Pray as you can, not as you want
The second of Fr. Thomas Hopko’s 55 Maxims for Christian living is, pray as you can, not as you want. There is much wisdom in these words. It should be obvious that Christians are meant to pray. Anyone serious about being a Christian will spend time in prayer, but sometimes we fail in our lives of prayer simply by taking on too much or too little when it comes to prayer. You may be thinking to yourself right now, “of course one could pray too little, but how can one pray too much? Didn’t St. Paul tell his disciples to pray without ceasing?”
I would dare say that most of us probably do fall into the category of not spending enough time in prayer, but there is also another danger and that is the danger of not knowing ourselves well enough to know what prayer best fits our current life situation. I, for example, love when I can get away for a few days to St. Meinrad Monastery for the quiet and simplicity which is lived there. When I am there, it is great to be able to pray the hours of the day with the monastic community, but were I to try to do so here in the parish it would be a total failure. My role as pastor is much too active and my responsibilities to those I serve would be hurt by trying to observe a rule of prayer that is not my own.
Our call as Christians is simply to pray, not to look to what others are doing, but to pay attention to where it is God is calling us to be. Some of the next few maxims will deal with some more specifics of how to pray, but first we must accept this first maxim which calls us only to do what we are able and then to be satisfied that it is enough.
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