Is Prayer Enough?

Sr. Irene Nowell, a beloved Benedictine scholar of the Hebrew Bible, makes a striking recommendation. She suggests that we pray with the book of Psalms in one hand and the newspaper in the other. While few of us read an actual newspaper anymore, we get the point: pray with the pain of the world.

Sr. Irene says it this way: “Take the psalm book in one hand and the daily newspaper in the other. After every few psalm verses, read another headline. The voices that cry out in the daily news also cry out in the psalm. Every time we pray the psalms, we pray in the name of the whole Body of Christ, in the name of the whole world. We carry all those people in our prayer; by praying the psalms we take responsibility for the well-being of all of them.”

The current situation in Ukraine is agonizing. Other situations come to our minds—school shootings, abuse, drought and famine, the toll of pandemic, wars and violence around the world. What are we to do? “Thoughts and prayers” are not enough.

Or are they? It depends, of course, on how we understand prayer. According to Sr. Irene, prayer is not an individual, inward exercise. It is a communal, universal experience. My prayer, with the newspaper in one hand, is what joins me to my suffering brothers and sisters in Ukraine and around the world. And once joined with them, I must do what I can to alleviate their agony.

Prayer is not an escape from reality or action. It is a commitment to community, a sinking into community, an authentic identification with both the joys and sorrows of others. It is only natural, then, that prayer—which begins as words, silence, the state of the heart—should spur us to action, love, commitment. This too is prayer. Prayer reminds us who we are. It reminds us that we are a people of love. We need the discipline of prayer because it reminds us of this, and we are very forgetful.

Is prayer enough? If prayer is just words, then no, it is not enough. But if prayer is engagement with God and others, words-leading-to-love, an identification with every human being that is lonely or afraid or hungry or hurting, if prayer is action that addresses affliction, silence that clarifies, self-poured-out-for-others, only then is prayer “enough.” Only then do our lives become prayer—when the newspaper, the psalms, and whatever other love we have pondered or uttered have moved us to understand, to be, to change, to serve. Thus the instruction of St. Paul: “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17).

Hear, Lord, my plea for justice; pay heed to my cry; listen to my prayer (Psalm 17:1).