Benny Nalkara, CMI

“We do not know how to pray?” (Rom 8:26). This statement of Paul happens to be one of the strangest statements we find in the bible. It challenges the basic understanding of Christian life that it is engineered by prayer. Prayer is the connecting link between human beings and God in daily life. “I pray, therefor I am,” becomes the underlying life principle of every believer. Then, naturally, Paul’s statement stands as paradoxical!
Paul was writing these lines in Romans 8 in his attempt to highlight the characteristics of the new life in Christ, which is governed and guided by the Holy Spirit. Paul explains many roles played by the Holy Spirit in human life and in that he attempts he explains the helps of the Holy Spirit in human weaknesses. One of the most important weaknesses Paul identifies is the failure from our part in knowing how to pray. What would be the “ignorance” meant by Paul here in our prayer?
Prayer in the life of human beings is seen basically in the context of needs. The petition dimension of prayer prevails over all other forms of prayer in our existential life. Our anxieties, uncertainties, struggles, quests for peace and prosperity etc are reflected in our prayers. But our prayers often fail to reflect our nature and identity as the children of God. When Paul writes that we do not know how to pray, what he meant was this “identity crisis” in prayer and the subsequent failure in praying properly. This reminds us of the fact that one of the prominent requests made by the disciples of Jesus was to teach them to pray.
According to Paul, the basic element we lack in prayer is our “identity.” This identity is the awareness that we are the children of God and what we need is the basic trust in Him. We all know how to recite prayers and we do recite a lot of prayers; but we do not know how to pray as we should, namely, as children. The role of the Holy Spirit is creating this awareness through the indwelling presence and helping us “cry out, ‘Abba’.” If we can have this identity, we will accept the fact that God, “the heavenly father knows what is to be given his children.”
When Paul reminds us of our weakness and ignorance in prayer, he wanted to highlight the unfitting nature of our prayer as children. We are always petitioners in prayer, who brings loads of demands and things to be done by God. We know only how to pray like mercenaries and wait for the result of our prayers. We also know how to pray and make God somehow obey us and concede our demands, rather than wait for God to grant us his grace and blessings. Hence the importance of the Spirit of God helping us in our weakness and assisting us in our prayer.
A real prayer should transform our life and a transformed life transforms our prayer also. A prayer assisted by the Spirit of God has to have the dimensions of the spirit, generosity to others, simplicity, sincerity, and humility. Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the Tax collector in the temple (Lk 18:9-14) points to this transforming dimension of prayer. Even in prayer the Pharisee was not generous to others but only to himself. He was not open, sincere and humble. Often the prayer can be an occasion for us to show case our morphed face than our transformed life. This situation is viewed as a weakness in prayer by Paul.
We fail in prayer when we understand that prayer is an eloquent and sophisticated communication. In prayer, we are worried about only our words, not about our deeds. When Paul mentions about our ignorance in prayer, this weakness is also intended. He highlights that it may be even a prayer of silence, can produce the right relationship with God. The Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. It could be also a prayer of simple presence before God. But it has a lot of meaning and significance. God hears such prayers more than all our sophisticated prayers.
This eye-opening statement on prayer by Paul his revealing that only the Holy Spirit can be transformer of prayer should enable and inspire us to working towards reorienting our prayer culture. We struggle to start, succeed and sustain in prayer. The sophisticated chantings or the the screaming slogans won’t make our prayer. The rituals and rubrics will not enhance the quality of our prayer. We need to have the basic openness towards God, others and ourselves in prayer. What we need is to understand our identity and underline the need of help of the Holy Spirit in our act of prayer.