Many years ago, I attended a friend’s ordination to the priesthood. This man was a Notre Dame graduate and had attended the university before he had discovered his priestly vocation.
His friend, Holy Cross Father Theodore Hesburgh, spoke at the ordination ceremonies. Hesburgh, then retired and now deceased, had been president of Notre Dame while my friend was a student there. His obituary in the New York Times noted that he was “for decades considered the most influential priest in America.”
There was one line from his speech that I’ve always remembered and that has made a difference in my life. Father Hesburgh said he would often pray, “Come, Holy Spirit,” when in trouble or in doubt or in need of inspiration. “It’s a prayer that never fails me,” he said.
Such a simple prayer and yet so full of meaning in our faith. It was Father Hesburgh’s witness about the prayer never failing that piqued my interest.
I have come to realize that the prayer doesn’t mean the Holy Spirit is ready to give me whatever I want, or to solve a problem according to my directions. It does mean, I firmly believe, that invoking the Holy Spirit — if done with an open and willing heart — can inspire me to do better or to choose the better path.
I saw this recently, when I was angry with someone. My options included an angry retort, or perhaps the old silent treatment — too often my regrettable go-to.
But as I headed away from the situation, I invoked that silent prayer, and I found myself stopping. “Do you want to hear something funny?” I said, and I proceeded to tell an anecdote about my granddaughter. The ice was broken. With my silly aside I had signaled my willingness to forgive, and it led to discussion and reconciliation.
You know the old adage, “Prayer doesn’t change God, it changes the one who prays.” It’s true.
And this is what genuine prayer can do. It can change me. It demands that I listen, that I reflect, that I allow the voice in the silence to speak to me and be heard.
Authentic prayer doesn’t end when my self-appointed “prayer time” ends. It can continue throughout my day, if I am mindful. The Holy Spirit doesn’t take time off.
St. Ignatius of Loyola, who founded the Jesuits, developed a prayer called the “examen,” which he urged his followers to use daily. He considered it a foundational prayer for the spiritual life. God is in all things, and therefore speaks through the events of our day.
The examen is not a call to review your sinfulness, like an examination of conscience, although you may find things in your day for which you are sorry. It’s often called an examination of “consciousness” because it reviews your life as you’ve lived it in the past 24 hours.
In the examen, you place yourself before God and ask for enlightenment. You recall all the many things within that very day for which you are grateful. Then you examine the day, the events, the emotions, the disappointments, the highpoints. One event or emotion may particularly stand out, and you take that into prayer.
Then you look forward with God to the day ahead.
Practicing the examen makes us more conscious of God’s presence. It’s part of my hope for the New Year that I will be more devoted to this discipline, and that my day might find me, thanks to those long-ago words of Father Hesburgh, more willing to say, “Come, Holy Spirit,” as I move through my day.
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