Building a Good Prayer Life
If you were to rate your relationship with God out of 10, what would it be? And if it could be anything out of 10, what would you want it to be?
For those of you who, like me, would like to bump up your score by a number or two, the secret to having a 10/10 relationship with God is to build a good prayer life.
From a very young age, many of us are told by parents, teachers, priests, youth ministers, and any number of guest speakers at hip and groovy youth events that it is important to pray. Personally though, I found this very difficult growing up, because I didn’t really understand prayer until I was well into my uni years – and I didn’t really start to build up my prayer life until I joined Youth Mission Team in 2019. So if you’re anything like me, and you’re keen to pray but you don’t quite know what prayer is or why it’s important or how to improve your prayer life, here are some thoughts to help you get started.
WHAT IS PRAYER?
When I was little, I thought that prayer meant saying a lot of Our Fathers and Hail Marys. But during my teenage years, I began to hate that way of praying because I found it dull and repetitive, and I wanted to talk to God in my own words. I used to pray every evening in bed, and I’d say in my head, “Dear Lord, thank you for today. Please take care of the world and everyone and everything in it, especially...” and I’d list as many intentions as I could think of until I fell asleep. But eventually I grew frustrated with this kind of prayer as well, because I was saying pretty much the exact same thing every day, which was just as boring as saying a Rosary, and I felt like there were too many things to pray for, and I couldn’t remember them all, so it was easier just to say, “Lord, take care of everyone and everything,” and leave it at that – but then that felt much less sincere. And I felt that if I didn’t pray for something, then it wouldn’t happen. So I was caught in this place of wanting to pray but not fully understanding what prayer was or how it worked.
Nowadays I’ve come to really appreciate the beauty of traditional prayers like the Rosary, as well as the importance of petitionary prayer. But there’s a lot more to prayer than just these specific aspects. Prayer is, in a nutshell, time spent with God: talking to Him, listening to Him, being present to Him, even just going about your day with the awareness that He is there with you. Pretty much anything you say or do can be a prayer if you offer it up to God and your intention is to glorify Him through it.
WHY IS PRAYER IMPORTANT?
As with human relationships, the quality of our relationship with God depends on how much time we spend with Him. In human relationships, there are many ways you can communicate with people, and many things you can do together to invest in each other: talking, listening, sharing meals or going out for coffee, running random errands together, writing cards, sending cute texts, watching movies, being out in nature, asking for and giving help, and sharing vulnerably about yourself and what’s happening in your life. Different people gravitate towards different forms of communication, but as a general rule, the more lines of communication you have in a relationship and the more time you spend together, the better that relationship is.
Our relationship with God works in the same way, and our prayer life is the means by which we communicate with Him and spend time with Him. The more time we spend in prayer and the more we engage in different types of prayer, the stronger our relationship with Him will be. Since God is the source of all love, goodness and joy, it makes sense that our relationship with Him is what sustains all our other relationships and enables us to experience love, goodness and joy in our own lives.
I find that whenever I haven’t prayed for a day or two, I start to feel really depressed and I find it much harder to love the people around me as they deserve to be loved. But when I’m committed to my prayer life and I’m seeking God throughout every day, then regardless of whether I’m having an easy day or a hard one, everything makes a little bit more sense and I feel much more at peace with myself and others. Right before I joined Youth Mission Team, one of my close family relationships broke down, leaving me with a lot of grief and anger as I prepared to move to Sydney. Then I spent a few hours with God in adoration, and I asked Him how this could have happened to me. I felt Him say that no matter what this other person had done, He still loved me and would watch over me throughout the year. Although that didn’t change my family situation, it was enough to reassure me that I was in the right place and doing the right thing, and I had the confidence to entrust my year to God, and to entrust my family to Him while I was away from home – and that made all the difference.
TYPES OF PRAYER
There are as many ways to pray as there are people on this earth, and each of us will have our own unique way of communicating with God and giving Him glory. However, there are many common prayers and practices that have been handed down over the centuries, just as there are many established forms of human communication and many different activities that we have in common. Each of these different types of prayer has their own surrounding theology and application and traditions, and different people are naturally drawn to different types of prayer at different times in life. So don’t worry if there are some types of prayer that everyone raves about but you don’t particularly find useful; there will always be some form of prayer that works for you in your current stage of life, and it may change as you get older, so just keep trying as many different types of prayer as you can, and expand your prayer life with something new here and there as you see fit.
At the end of the article I have listed my thoughts/experiences on 11 different types of prayer to get you started!
BUILDING YOUR OWN PRAYER LIFE
So you’ve found a few different types of prayer that appeal to you, but how do you actually build up your prayer life?
Like I said before, the key to any good relationship is time. So the more time you spend with God, the better. But relationships are also about balance. A good relationship involves a healthy balance of different activities and lines of communication: sometimes you and your friends do fun activities together, sometimes you have serious D&Ms, and sometimes you just hang out together in comfortable silence. Additionally, you have to balance all the different relationships in your life so that you’re investing in everyone as much as you need to.
So it is with God. You want to spend time with Him, and you want your prayer life to involve a good mix of different types of prayer: prayer by yourself and prayer with others, sacramental prayer (Mass, adoration and Reconciliation), reading the scriptures, journaling, or whatever else you want to throw into the mix. A good rule of thumb I like to use is to take the five love languages, which are so important in human relationships, and see how I can use them to love God through my prayer life. For example:
Words of affirmation: Praise God for His greatness and thank Him for His blessings.
Physical touch: Receive Jesus in the Eucharist.
Acts of service: Ask God how you can serve Him by serving others.
Gift-giving: Surrender your own desires to God and ask how you can give your time, talents, and treasures back to Him.
Quality time: ...Pretty much any form of prayer covers this one, haha.
If you’re looking to add a new component to your prayer routine but you have trouble remembering to commit to it each day, I recommend setting an alarm on your phone, or asking someone to be your accountability partner, or training your brain to associate certain cues (like getting on a train or a bus) with the particular prayer you have in mind. Just take it one day at a time and do your best to stay committed, and God will commit to you in return.
If you have any questions, feel free to post them here or message the YMT instagram – or just ask an MGL priest, brother or sister because they probably know more than me...
But keep building up your prayer life, and I can promise you you’ll begin to see the fruits. Godspeed!
The Rosary
I used to hate the Rosary when I was growing up, but I’ve really warmed up to it over time, especially when praying it with friends. There are many different ways of praying it, and I reckon anyone can find a way of praying it that appeals to them. This is just as well, for it may be the most highly recommended form of prayer besides attending Mass, and the fruits of praying it are abundant. So I highly recommend getting around it and making it your own; maybe you like praying it alone, maybe you like praying with friends. Maybe you like to sing it instead of speaking it. Maybe you have particular prayers you like to tack on the end, or different ways of reflecting on the mysteries, or different saints you like to pray it with. Maybe you like to offer up each Hail Mary for an individual intention. Maybe you like to pray it in the car or while walking.
Personally, I love that each of the mysteries is associated with a different fruit, so I like to choose a set of mysteries based on which fruits I want to pray for. For example, the fruits of the joyful mysteries are humility (Annunciation), charity (Visitation), spiritual poverty (Nativity), obedience (Presentation), and finding Jesus in our lives (Finding Jesus in the temple) – all of which are pretty crucial to Team life, so I pray the joyful mysteries often.
The Examen
This prayer honestly changed my life, especially on Team. Based on the teachings of Ignatius of Loyola, this daily examination of conscience consists of five steps:
1) Ask the Holy Spirit for help
2) Thank God for the blessings received throughout the day
3) Review your day (or a significant event within your day) and examine whether your thoughts and actions were moving towards God or away from Him
4) Ask pardon for your sins
5) Make a resolution for tomorrow
If you pray this every day for a few weeks, you’ll start to notice patterns that can help you to grow in virtue and learn to hear God’s voice in your life. I like to pray the Examen each night before bed, and I use my journal to write down my reflections as I go, which keeps my thoughts on track and keeps me awake until I finish.
Mental prayer
This is a blanket term for any sort of free-form conversation that you have with God inside your mind. I like to spend as much time as I can in mental prayer throughout the day, just thanking God for random things as they happen, or asking for help, or offering things up to Him, or even just saying “God, here’s what I’m thinking about this at the moment...” It’s a very useful way of reminding yourself that He is with you in every moment, and of staying close to Him when things get tough. You can also do this through journaling if you prefer; I find it helps me stay focused, and it’s nice to reread my conversations with the Lord as I continue on the journey.
Praise and worship
This is a favourite for many of us, because we naturally find it easier to enjoy music than silence. I really like praise and worship as an easy way to remember to praise God and thank Him, rather than just asking Him for things all the time. It’s also nice to find specific praise songs that speak to where I’m at on the journey, and to use them as a more repetitive and contemplative form of prayer, e.g. singing the same line a few times and dwelling on what it really means for me in my current season.
Chaplet of Divine Mercy
This prayer is great for the middle of the day because it’s short but packs a powerful punch. As with the Rosary, there are many traditions and promises surrounding the Divine Mercy chaplet, but I just love it for the line in the concluding prayer that goes, “That in difficult moments we may not despair nor become despondent, but with great confidence submit ourselves to Your holy will, which is love and mercy itself.” I used to pray the Divine Mercy chaplet at 3pm every day, and every day without fail, 3pm would come around and I’d be in the middle of something and I wouldn’t want to stop and pray. But I’d do it anyway, and I would get to that line at the end and instantly my entire mind and body would relax completely, and I’d go into the rest of my day feeling much more peaceful and organised.
Creative prayer
Many of us enjoy using our creative gifts, and I think it’s important to remember that writing, drawing, playing music, and other such activities can be a form of prayer if we’re intentional in creating things that will glorify God through their beauty – for God is the source of all beauty, and all beautiful things reflect Him in some way. I love creative prayer because it helps me connect with the image of God as the Master Artist, and to see myself through His eyes as His greatest work of art.
Ignatian Contemplation
For those of you who have a visual imagination, this type of prayer is a great way of engaging with the scriptures. All you have to do is pick a story from the Bible, read it a few times, then imagine yourself as one of the characters in the story. How do you interact with God? How does He interact with you? What is He saying to you through the story? If you’ve never tried it before, you may be surprised how God will speak to you through this. You can even combine this form of prayer with a Rosary, and use your imagination to contemplate the mysteries as you pray each decade.
Litanies and novenas
If ever you have a specific intention, a really nice way of doing petitionary prayer is to google whether there’s a particular litany, saint, or novena associated with that intention, and then to pray with that for a few days, perhaps with a group of friends. I try to pray the Litany of Humility every day, and I’m also a big fan of the Litany to the Blessed Virgin. On my first year of Team, my sisterhood really liked novenas, so we used to look for a saint that would match our intention, then look for a traditional prayer to that saint, and then we’d pray that for nine days. A cool way of keeping track is to get nine candles and light one for each day of your novena – and it helps you remember to pray if you keep the candles somewhere visible.
The Divine Office
This is the universal prayer of the Church, which we pray every night on Team. Basically, it’s just a group of people chanting the psalms together. It can be prayed at any point during the day, and is a really wholesome form of common prayer. You can find it through several apps and websites. Get a group of your friends together and try it sometime!
The Armour of God
This is another Team classic, and is notable for its scriptural basis (Ephesians 6: 10-18) and physical gestures. It can feel a bit silly sometimes, but that’s good for cultivating humility – and besides, we are bodily creatures, so it makes sense that we should pray with our actions as well as our words. I try to pray this at the beginning of each day, and especially entering into stressful situations, as I find it helps me to feel the Lord’s protection in a very tangible way.
Prayer to St Michael the Archangel
If you don’t tack this bad boy onto the end of every Rosary you pray, you’re doing yourself a disservice. The St Michael prayer is an absolute banger, and a constant reminder of the spiritual battle that each of us faces every day. Invoke St Michael’s protection at every chance you get, and you’ll soon start to feel the difference.
Eilidh is from Hobart, but has also lived in Canberra, Radelaide, and Houston. She studied English, psychology and journalism at UTAS, and worked in the newsroom at ABC News Hobart before serving on YMT Sydney in 2019. Eilidh enjoys hats, anime, volleyball, The Wiggles (the originals not the new ones), creative writing and choccy milk. She is currently serving on YMT Perth.