St John gives us a very simple test of Christian life: "Whoever says, 'I abide in Him,' ought to walk just as He walked" (1 John 2:6). Christian life is a call to be like Jesus. We are happy to think about the Jesus who multiplied bread, healed the sick, raised the dead and walked on water. Who would not want to be like Him in those things? But to walk as He walked means more than admiring His miracles and glory. It means looking closely at His whole life.
One area where we need to imitate Jesus is His prayer life. The Gospels tell us what He taught, but they also show us how He lived. People saw Jesus teaching, preaching, healing and performing exorcisms. But what was He doing before those hours? The Bible says that most of the time He prayed. When we observe His life closely, it was a life of continuous prayer, a life set apart for prayer.
Jesus Kept Returning to the Father
Luke introduces the public ministry of Jesus with prayer. At His Baptism, while Jesus was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him (Luke 3:21-22). Before beginning His public work, He went into the wilderness for forty days. Later, when His reputation was spreading and crowds came to hear Him and be healed, Luke says, "He would withdraw to deserted places and pray" (Luke 5:16).
The more He was sought after, the more He withdrew into loneliness and prayed. Popularity did not pull Him away from prayer. Work did not become an excuse for prayerlessness.
When Jesus had an important decision to make, He prayed. Before choosing the Twelve, He went out to the mountain and spent the whole night in prayer to God (Luke 6:12-13). Before the Transfiguration, He went up the mountain to pray (Luke 9:28). One day the disciples watched Him praying and something in what they saw created a desire in them. They said, "Lord, teach us to pray" (Luke 11:1).
When the disciples saw Him praying, they also had a desire. They could see that He enjoyed prayer, and they wanted the same thing. So they asked Him, "Lord, teach us to pray."
That life of prayer continued into suffering. In Gethsemane, on the eve of His Passion, Jesus prayed. On the Cross He prayed for His enemies: "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34). Even the cry, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" is the opening prayer of Psalm 22. In pain, He still turned toward the Father.
And prayer does not disappear from the picture after the Resurrection. Romans says that Christ is at the right hand of God and "indeed intercedes for us" (Romans 8:34). He did not finish His earthly life and decide to relax and watch television or footy. He intercedes for us.
So when Jesus asks the disciples in Gethsemane, "Could you not stay awake with Me one hour?" (Matthew 26:40), that question reaches our consciences as well. Could you not spend one hour with Me? Could you not spare one hour for Me?
The Spirit of the Son Cries "Abba, Father"
Jesus did not pray because He lacked power. He prayed because prayer was relationship with His Father. He loved speaking to His Father. It was not a burden. It was natural to Him because He is the Son.
Someone may say, "Of course it was easy for Jesus. He is the Son of God." But Scripture tells us something extraordinary about our own relationship with God. First John says, "See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are" (1 John 3:1). Through Baptism we have received the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Son.
Galatians says, "Because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!'" (Galatians 4:6). Notice who is crying "Abba." The Spirit of the Son is crying within us. The right to call God Father does not come from our own achievement. It comes because the Spirit of the Son has been given to us.
That changes the way we understand prayer. Prayer is not standing outside heaven trying to persuade a distant God to notice us. The Spirit of Jesus is already within us, turning us toward the Father. We can relate to the Father because the Spirit of the Son teaches our hearts to cry, "Abba."
For Jesus, prayer was talking to His Father. For the Christian, prayer can become the same kind of relationship. It need not remain something burdensome, artificial or forced. We are children of God, and the Spirit within us draws us into that relationship.
The Holy Spirit Is Given to Help Us Pray
When people speak about the Holy Spirit, their minds often go immediately to charisms: healing, miracles, supernatural revelations, wisdom, visions and extraordinary gifts. Those gifts are real. The Holy Spirit gives charisms to His people. But I want to put something before all of them.
The Holy Spirit is given to help us pray. Romans says, "The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words" (Romans 8:26). Before thinking about what the Spirit might do through us publicly, we should understand what He wants to do within us. He teaches us to communicate with the Father.
Look again at Jesus. At His Baptism the Spirit descended upon Him. He did not immediately rush out to demonstrate miracles. He went into the wilderness. Prayer came first. From that communion with the Father came the strength of His ministry.
The order matters. Closeness to God does not grow out of miracles. The works flow out of communion with God. If Jesus did extraordinary things, He did them from a life rooted in prayer. The same Spirit has been given to us to help us pray.
If you ask me what one of the greatest gifts God has placed in us is, I would say the ability to pray. In every circumstance I can relate to my God because the Spirit of His Son lives in me. When I do not know what to do, I can pray. When people are against me, I can pray. When decisions are difficult, I can pray. Prayer gives the Christian a way of bringing every circumstance before heaven.
I am convinced that prayer changes things. Sometimes the answer may come quickly. Sometimes it may take days, months or years. Frustrating circumstances may not change when we expect them to. But the timing belongs to the will of God. Prayer keeps us joined to Him while we wait, and that relationship itself changes the way we stand inside the situation.
Let Prayer Become Your Second Nature
Jesus warned His disciples in Gethsemane to stay awake and pray so that they would not enter into temptation. They slept. Then came betrayal, denial and desertion. There are times in our lives when, had we prayed, a particular chapter might not have been there. A wrong decision might not have been taken. There are temptations we might have resisted if we had spent time with the Father first.
Prayer should not remain something external that we occasionally remember in a crisis. There is a Christian way of living in which prayer becomes part of our nature. By vocation we are called to prayer. It becomes a second nature because the Spirit of prayer is already within us.
Think of the way we care for the body. We know we need food, water, air, rest and exercise. If those needs are neglected, the body becomes weak. There is also a soul within us that needs to be fed. It is fed through the Word of God, personal prayer and the Sacraments. If we neglect that interior life, we become spiritually weak even if everything outwardly looks strong.
We spend enormous amounts of time with people, television, sport, entertainment, work and all the other demands of life. None of those things is automatically wrong. But ask yourself honestly: out of the twenty-four hours God gives me, how much time do I give back to Him? How much time goes to everything else, and how much goes to prayer?
Jesus asked, "Could you not stay awake with Me one hour?" I believe one hour of personal prayer each day is a beautiful discipline for a Christian. It is not about watching the clock and trying to impress God with sixty minutes. It is about making deliberate room for the relationship that is supposed to stand at the centre of our life.
If you do not know how to spend that hour, begin simply. Spend some time worshipping and thanking God. Spend some time interceding for your family, your workplace, your school and people who need prayer. Spend time reading the Word of God. Spend time asking the Holy Spirit to fill you and teach you to pray. The exact number of minutes is not the important part. What matters is learning to remain with God.
And do not say housework makes prayer impossible. If you are cooking and peeling potatoes, your hands are occupied, but your lips are free. You do not peel potatoes with your lips. While your hands are working, your heart and lips can still turn toward God. We often manage to use those same lips for gossip or spend the whole time talking on the phone. Prayer can enter ordinary work as well.
That does not remove the need for dedicated prayer. The hour set apart with God helps prayer overflow into the rest of the day. The aim is not to pray only during one protected hour and then forget God for the next twenty-three. The aim is to become a person whose life naturally keeps returning to the Father.
Bring Prayer Into the Home
Personal prayer is one commitment. Family prayer is another. A Christian home should not only carry a Christian name. God should be honoured there together.
I put it bluntly: every family should have family prayer. Without that, it does not make a Christian family. It is just pagan. Let the Word of God be spoken in the home. Let children have access to Scripture. Teach them to pray while they are still young, and let them see prayer in the lives of their parents.
I have seen very young children pray with remarkable spiritual freedom, even children around four years old speaking in tongues and prophesying. Whatever we think children are capable of, we should not assume that the spiritual life belongs only to adults. Much depends on the example they see and the way they are formed.
An occasional retreat, conference or intense spiritual experience cannot replace an ordinary life of prayer. We can have a powerful experience, feel renewed and then spend the next year living in chaos while waiting for the next event to recharge us. That is not enough. The Spirit is not meant to be left behind at a retreat centre. Carry that life of prayer into the home and live it.
Make the home a place where Scripture is read, where people praise God, where the Rosary is prayed, where husband, wife and children learn to stand together before the Lord. Spiritual life has to move from special occasions into ordinary Tuesdays, ordinary meals, ordinary housework and ordinary family problems.
This is what it means to become like Jesus in prayer. He prayed in the morning. He prayed through the night. He prayed before decisions. He prayed in solitude. He prayed when people surrounded Him. He prayed before suffering and in the middle of suffering. He prayed for His enemies. His life remained turned toward the Father.
Look at that Jesus and let the same desire arise in your heart: I want to be like You in my prayer life. I want to relate to the Heavenly Father as You did. I want the Holy Spirit within me to teach me to cry, "Abba, Father." I want prayer to become part of who I am. Lord Jesus, teach us to pray.