duty", not something nice-to-have or optional. I don't know if that way of thinking is true for all faiths, but I think it is very much true that prayer works best as a habit, something you do at least every day. Much of the good of prayer only seems to come when you have done it for awhile with unalike things going on in your life. From what I have seen, it seems best to find many little ways to bring prayer into your life - something to say when you wake up, when you go to sleep, before you eat, when you put on a worn holy symbol, and so forth, as well as a "main" prayer set aside as its own thing. Of course, all of this doesn't have to be piled on at once, as that's not how good habit-building works, but over time, adding such things helps to make prayer a given, rather than something that takes will and forethought.
Pray in the Right Frame of Mind with the Right Feeling: For Christians, the Council of Trent recommends that Christians go into prayer with 1) utmost humilty, 2) sorrow or regret for sins done, 3) a lack of unworthy feelings like wrath or pride, and 4) faith in God. Once praying, the prayer should be heartfelt, with the ideal being that you "pour out" what is in your heart and soul with great warmth. I feel like the strong weight put on humility and sinfulness may not fit with every other faith, but the heart of the thought, that you should put yourself in a frame of mind in keeping with what is best to your Gods and then pray earnestly and with true feeling, seems like a good one to me.
Ask for the Right Things: The Catechism gave what struck me as a remarkably good rede about asking for things in prayer. First, get in the habit of asking God(s) for all things that you want in your life. Second, practice only asking for things that bring you closer to God(s). This is a really good way to build habits - you start by harnessing your natural yearning to have stuff to get you to pray often. Hopefully, as you do this, you start thinking about and acknowledging the role of the Holy in bringing good things into your life. Having gotten used to thinking about God(s) shaping what comes into your life, you can more readily think about what kinds of things God(s) might most want you to do in the world, and you can start asking for that. Through this change, you learn to ask for the right things, which makes even your prayers asking for stuff into a way to come closer to the Holy.
Beware Prayer Becoming a Way to Do Unworthy Things: For all the good that prayer can and does do, it can also become hollow, or even worse, truly harmful. If you only say the words or go through the motions, not only won't you get much out of prayer, you might sour on it or even on the Holy. There's some place for "fake it till you make it" in any kind of habit building, but if prayer feels hollow for a long time, it's likely not doing you any good, and you might need to work out a new way of doing things. Still worse is if you let prayer become a tool for your pride - showing off, making a big fuss about how strong your belief is, or the like. The Council refers to Jesus's well-known rede to pray indoors, out of the public eye. I think there's a role for public prayer, but a good rule of thumb seems to be that if you only pray when others are watching, you're likely doing it wrong.
A Lone Sufficient Prayer Can Be Helpful to Have: The Catechism puts forth the "Our Father" as a wholly sufficient prayer by itself. In other words, as a Christian, if you only pray the Our Father, you're doing everything you need to do with prayer. Other prayers are helpful and do a lot of good, of course, but they say that you only really need this one prayer. I found this a highly interesting thought. I think it would be very helpful to look at your faith and ask yourself "if I could only say one prayer for the rest of this life, and I wanted to get at everything that is most important in my faith, what would that prayer be?" I think that most faiths likely don't have a ready-to-go answer the way Christianity does (perhaps the "Bond Among Druids" for Revival Druidry), but that writing it would be a worthy goal to strive for.
Some Hands-On Tips: The Council also gave a handful of more hands-on tips that I thought were helpful: 1) "Mental Prayer" (praying without speaking out loud) not only works, but is often best suited to sharing strong, deep feelings. That being said, praying out loud helps you stay focused and can be a spur to feelings of devotion. 2) Food and drink can make it harder to have the right mindset or feeling for prayer, so it might be best to pray without having eaten or had drinks besides water for some time. Fasting can also bring on an even stronger feeling for prayer. 3) Try to make your deeds outside of prayer line up with what you ask for in prayer. If you ask for help, but give no help to others, you shouldn't think that will work out well for you.
Edited 8 August 2022, 11:52 central time: removed "(1829)" from the link to the Catechism of the Council of Trent, as that is the date of the English Translation, but the Catechism was originally published in 1566, so that was misleading!
