Our Prayer Life Poem by Daniel Brick

for Mark

When we were children we played
a game, placing our palms together,
fingers pointing upward in a familiar
gesture for praying, we chanted,
"See the church, see the steeple."
Then opening our hands and wagging
our fingers, we shouted, "Open the door,
See all the people! " When the nuns
watching over us saw this routine,
they reminded us to pray, but they
were smiling too. We were assembled
in the front six pews, facing the altar
and the celebrant, kneeling or standing,
as the ritual would have it. We responded
to the priest's sacred words with equally
sacred words, and miracles happened on cue.
But did we really pray in our hearts?
How do children learn to pray, body and
soul united and fiercely focused on Jesus?

Does prayer gradually increase in power
and awareness until it permeates
every fiber within a child's soul? Until
a parent is startled when her daughter
says, "Mommy, I'm glad Jesus loves me."
Until a father finds his son reading
the Bible on a Saturday afternoon,
and the two of them talk about EXODUS
as if it were part of their family's
story. And they feel Moses, Joshua
and Deborah watching over them
in a community of prayer...
And somewhere nearby a man alone
is assailed by doubt, his mind clouded,
access to his soul blocked. Then he reads
in the psalm, "Taste and see the goodness
of the Lord, " and he rejoices, because
his journey back from doubt to faith
is almost over. He recites favorite prayers
and they reach the depths of his soul,
where Jesus awaits him under the Sign of the Cross.

The signs that signal it is time to pray
are everywhere, because everywhere is blessed
with divine presence. In a recent but eternal
Sunday service, the pastor, having already closed
the event with a blessing and a mission, stood
at the edge of the sanctuary, speaking
with a parishioner, when another brushed past them,
in a trance of prayer, anxious to kneel. He was summoned
by something inside him and someone outside him.
He bowed his head until it touched the sacred floor,
and he was one with his prayer. A million words
of theology could not have explained better what faith
is than his prayerful example. He knelt there,
a man redeemed and grateful. The children sing,
"See the church... See all the people, " and
it already their first prayer on the road to redemption.