A Brief Primer on Prayer

By Fr. Peter John Cameron, o.p.

40 short essays to nourish your meditation during Lent.

With his simple, profound, and engaging style, Fr. Peter John Cameron, O.P. draws from the wisdom of great Catholic saints and writers to encourage us on the path of prayer.

- Forty short essays on the essence of prayer
- Insights into how prayer forms a more intimate relationship with God, while helping us become the people God created us to be
- Exploration of the riches and benefits of prayer

These forty practical meditations beautifully demonstrate how prayer helps us become the people we have been created to be.

Father Cameron is the Founding Editor-in-Chief of Magnificat.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9781639670918

Book preview

Meditation 1

Prayer is rising up

We’re convinced we need something that goes beyond what

the world and all things finite

can provide. And prayer is the most reasonable

way to come face to face with that mystery…

The saints speak of prayer as the raising of one’s mind and heart to God (Saint John Damascene, † 749; CCC 2590). Saint Thomas Aquinas († 1274) understands prayer as a raising of the soul to God in four ways: the elevation of faith by adoring God’s greatness; the elevation of hope by our endeavoring for holiness; the elevation of charity through intimate encounter with God; and the elevation of justice by imitating God’s justice in our own actions.

Prayer and hope

We might reflect on the hope part. Dominican Father Jean- Pierre Torrell, commenting on the teaching of Saint Thomas, notes how Aquinas refers to prayer as the interpreter of hope or the interpreter of desire. Hope itself presupposes desire. We live expecting something… awaiting something in life that exceeds our capacity either to understand or to bring about. But we know that Something is real and meant for us.

Saint Paul outlines a dilemma we all face:

Hoping for what we cannot see means awaiting it with patient endurance. The Spirit too helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in speech. (Rom 8:25-26)

Intimacy with God

The Holy Spirit, the author of prayer, interprets our hopes, our desires, in moving us to pray in a way worthy of God. We bring to God our longings, our aspirations, our yearning, whatever weighs us down so that, in prayer, it can be lifted up. We’re convinced we need something that goes beyond what the world and all things finite can provide. And prayer is the most reasonable way to come face to face with that mystery, and to be ready for an answer. As Simone Weil († 1943) says, If we look to heaven long-term, God descends and lifts us up.

Saint Thomas Aquinas encourages us:

When we pray to God, the very prayer we send forth makes us intimate with him, inasmuch as our soul is raised up to God, converses with him in spiritual affection, and adores him in spirit and truth.

Meditation 2

Prayer is entrusting

"Have no fear of either your misery

or your powerlessness, for I know well

how to vanquish them."

When we’re hampered by our limitations, our inability, our weakness and lack, we’re tempted to quit—to just give up. But if we keep going, it’s owing to one reason: because we dare to trust. And prayer is an act of trust.

Saint Thomas Aquinas tells us that the word trust means primarily that hope which a person conceives when they rely upon the words of another whose help has been promised to them. And Jesus does promise that help to us! We need to trust that… and we trust by actually entrusting ourselves to Someone. One concrete way to do this is to pray.

This means total confidence even in front of all of one’s own weaknesses, says Servant of God Luigi Giussani († 2005).

If I recognize that my strength is in Him, none of my weaknesses can stop me. Trust is the certainty that Another will realize the ideal. It isn’t necessary to cultivate plans of perfection, but to look Christ in the face. Don’t daydream and aim for perfection, but look Christ in the face: If one looks Christ in the face, if one looks someone one loves in the face, everything is straightened out, everything falls into place. Happiness is to follow Another. Trust is the opposite of being suspended over a vacuum: Trust is being suspended over a fullness.

These are Jesus’ words of help that we can rely on:

Have no fear of either your misery or your powerlessness, for I know well how to vanquish them. Even when all seems lost, yet have no fear, for I know well how to choose among the many the one path, secret and unknown to you, which, in spite of all, shall lead you to the dazzling peak of love’s transformation. (Father Paul de Jaegher, S.J., † 1958)

The prayer of trust is every prayer in which we declare, I will rely on your strength—not on my own. Lord Jesus Christ, you are my strength!

Meditation 3

Why prayer can be penance

After confessing our sins, we are often given prayer as

penance. Here’s how that works.

Once we have finished confessing our sins in Confession (the sacrament of Penance), the priest-confessor assigns us a specific penance. As Dominic Prümmer, O.P. († 1931), states, all good works may be given as penances, including works of piety, charity, [and] mortification. But especially prayers.

Set on the path to holiness

Saint John Paul II († 2005) reminds us that the penances believers receive in Confession are the sign of the personal commitment that the Christian has made to God, in the Sacrament, to begin a new life. For this reason, they should not be reduced to mere formulas to be recited, but should consist of acts of worship, charity, mercy, or reparation (Reconciliation and Penance 31). In other words, we should carry out the penance assigned reverently and in a spirit of fervent prayer. For the performance of penance is a purposeful break with evil. By doing our penance, we actively turn our back on sin and place ourselves on the path to holiness.

Christ pays the price

But sometimes the penance we receive can seem almost too simple. Dominican Father Romanus Cessario, in his beautiful new book The Seven Sacraments, helps us with this:

Oftentimes, the penance given in the confessional by the Catholic priest consists of the recitation of certain familiar prayers—for example, to say the Hail Mary so many times. This nominal penance achieves a meritorious status beyond what its simple execution may merit by reason of the superabundant meritoriousness of Christ’s saving sacrifice that the sacrament of Penance communicates to the performance of a prescribed penance. (225)

We pray our penance in a disposition of heartfelt humility, thankfulness, and awe. By the penance you do, you are not buying yourself back into God’s good graces. It is not you who are paying for the absolution you received. Jesus Christ himself paid that price when he died for us on the