praying without words is the best prayer

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     “For many years after my conversion,” he admits, “I never used any ready-made forms except the Lord’s Prayer. In fact I tried to pray without words at all—not to verbalize the mental acts. Even in praying for others I tended to avoid their names and substituted mental images of them. I still think that the prayer without words is the best—if one can really achieve it.”

     ...All this is consistent with Lewis’ earlier observations, that much of prayer is really a disposition of heart that is in tune with God’s presence in one’s life, so that the more our hearts are in tune with and obedient toward God, the less fuss do we need to make about how vocal and articulate we are in “saying our prayers”; provided, of course, that we do not succumb to merely having “warm feelings” or vaguely imaginative thoughts we mistake for real communion with God. This will always demand the most rigorous attentiveness and serious intent to be called real prayer.

     A child tends to relate to God, as he relates with his parents. This correlation, unless corrected and healed, may persist, unconsciously so, throughout life.

     “Has any theologian (perhaps dozens) allegorized St. Mary Magdalene’s act in the following way, which came to me like a flash of lightning the other day!...The precious alabaster box which we have to break over the holy feet is her heart. It seems so obvious, once one has thought of it.” So Lewis had come to see that prayer grows in the breaking of the human heart before God.

     Francis de Sales might also have helped him when he advises that in meditation, “place yourself in the presence of God.” In honest humility, Lewis also learnt to see that at prayer one is in a more “real” situation than ever one could be in the “real world.” Prayer is the struggle to come to grips with “rock-bottom realities.” Prayer, then is the struggle for the “real I” to meet with the reality of God. Prayer then is saying, “may it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to.” This is the prayer that precedes all prayers. Then, as the great Iconoclast, God in his mercy may shatter all our false ideas and conceptions of him, that so hinder our real prayer in life.

     Wisely then, Lewis argues that it is a wrong kind of question to ask, “Does prayer work?” It misleads us about the true nature of prayer. The quiet composure of heart before God rests in a relationship that is deeper, far deeper than words can ever express. This is where Lewis so clearly rested, and explains why so little need be said really about prayer. It is to be experienced rather than superficially talked about.