- The faithful among us often learn to pray as children.

We ask for things.

We might even say thank you sometimes.

But today's guest asks what it would mean to pray like adults?

And offers insights about faith and public life, and even the challenges to democracy.

He's Father James Martin, this week on "Story in the Public Square".

(gentle music) Hello, and welcome to "Story in the Public Square", where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller with The Providence Journal.

- This week, we're joined by the Reverend James Martin S J, a Jesuit priest, editor at large of America Magazine, and the author of several books, including "Learning to Pray: A Guide for Everyone," which was published earlier this year.

Father Martin, thank you so much for being with us.

- My pleasure, thanks for inviting me.

- So we mentioned the book is phenomenal, "Learning to Pray: A Guide for Everyone."

For the audience, can you just give us the 30,000 foot overview?

- Sure, it's an introduction to prayer for, as the subtitle says, everyone, and it's basically directed at people who think that they can't pray, that their prayer is not fruitful, that nothing happens when they pray and so it talks about various ways to pray and probably the heart of the book is what happens when you pray, which is a source of great mystery to people.

So, it's an attempt to really make prayer accessible for everybody.

- So maybe most foundationally, when we say pray, what is prayer?

- Well, that's a great question.

I have about 10 definitions in the book from different people.

The one I came up with that I like, that I've settled on, is prayer is a conscious conversation with God.

So it's a back and forth.

It includes things like petitionary prayer, and of course, rote prayers that we're familiar with, like the Our Father and the Hail Mary, if you're Catholic.

But it also includes listening to where God is active in your prayer.

I talk about the different kinds of things that come up in prayer that are ways that God has of communicating with us in our daily lives as well, but it's a back and forth, it's a conversation with God.

- So why do people pray and can anyone pray?

- Anyone can pray and there are probably as many reasons as there are believers, but the main reason that people pray is to be in a relationship with God, to encounter God.

Of course, people pray in times of need, people pray out of gratitude.

But again, you know, there are multiple reasons to pray.

I would say the primary reason is being in a relationship with God.

- So can you give sort of a historical overview of prayer?

Prayer is not a new phenomenon or new practice.

It's ancient, really.

If you can give us an overview, I think that would put this in really good context.

- Sure, it's a bit of a tall order, but I would say that people have been praying ever since that they've been aware of God's presence in their lives.

We have, you know, all the way back in the Old Testament in the Hebrew scriptures.

We have the Psalms, people have been praying.

You know, you have Abraham praying asking God for something.

Moses prays.

So, it reaches far, far back for Christians.

Jesus is the exemplar of prayer.

He prays many times in the gospels, and in fact, the Gospel of Luke is called the Gospel of Prayer.

And then, you have the great monastic traditions of the monks praying and it's hard to sort of sum up all the spiritualities of prayer, but I would say in every age, people have had to, in a sense, re-appropriate it and that's why in the book I talk about lots of different definitions for prayer, you know, from the fourth century monk, Saint John Damascene, who said that, "prayer was a raising of the mind and heart to God", to Saint Teresa of Avila, the Carmelite nun, who said, "that it was a sharing between friends", sort of a mutual sharing, to a 20th century, Jesuit priest named Walter Burghardt, who called it, "a long, loving look at the real".

So it's the same thing throughout the centuries.

It's just defined a little differently, I would say, but it's the same and it's because it's the same God that we're in relationship with.

- Father, so I found myself moved at several different passages in the book.

One in particular that struck me was you described longing as a type of prayer, longing for God's presence in our lives as a type of prayer, and I can remember having a conversation, I went to Providence College, go Friars, and a Dominican priest and I had a conversation once about that feeling of, I had a period in my college years where I felt absent from God, and I remember him reassuring me that that sense of absence and that sense of longing was actually God's voice reaching out to me.

When you wrote about that, I found that particularly moving.

Can you elaborate a little bit on that sense of longing?

- Yeah, thanks, and I'm glad you liked it and I agree with what he said, that advice to you.

The idea is basically that all of us have a longing for God.

Now, what does that mean?

I mean, how do we experience that?

Well, we have a desire for something more, right, is that all there is?

There's a desire to know God.

There's a desire to sort of understand the meaning of life.

And as Saint Augustan said, "our hearts are restless until they rest in you".

And so there's a natural desire for God.

I talk about that in the book a lot.

And one of the key insights in the spiritual life that help people begin is that that desire, that longing, that sense of emptiness, what one spiritual writer called, "the God-shaped hole", is really God's way of drawing you closer.

So the desire for God is God's way of attracting you, in a sense.

How else would God work in our spiritual lives, other than through that attraction?

And so one of the great quotes I love, I saw it on a retreat house wall at a retreat house in New Jersey, which was, "that which you seek is seeking you".

And so the very desire for God is God's desire for you.

And once people sort of are open to that suggestion, it really opens up their spiritual life because they realize it's not simply their curiosity, as important as that is, it's God's call, it's an invitation.

And so in that case then prayer becomes a response to that invitation.

- So you have an entire chapter on this in your great book, but what happens when we pray?

What happens to our minds, our souls, or in our spirits?

What happens?

- Well, it's a great question and I'm always glad to be asked because it's so mysterious that when you read a lot of books on prayer, they talk about, oh, when you feel close to God or when God communicates with you, or when you feel lifted up and I remember as the Jesuit novice reading that and thinking, what are you talking about?

Like, what does that mean?

Like, do I hear voices or do I see visions?

Or I don't know what that means.

And so one of the things I talk about in the book is just that question, what happens when you pray?

And for example, emotions come up, feelings of joy, sadness, desires, you know, the desire to live a holier life, feelings like calm, insights, you know, an intellectual insight is a very important fruit of prayer.

Memories and memory can be a gift from God.

Words and phrases sometimes come up, right?

Very sort of brief words and phrases, or even mystical experiences.

So it's important to encourage people to see that those kinds of things that happen in prayer are ways that God has of communicating.

Otherwise, people sit down with the best of intentions, "I wanna pray about this Bible passage", or "I want to pray for help, you know, from God", or "I just want to be at peace", and they don't know what's supposed to happen and the key is when something does happen, they think, "oh, it's just some distraction".

And one of the lines I like is from a Jesuit friend of mine who died about three or four years ago, actually quite young, he used to say that, "people have these experiences, but they're not encouraged to talk about them".

Isn't that great?

I mean, everyone has these experiences in prayer in our daily lives, but there are a few, sometimes they're not encouraged to look at them and to take them seriously.

They think it's just a distraction or the right thing is not happening in my prayer life.

But these are the kinds of things that come up regularly in people's prayer.

And it's the way that God has of communicating with them.

- So, you know, in thinking about this, what came to mind was meditation.

And of course there's, as you know, there's a long tradition in meditation, in certain religions, I'm thinking of in particular of Buddhism.

Is there any relationship between prayer as we are discussing it in this conversation and meditation, as people who are, you know, adherence to Buddhism practice their meditation?

- Sure.

And I think you'll find, and you probably have found that different spiritual writers use these three words in different ways, prayer, meditation, contemplation.

And what one writer means by meditation, the other one is talking about contemplation, the other one is talking about prayer.

I, the way I look at it as this, you know, there are many people who meditate, right, as you say, Buddhist, and even people who are non-believers, they meditate, they're quiet, they meditate on their lives.

They might feel a sense of oneness with the world or with the universe.

Prayer, as I understand it, it's a little different, it has an object and that object is God.

It's about a relationship.

So, you know, a lot of atheists and agnostics, you know, practice meditation and yoga and things like that.

But prayer, I would say, strictly speaking, is an encounter with God.

You know, there's another person in the conversation and that's not to disparage or diminish meditation, it's just to say that for the believer, it's about the relationship.

- Talk about unanswered prayers.

I mean, I think many people pray hoping for something, you know, whether it be, you know, relief from a disease, whether it be, you know, help for a loved one, they ask there's an ask in, in prayer.

And, and sometimes those prayers are not answered.

Talk about that.

- Yeah.

Another good question and another reason why some people stop praying.

They stop believing because they asked for something that's good.

Right?

You know, someone to be healed from some illness, you know, especially a child or something and it doesn't happen.

And, you know, so I, I look at some of the traditional answers like, well, God is giving you something better.

Right?

You asked for something that God's giving you something better, which, you know, in some cases that is true.

But if you're talking about a child and the child dies, you can't say to the parent, "no, God is just giving you something better".

That's, that's monstrous.

And it's, it's, it's sort of as a strange image of God or God answers your prayers, but God says, "No", you know, again, let's, let's, let's look at a child who's sick.

You know, that, that also makes God out to be almost a sadist.

God answers our prayers and we have to sort of discern what the answer is.

Well, you know, these, you know, sometimes these things are, are accurate.

But I think that the most honest answer and the most sort of theologically grounded answer is that we don't know, you know we don't know why some prayers seem to go unanswered.

And I think the invitation though, for the believer, is to believe in a God, you know, who we don't understand.

I mean, I prayed for many things that, you know, have not happened.

I mean, my father died in 2001 of lung cancer and I prayed that he would get better and he didn't and he died.

So, but I'm still in relationship with God.

Right?

I don't, I'm not saying that that's the end of the relationship.

Because it is ultimately about the relationship and not about whether or not I get what I want.

So, but that doesn't mean you can't ask.

I mean part of being in an honest relationship with God is being open and honest about what you desire.

Cause that's, that's the flip side of this.

A lot of people say, well, I can't ask for anything because it's selfish because there are people who need things more than I do.

Of course there's people who need things more than you do, but you can still ask.

That's part of being in an honest relationship.

- I want to ask you about, you touched on this a little bit previously, but one of the things that I found really enlightening about this book was the notion that when we pray, we should also listen because I, I think that, you know, the early days of the internet, it was always about, look, get your website out there and put that stuff out there.

Then we started talking about web 2.0 was actually using the internet to listen back.

I started thinking about this as sort of like prayer 2.0, because it's not just me talking to God, it's listening to God speak back to me.

Can you elaborate a little bit on that?

How do we know that God is talking to us?

And it's not just, you know, us imagining what we, what we, what we want to hear the response be?

- Yeah.

Another good question.

And I think it's, it's, it's part of the relationship because of all you're doing is talking at God, imagine a relationship like that with a friend?

I always use the example of going out to dinner.

So you went out to dinner with a friend of yours and all you did was talk, talk, talk, talk, ask, ask, ask, which is fine, I mean, because part of the relationship is you talking, I mean that makes sense.

If you never talked or never shared something, it would be odd, but if you never listened, it would be a kind of a one-sided relationship and a rather strange one.

But that's the way that a lot of people, you know, sort of approach their relationship with God.

What does it mean to listen in prayer?

Again, it does not mean hearing voices or seeing visions.

It means, first of all, being attentive to what's going on in your daily life, you know, where are you encountering God in your daily life?

You know, where is God reaching out to you through friends, through, through family, through nature, through insights, where, where are you feeling God's presence?

God's healing touch, God's consolation?

In prayer, it is a little more difficult, but it is looking at those things I mentioned before, desires, emotions, insights, memories, feelings, words, and phrases, mystical experiences, and then discerning, does this make sense?

So, for example, if you are praying in a very stressful time and you read the 23rd Psalm, the Lord is my Shepherd, and in the middle of this stressful time, you feel this tremendous sense of calm.

And you feel that God is your shepherd and that God will take care of you and you feel uplifted and you feel a sense of peace.

You know, it's not unreasonable to think that this is one way God has of communicating with you.

Now, if you're a reading about the 23rd Psalm and suddenly you get this image of, you know, I have to go and eat a hamburger, you know, that that may be, you're just hungry.

It doesn't mean God has given you this image of a hamburger for, to do what to like distract you from the prayer.

So part of it's discernment, but, but in my experience, I've been a spiritual director for about 20 years, I would say 99% of people can really judge and discern well, what's coming from God and what's not, you know, what's a distraction.

And, and some of the questions they asked in the book are, does it fit with what we know about God?

Does it make sense to you in your life?

Does it lead to an increase of love and charity, right?

Does it fit with what we know for Christians about Jesus?

Is it long lasting?

So there are ways of discerning, I think that are, you know, so example the example of, you know, feeling at peace or thinking about a hamburger, most people can determine what's coming from God and what's coming from their stomach.

But it's true because not every, not everything that pops into your mind is from God, obviously.

- So I, you know, I want to be, honest about something.

In preparing for this conversation.

I found myself a little antsy.

I've, I've always considered myself faithful, but it's personal to me and I think I'm uncomfortable talking about matters of faith in a public setting, even if I'm just doing the interviewing.

So, I want to go with a, a bigger, broader question and ask you what is the appropriate role of faith and prayer in public life?

- Well, we bring our faith into the public square.

I'm Christian, I'm a Catholic, I'm a Jesuit priest.

And that comes with a certain constellation of beliefs, right?

Especially centered on Jesus and what Jesus asks us to do.

In that, I'm joined with people from the Jewish tradition and Muslim tradition in terms of God and worship.

But I think part of it is also respecting where the other person comes from as well.

We do not live in a Catholic country.

We don't live in a Christian country.

I mean, there, most people are Christian, but it's not a theocracy and it's not, it's not run by a religious organization.

And so it's also being attentive to other people's voices.

And also as the second Vatican Council said, for the Catholic Church, "to reject nothing, that is good and true in other religions".

So for example, you know, I mean, I frequently, you know, in different venues talk about Christian values and Catholic values, but I don't expect everyone to ascribe to them.

And I have to listen to what other voices are telling me from various religious traditions.

So you have to do it with a with a great degree of humility, but also with confidence too, right?

That this is you it's, it you're proposing things, right.

This is how I look at things and hopefully people listen.

- So religion and exclusionary politics seem increasingly intertwined around the world.

And even of course in America.

What is driving that union for lack of a better word?

How have these two become so closely allied?

And maybe also you can give a historical overview here too, because this is certainly not the first period in history when this has been true.

- Well, I mean, for, for a great deal of history, the church and the state were united, right?

I mean, you had the, you know, you have, I mean, all sorts of examples of, you know, that the Pope crowning the Holy Roman Emperor, and I mean, the church and state were united and so one of the sort of values of the enlightenment was to decouple those things.

And the church and state and church and government should not be united in that way.

I think what's happened today is that various religious forces have aligned with various political forces and not always for the best intentions.

And they've put themselves out there.

I mean, both the religious forces and the political forces as this is God's will, right?

So God's will, is this God's will, is in this party.

And I think it's especially dangerous because if you say that God is on this side or that side of a political party, I mean, God is on everybody's side.

And, in fact, if God is on anybody's side, as we see from the Old Testament and the New Testament, God's on the side of the poor and the marginalized, if we're going to say which side does God choose, right.

God "hears the cry of the poor", as the Psalm says.

And so it's very dangerous, I think, to say that, you know, God is on my side and if you vote this party or that party, you know, you're not voting according to God's will, and that's really dangerous.

And it's also dangerous for churches to align themselves because they split their congregations.

So it's, it's dangerous for about a million different reasons.

As, as we see, as we see.

The other thing is, look, I mean, I always say that there are crazy people and there are there are crazy religious people.

And the crazy religious people are crazier than the crazy people, because they feel like they have God on their side.

- So how do you counter this?

I mean, these are powerful forces, however they arise, they're here and they're powerful.

Maybe there's a political answer to this, but there's maybe an answer involving prayer too?

- And father.

I just want to maybe focus it a little bit.

I mean, you've written about this dynamic playing out with the run-up to the January 6th insurrection, but you've also written about this relative to the position that some religious leaders took in the lead up to election day, where they characterized Democrats as being the party of death and the party of evil because of their stance on abortion rights.

- Yeah.

Well, one of the things to say very simply, is to say that neither party has a lock on Christian values.

I mean, you could, you could say that, you know, the Democrats are, you know, put forth, which is true, a pro-abortion policy, which is against Catholic teaching.

You could also say the Republicans put forth the pro death penalty policy and a pro keep the migrants and immigrants out, which is also against Catholic teaching.

So no one party has a lock on Catholic teaching.

No one party is aligned with God.

And so one of the things to do simply is to point out the fallacies of those arguments.

And I think it's pretty simple to do.

I mean, when one party says we have it all, you know, we're the party of God.

We're the party of Jesus.

You say, well, "gee, what about how you treat the poor, or migrants and refugees or the sick?

Or how do you care for people in the inner city"?

"Oh, well, that doesn't matter".

Well, actually Jesus talked a lot about the poor.

Why is that any less important?

So it's, I think gently pointing out the flaws in that argument.

But again, it's when you feel like you have God on your side, then you by definition can do no wrong.

And so that's another danger.

- You mention, pro-choice politicians who are Catholic and there are some bishops, including our Bishop here in Providence, Bishop Thomas Tobin, who say that, "Those people should not be allowed communion".

Where do you stand on that?

And why?

- Well, I don't want to challenge a Bishop and I'm just a Jesuit priest.

So I'm not a Bishop, but I would say that, you know, one of Pope Francis' lines always comes back to me, which is, "the Eucharist is not a prize for the perfect.

It's medicine for the sick".

And if we are going to look at, in a sense, excluding various politicians and people, right, not just politicians, from communion, then we have to look at people who do all sorts of things.

People who support the death penalty, people who are against refugees and migrants, people who don't go to mass every Sunday, people who are cruel, people who are not forgiving, people who are not loving, people who don't care for the environment.

People will say, well, these are life and death issues.

Well, in that case, then look at people who support the death penalty or people who support various wars, right?

Or people who do not support policies that help people, you know live, right?

I mean, in terms of, you know, providing social services for people where people die.

So it's, it's much more complex than just the one issue.

And in fact, Pope Francis that said other issues in addition to abortion are, and other lives that we're looking at are "equally sacred".

So he's pretty clear, the Pope has been pretty clear about not singling out one issue and certainly not using the Eucharist as a weapon, which I think unfortunately, people can interpret that.

As you know, it's happening right now.

- Father, we've got about less than three minutes left in this episode.

I feel like we could talk to you for a week.

But, you've long been a leader in the Catholic church's outreach to members of the LGBTQ plus community, and there's a long history there, but I'm wondering, where does that community stand in the Catholic church today?

- Well, they stand inside the Catholic church because they're baptized Catholics.

So they're as much Catholic as much as Pope Francis as your local Bishop, as me.

They're baptized and so they're Catholic.

They often, however, are treated like they're dirt.

And they are, I think they're probably the most marginalized group in the church.

Because about no other group do we say, "oh well they're they're sinners and so, they can't be a part of it".

We don't say that about divorced and remarried Catholics.

We don't say that about Catholics who use birth control.

We don't say that about Catholics, who don't, who don't go to mass every Sunday.

We don't, I mean, there's on and on and on.

No Catholic's life fully encompasses church teaching.

And yet it is the LGBTQ person who was made to feel that way almost exclusively.

And so they really are persecuted, I think within the church, marginalized, really treated like dirt.

And one of the reasons I'm participating in this Ministry with many of the people, is to remind people that the way that Jesus treated people who were, who felt like they were on the margins, is by going to them first and welcoming them.

And so this Ministry is really about reminding them and reminding the church that they are Catholic.

They are as much a part of the church as anybody is.

- You are an extremely accomplished storyteller.

And thanks for coming on "Story in the Public Square", to tell some of your story.

Can you speak in general about the power of storytelling?

Not necessarily, you can include of course religion, but just in general, the power of telling stories.

- You got about 35 seconds Father.

- Sure.

I would say arguments and debates close minds down, but stories open minds up.

And there's a reason that Jesus taught in a parable.

When he was asked, who is my neighbor?

He doesn't offer a PowerPoint presentation of the 10 points that make up a neighbor.

He tells the story of the good Samaritan.

And so, you know, Jesus tells parables and in a sense, Jesus, who's real, was a kind of story told by God.

People said, "what is God like?

", and God tells the story of Jesus.

So Jesus, in a sense is the parable of God.

- That's wonderful.

- Father, thank you so much for being with us.

The book, "Learning to Pray", is available now, and it is an inspiring read.

Thank you again.

That is all the time we have this week, but if you want to know more about, "Story in the Public Square", you can find us on Facebook and Twitter or visit pellcenter.org, where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

For G Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes, asking you to join us again next time, for more "Story in the Public Square".

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