STOP, LOOK and LISTEN
This is the closest we will come to teaching a “method” of prayer. But these three steps are such a simple “method” that you will never forget them.“

Stop, look, and listen” is what you do at a railroad crossing. Prayer is like a railroad crossing. God is like a great train crossing the tracks of your life. You want to get run over by this train! So here is how you put yourself on the tracks in front of God.

First, STOP! Stop doing everything else you are doing. Stop worrying about anything else in the whole world except your prayer to God right now. Stop being Martha; if you don’t, you cannot be Mary (see Lk 10:38-41). You cannot sit at the Lord’s feet while you are running around on your own feet. You cannot hear him if you are frothing at the mouth and fussing at the fingers. You cannot LOOK unless you first STOP; you cannot practice the presence of God if you are just too busy for him.

This is true even of your kids and your parents: they need your time more than they need anything else, for that is your life – your lifetime. Time is a test of love, and the beloved (or the not-beloved) always knows it. God certainly knows it.

You cannot “do God” by halves. God – the real God as distinct from some convenient man-made idea – is too big to fit into some little side slot in your mind while you are doing something else that is more important to you. He is not back-ground music.

STOP
This first step, STOP, is in itself the easiest one. But you will probably find it the hardest if you are a typically modern person: busy, active, outgoing. Most of us are like rolling stones: we have too much momentum to slow down. If you do find this hard, remember that it is only hard to you; in itself it is easy. And remember that it is necessary: you have to stop even to smell the roses; all the more necessary to stop to talk to God!

You cannot “do God” by halves.
God… is too big to fit into some little side slot in your mine
while you are doing something else that is more important to you.
He is not background music.

LOOK
The second step is LOOK: look at God with the eye of your soul, the eye of your mind. I mean the eye of faith. You cannot see God with your body’s eye, and the eye of your reason is very weak; but the eye of faith is strong because that is God’s own gift to you, the eye God provided. Faith knows that God is real, and faith knows that God is present.

LOOK means simply LOOK. It is hard only because it is so simple. The holy Cure asked the peasant what he did when he prayed, and his answer was the most perfect description of contemplative prayer: “I look at him, and he looks at me” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2715).That is all. By a simple act of will, turn your attention to him. You cannot talk to someone if you do not look at him. And this is going to be a two-way conversation. You are going to talk, but you are also going to listen. And you cannot listen to him unless you first look at him.

LISTEN
So the last step is LISTEN. In a conversation, if you are the wisest, it makes sense for you to do most of the talking. If the other person is wiser, it makes sense for you to do most of the listening. The wiser the other is, the more listening you want to do. Well prayer is conversation with God, and it makes no sense for us to do most of the talking. We ought to be listening most of the time.

But, you may object, we cannot hear God’s voice as we can hear the voice of another human being. True but we can hear God’s voice in other ways. We hear him in nature which is his art. We hear him in his providential directing of our lives, and in the lessons in human history, and in the “still, small voice” of our conscience, God’s interior prophet. We hear him loud and clear in Scripture, his inspired Word deliberately given to us. One way of praying is listening to God’s voice in Scripture, reading Scripture as God’s Word – which is exactly what it is!And the best listening, the listening that gest the closest to God’s heart, the listening that hears the most total revelation of God, is listening to Christ, God incarnate, God in the flesh, “very God of very God”. “The Word of God” means the Bible only secondarily; primarily it means Christ.

In the words of the Catechism, Christ is “the Father’s one, perfect, and unsurpassable Word. In him he has said everything; there will be no other word than this one” (CCC 65). Praying by reading the Gospels prayerfully and “listening” is one of the very best ways to pray. We also need to hear what God says to us at each moment of our lives. This is a habit we gradually develop, for God’s voice is “a still, small voice”. But he promised that we would learn to recognize it: “The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name … and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice” (Jn 10:3-4).

• How do we listen to his voice?

With the ear of our heart. With love. Love has ears, as love has eyes. Just be there, and love him, and let him love you.

• What will happen then?
• What will we hear?

Let God take care of that. Seek only him, do not use him as a means to seek any other end. He is not your Santa, he is your Savior. I cannot tell you what he will give you, except for one thing: he will give you himself. He will give you more of himself the more you want him, that is, the more you love him. He wants to pour infinite riches into your soul; prayer is a way of opening up your soul so that more of God can enter. In order to listen, we must look. In order to look, we must stop. And in order to stop doing things, we must first be doing things. God gave us a world in which we are to work. But God also gave us a Sabbath, in which we are to pray.

• Why is the first third of this prayer – stopping – the hardest?
• Is your other work really so important that you cannot stop it from one Sabbath part out of seven to turn to the One who gave you your other work, in fact who gave you your very existence?
• You can pray the “stop, look, and listen” prayer in just one minute can you not give God just one minute?
• The first minute of each hour? One part of our sixty?
• Is that too much of a Sabbath rest for you?

It is a simple, easy, and beautiful practice, and I absolutely guarantee you that if you do it, you will love it and cherish it and be very grateful for the suggestion.

STOP & PRAY

• Can you stop reading this right now and pray for one minute?

If you cannot, you are in serious trouble; you are addicted to work and action as to a drug. You are a slave. If you can but you will not, you are in even more serious trouble; for that means that you do not love God as much as you love whatever else you are doing. Perhaps what you are doing is reading about loving God!

• So you have no time to love God because you are reading about loving God?

That is insane. We are all insane. That is what original sin means. Sin is insanity. It is preferring finite joy to infinite joy, creatures to the Creator, an unhappy, Godless self to a happy, God-filled self. Only God can save us from this disease. That is what the name “Jesus” means: “God saves.” He has done his part, on the Cross. Our part is to accept him. A good way to act out our acceptance right now would be to stop reading this and pray for at least one minute.

• Will you give God one minute?

Please do not give me, the author of these words, that minute and rob God. Please rob me and give it to God. Stop reading me and read God. Stop listening to me and listen to God.

• Are you finished?

Do not read another wore until you are. Now ask God to help you do that again and again for the rest of your life. We are one day nearer Home today than we ever were before. I guarantee you that after you die you will not say “I spent too much time praying.” It’s your great privilege to enter into prayer with God, yet through prayer he will bless you immensely. Let’s look together at eight reasons prayer is necessary and vital for your life.

1. Prayer can set (or change) the tone of your day.
2. Prayer provides solutions and helps us to overcome temptation.
3. Prayer helps you make better decisions.
4. Daily prayer keeps God in the forefront of your mind, not forgotten until Sunday.
5. More frequent communication builds a stronger relationship.
6. The discipline of daily prayer is submitting your heart to God.
7. Answered prayers are prayers prayed.
8. Opening your heart to God daily allows God to transform your heart.

I know your day is busy (so is mine!), but I promise you that you can find time for what you hold as a priority.