The Essence of Prayer
Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, and sometime curate of our Vicar, Sarah Coakley reminds us of a surprising truth about ‘prayer’: the story of St Augustin when he was asked about prayer.
It was the recently bereaved widow Proba who asked St Augustin about prayer. She who was devastated by the loss of her husband; anyone who has been bereaved will recognise her sense of the impossibility of going on without her loved one. So she asked Augustin: how do I pray in this loss? I cannot have my husband back, but what else is there to wish for or desire? What can I ask God for? And what is prayer anyway? – I have lost my sense of what it is all about.
And Augustin answers in what may seem a surprising way. He says “there is only one thing to ask for, and that is the essence of all prayer: pray to be HAPPY. Because in letting all your desires yearn towards that ONE goal, in unifying your desire in this intense way, you are longing for what God longs for in you, and what God has made possible for you in the life and death and resurrection of his Son.
And although God does not necessarily give you this instantaneously, for there is much darkness in this life, God does hold out the promise and never goes back.
So in desiring this one, supremely appropriate human desire, the desire for true happiness in God, you have found the essence of prayer, which is to allow the Spirit to magnetise and unify your desire in this way, and to co-operate in this deep longing for fulfilment which God has implanted in you. That is prayer.”
Sarah Coakley
20 August 2017
