Letters from the International School
Different types of prayer by Kim Nataraja
In John Cassian’s ‘Conference 9’ Abba Isaac,
one of the Desert Fathers, starts to teach Cassian and his friend
Germanus about prayer. He first emphasizes that there are different
ways of praying: “The apostle [St Paul] notes four types of
prayer. ‘My advice is that first of all supplication should
be offered up for everyone, prayers, pleas, and thanksgiving’
(1 Tim 2:1). Now one may be sure that this division was not foolishly
made by the Apostle. So we must first enquire what is meant by prayer,
by petitions, by intercessions, and by thanksgiving.” Abba
Isaac continues by giving detailed explanations of the types of
prayer mentioned and when they are appropriate, concluding: “Hence
all of these types of prayer...are valuable for all men [and women],
and indeed quite necessary.” He even illustrates how Jesus
used each of these types of prayer himself. He proceeds with an
explanation of the prayer Jesus taught us, the ‘Our Father’,
and names it the most perfect of prayers. But finally he arrives
at the most desirable prayer of all: ‘pure prayer’,
‘contemplation’, when we are no longer aware that we
are praying and he quotes St Antony: ‘Prayer is not perfect
when the monk is conscious of himself and of the fact that he is
actually praying.’ Abba Isaac stresses, that all forms of
prayer can lead to ‘pure prayer’ - what is needed is
persistence and faith.
He then urges them: “to follow the gospel precept which
instructs us to go into our room[Matthew 6,6] and shut the door
so that we may pray to our Father. We pray in our room when we withdraw
our hearts completely from the clatter of every thought and concern
and disclose our prayers to the Lord in secret, as it were intimately.
We pray with the door shut when, with closed lips and in total silence,
we pray to the searcher not of voices but of hearts.” Here
he outlines the basis of contemplation without telling them how
to ‘go into our room’. But in the next Conference he
does explain how to do it, as Cassian and Germanus show that they
are ready for this type of prayer by asking the right question.
Now we have arrived at the way of prayer John Main found to his
delight in Cassian’s teaching: praying with a ‘formula’,
which leads to contemplation.
Cassian does not restrict this type of prayer to certain periods
of the day, but urges Cassian and Germanus to ‘ceaseless prayer’;
“You should, I say, meditate constantly on this verse in your
heart. You should not stop repeating it when you are doing any kind
of work or performing some service or are on a journey. Meditate
on it while sleeping and eating and attending to the least needs
of nature.”
Whereas there is no denying the importance of this way of praying
to us and the early Christians we must remember it is only one way
of prayer amongst others. Laurence Freeman uses the image of prayer
as a wheel: “Think of prayer as a great wheel. The wheel turns
our whole life to God....... The spokes of the wheel represent different
types of prayer. We pray in different ways, at different times,
and according to how we feel...The spokes are the forms or expressions
of prayer which fit into the hub of the wheel, which is the prayer
of Jesus himself....All forms of prayer are valid. All are effective.
They are informed by the prayer of the human consciousness of Jesus
which is in us by the grace of the Holy Spirit.” (Laurence
Freeman)
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