St. Anthony Messenger: Praying without Words

How do I begin writing about prayer when I have not felt like praying?

It’s not that I’m angry at God. It’s not that I’m indifferent to prayer. But sometimes there’s a heaviness to suffering that only silence can hold. There are times when words fall short. Instead of rising from my lips, as my prayers once did, now they sink like stones, collecting on the ocean floor of my family’s pain. The tide betrays a rocky shore, remnants of my efforts, all those sunken words. In the morning, I’ll cast them into the ocean again. Grief, in this sense, is pure mysticism.

There is a weight to my words because my mom passed away unexpectedly in February. She was 60 years old—healthy with no existing medical conditions. But her pure and loving heart stood no match against a cardiac arrhythmia that took her in her sleep...

Click here to finish reading my "Let Us Pray" column in the October 2021 issue in the St. Anthony Messenger.