How did St Francis pray and how might we pray?
St Paul tells us in Romans 8:26, the Apostle Paul says: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”
I am always trying new techniques and methods, Ignatian, Marian, Centering. I am not sure I am the master of any of them or if I have found a method which really works for me in the sort of consistent way which we see reflected in the lives of some of the saints.
I am discovering that Francis helps. Not in the sense of providing a roadmap for a day by day ascent to the high mansions, or a systematic method which can be written down on the back of a piece of paper, or read about in extensive detail. Francis himself appears to have been a somewhat “unmethodical” prayer, if only in the sense that he did not leave us with Spiritual Exercises or extensive rules and writings about his prayer. He liked to spend hours in prayer, liked to do so in places of remoteness, liked to pray during the night. In short, the absence of a Franciscan prayer textbook can be somewhat explained by his clear preference for praying rather than writing about prayer.
I have always been struck by his prayer: Who are you Lord and who am I? It is a “mantra” which I am finding helpful as an entry to prayer. One way to raise our hearts and minds to God is to return again and again to the mystery and infinite depth of his Presence from a place of desire and search, an almost blind groping or feeling towards Him. The Dutch and Germans have a great verb for this: “tasten”. This posture in prayer is a way of listening because it ask God to reveal himself rather than grasping at an understanding. I hope to persist in this posture as a way of following in the footsteps of St Francis.