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BE STILL, DAILY TIME OUT
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SITUATED PRAYER
By Father Michael Paul Gallagher S.J.
How then can we build a bridge between a quiet prayer of presence and this fidelity to the gospel in the small choices of each day? The best answer I know lies in a renewal of the old idea of an examination of conscience, making it a prayer of awareness rooted in the concrete realities of this day. In this way it can be a prayerful pause for the paraclete, where I become conscious of the flow of the day I am living, and with the spirit adjust the compass of the heart.
Suppose you have a break in the middle of the day when you leave work and walk to some place to eat. With a little practice, you can use this time (preferably ten minutes or more) for ‘situated prayer’. By this I mean a prayerful glance through the hours you have just lived. Notice the mood that dominates. Ask to see your attitudes as following or as resisting the calls of the Spirit. Give thanks for what was generous or in tune with Christ. Recognize humbly the moments when you became ‘driven’ or harsh, or out of tune with the gospel.
It’s not a question of judging or blaming. It’s not mainly a question of external behaviour. It’s more like a musician striking a tuning for to check that the instrument is really in tune, and to retune the strings that are not. It’s more a matter of ‘quality control’ of your responses to what has happened today. Because in everything you have been responding (or not) to the promptings of the Spirit of Jesus.
But there is a battle zone that takes place within my attitudes. Have I been living with that simplicity and trust that Jesus speaks of and that he embodies? Or have I let myself forget and fall into some of my sub-Christian ways? If so, I ask healing for this forgetfulness. I ask freedom from this false tone and for reattunement in his Way. Because Christ is that tuning fork.
Crucial to this situated prayer is not only looking back, but ‘praying forward’ so to speak. What of the rest of this day? What do you foresee? Just as you can quickly scan the past few hours, so the imagination can zoom through the coming events. You pause on where you find some danger. In such and such a situation, you could respond ‘out of tune’. You ask for guidance, for wisdom, but praying about the concrete scene that you foresee, or about the people you may have to meet, and so on.
The purpose of this bridging prayer is very simple. The main fruit lies in a quality of heart and attitude that can guide your living and ministry. And so you respond to the Lord in the daily struggle of reality, even when you cannot think directly of him. You learn to ‘do the truth’ (John 3:21), but in the smallness of the daily.
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