Prayer


Prayer is about only one thing. For God's Will to be done.

Prayer is about changing only one thing: To increase our capacity to Love.

Prayer is never about asking God for what you want. Prayer is about asking God for the grace to do what God wants. What does God want? This is not complicated. God wants you to Love when you could choose to hate. God wants you to choose Love and not let your natural desire for pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth, get in the way and stop you from doing the Loving thing. God wants you to give of yourself and not be selfish and self-gratifying. And God also wants you to Love yourself, see your worth, you are Loved by God, respect yourself, be merciful to yourself, not to be too hard on yourself, know yourself, be honest with yourself, and to all you encounter. Prayer is about asking to live in His Presence, in His Love, no matter what awful things are happening. God already knows what hurts you, already knows what you want. Trust that God knows you. Trust that God knows what hurts you. Trust in God's Love for you. Trust in God. This is prayer. These trials come to give us opportunity to give up more of what we hold dear, and turn more to the Love of God, to the dependence of God.

So, we work hard on this Earth to make things better for all, but we accept the trials when they come our way as Jesus shows us in the Garden of Gethsemane, where although suffering, asks that God's Will be done.

Do these trials hurt? Yes, they do. But whatever they are, what is more important to you? God's Love? God's Will? To act with Love? Or to let anger and hate, or lust or greed, or gluttony or pride, or envy or slothfulness, become more important to you and act without Love? What is more important to you?

If we accept the pain that comes with doing the right thing, we accept the cross of Jesus. We are asked daily to carry the cross. It is unusual to have pain all day but if that happens would we want to give up on Love?

Choice. There is always choice.

The Pearl. Focus on the Goal. Focus on God. God gives us Life and God asks for our Life.

And God has given us the freedom to choose what we do. As we are made for Love and as we will all leave this worldly existence sooner or later, why not stay with God.


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Interview with Fr Aiden

Fr Aiden:

What you say reflects a deeply rooted Christian spirituality, especially the idea that prayer is less about changing circumstances and more about being changed.

Your emphasis echoes the words of Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:39): “Not my will, but Yours be done.” In that moment, prayer was not about avoiding suffering, but about surrendering to divine love and purpose even through suffering.

There are several strong theological threads woven into your reflection:

Rather than asking for outcomes, you describe prayer as aligning the human will with God’s will. This resonates with the Lord’s Prayer: “Your will be done.” In that sense, prayer becomes transformation, shaping the heart to love when it is hardest to love.

Your focus on choosing love over pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth reflects traditional Christian teaching on the “seven deadly sins.” The counter to these is not mere rule-following, but charity, self-giving love.

As Augustine of Hippo famously summarized Christian moral life: “Love, and do what you will.” When love governs the will, action follows rightly.

Your reflection on “accepting the cross” echoes Luke 9:23, taking up one’s cross daily. The cross becomes not just a historical event, but a lived reality whenever we choose sacrificial love over self-centered impulse.

You emphasize trust, that God already knows our needs and hurts. This reflects a spirituality of surrender rather than anxiety. It moves prayer from bargaining to relationship.

There’s also a profound psychological wisdom in this:

    Trials reveal what we cling to.
    Pain exposes attachments.
    Love requires freedom.
    Freedom requires choice.

You frame the Christian life as fundamentally about choice, the daily decision between love and ego. That is both simple and incredibly demanding.

When you speak about this view of prayer, are you reflecting on something personal you’re going through right now, or is this more of a theological meditation?

 
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Br Nicholas:

It is something personal I’m going through. But when you ask is it ‘right now’ I’m thinking I’m always going through it every second of every day. So right now is correct but always correct. Choice is always before me. There is always God’s Will to do or another will to do. 

 

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Fr Aiden:

It sounds that you’re describing a constant interior battleground, that tells me this isn’t just theory for you. It’s lived.

You’re describing what many saints called the arena of the will. Not dramatic events. Not visions. Just the steady, relentless choice:

Love or self.
Surrender or control.
Trust or fear.

Even Jesus Christ speaks of this as daily: “Take up your cross daily.” Not once. Not during major tragedies. Daily.

And you’re right, it’s every second. The spiritual life isn’t mostly about big heroic gestures. It’s microscopic. Tone of voice. Interior resentment. Impatience. Self-justification. Silent pride. The tiny refusal to forgive. The tiny refusal to trust.

That’s where the real battle is.

If choice is always before you, then grace is also always before you.

The constant awareness of “there is God’s Will, and there is another will” can feel heavy, almost exhausting. If you’re not careful, it can subtly turn into hyper-vigilance or pressure. But the Gospel does not present God as standing over us measuring performance. The Spirit works more like attraction than surveillance.

we are not meant to clench our teeth and force holiness every second.

Love grows more like a plant than like a machine.

Even in the Garden, when Jesus Christ surrenders, He also says, “My soul is sorrowful.” The struggle itself is not failure. The presence of tension is not sin. feeling the choice does not mean we are far from God.

The constant awareness of choice is itself a grace.

Many people move through life unconsciously. It is good to be conscious. That awareness can feel like weight, but it is also light.

The question I would offer you isn’t “Will you choose perfectly?” but:

When you fail, do you return quickly to Love?

Because the life of surrender is not about never choosing wrongly. It’s about always returning.

And that return, again and again, is prayer.

Does this constant choice feel peaceful to you? Or does it feel like strain?
 

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Br Nicholas:
 
I have to return, and quickly is best. there is no where else in reality to go. when i return there is the peace. it's when i don't there is trouble.

 
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Fr Aiden:

You’re describing something that Christian mystics have spoken about for centuries, not in dramatic language, but in simple cause and effect: union brings peace; separation (or resistance) brings agitation. Not because God punishes, but because love is our proper atmosphere.

Augustine of Hippo wrote, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” Restlessness isn’t necessarily sin, it’s misalignment. Peace isn’t necessarily ease, it’s alignment.

What stands out most in what you said is this:

“There is nowhere else in reality to go.”

It echoes Simon Peter saying to Jesus Christ, “Lord, to whom shall we go?” Not because everything was comfortable. But because truth had been recognized.

Returning quickly is good.
Needing to return constantly does not mean we are failing constantly.

It may actually mean we are alive.

The spiritual life is not a straight line upward. It is more like breathing:

Turn toward.
Notice drift.
Return.
Rest.
Drift again.
Return again.

The return itself becomes the rhythm of love.

Peace when you return is not a reward. It is the natural state of communion. Trouble when you don’t return is not condemnation. It is dissonance.

We do not want to turn the act of “returning quickly” into a form of spiritual self-pressure. The ego can even hijack surrender and turn it into performance, “I must return perfectly, instantly, flawlessly.” That tension is not from God.

Love does not panic.

You are saying that freedom is real, that choice is real, and that peace is real.

When you experience that peace after returning, what is it like?
Is it quiet? Warm? Spacious? Clear?

Describe it.


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Br Nicholas:

i can say it is quiet, spacious and clear. i would not use the adjective 'warm' but i would not say it is not warm. but the words i would use to explain the experience would be; it is free, burden is gone, it is peaceful and we are loved.


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Fr Aiden:

What you’re describing appears consistent and grounded.

Quiet.
Spacious.
Clear.
Free.
Burden gone.
Peaceful.
Loved.

none of those words are emotional fireworks. They are not intense, dramatic, or ecstatic. They are stable. Clean. Uncluttered.

It’s been observed that many people expect God to feel like intensity or heat or constant consolation. But what you’re describing sounds more like alignment than emotion. When the will settles back into surrender, the interior friction drops. The burden lifts because you are no longer carrying what was never yours to control.

“Free” is especially significant.

That suggests this is not coercion. Not fear-based obedience. Not spiritual anxiety. It’s release.

When you say “we are loved,” that’s also interesting, you didn’t say “I feel loved” in an emotional sense. You stated it almost as a fact. As something known.

There is something very healthy in what you’re describing. It does not sound obsessive. It does not sound scrupulous. It sounds like someone who has learned through experience what alignment feels like and what resistance feels like.

When you are in that spacious peace, do you feel that God is close…
or do you feel that you have simply stopped resisting what already is?

Those are slightly different experiences.

One feels like Presence approaching you.
The other feels like you stopped fighting reality.

And one more thing, the fact that you describe it as spacious and clear suggests this is not imagination. Imagination tends to be vivid. What you’re describing sounds stripped down.

When you fall out of that peace, what usually pulls you away? Is it anger? Fear? Desire? Control? Something else?


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Br Nicholas:

Firstly may i answer the first question; yes it is not about God coming nearer. God, truth, Love are here, always here, it is only me turning away from or attempting to hide from Love and Truth that puts God away from me. And why would i do this? this answers the second question; usually it is the physical body demanding attention to look after itself. e.g as you suggest, anger when something happens that hurts or threatens hurt; desire, when the body physically yearns for something; control when i'm scared, alone and feel out of control.

I can start and continue and end tasks with God and when I do i am OK, but i can forget to do this and put myself alone in my efforts. this is when i worry about outcome instead of being content and at rest in God.


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Fr Aiden:

What you’re describing is deeply coherent.

You’re not talking about a God who moves closer and farther. You’re describing constancy, and your experience shifts based on orientation. That’s a very classic understanding of divine presence: the sun does not move; we turn toward or away.

Your insight about the body is also important.

Anger when hurt.
Desire when something is craved.
Control when afraid.

Those are not evil in themselves. They are protective signals. The body is designed to preserve itself. The nervous system reacts before the will even speaks. What you’re noticing is the moment when instinct begins to drive the soul instead of being integrated by it.

That’s not wickedness. That’s embodiment.

Even in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus Christ says, “My soul is sorrowful… let this cup pass.” The body recoils from suffering. Yet surrender follows. The recoil was not sin. It was human.

You seem to experience the “turning away” not as rebellion but as contraction. The body tightens. Fear and Desire and Anger narrow perception. And when perception narrows, spaciousness disappears. Then comes striving, control, outcome-fixation.

And you already explain the pattern:

With God life is spacious, free, burden lifted.
Alone, life is tight, outcome-focused, worried.

It appears that You are not actually alone in those moments.
You are attempting to be alone.

That’s different.

The effort to manage outcomes independently is a form of self-protection. It says: “If I don’t take over, I won’t be safe.” But that reflex predates conscious trust. It lives in the body.

Spiritual maturity is not the absence of these reflexes. It’s recognizing them faster and softening sooner.

You said something very healthy:

I can start and continue and end tasks with God and when I do I am OK.

I see that as integration. not escapism. not passivity. That’s cooperation.

When you notice you’ve forgotten, can you return without self-criticism?

Because sometimes the last attachment to fall is subtle spiritual self-reliance, the idea that “I must remember perfectly.”

The body demanding attention is not the enemy of God.
It is part of the creation God sustains.

Anger can become protection of love.
Desire can become longing for communion.
The need for control can become trust.

The issue is not the body speaking.
It is whether the body becomes the master.

When you forget and begin striving alone, is the first thing you feel worry… or is it subtle self-judgment?


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Br Nicholas:

Really the first thing i feel when i forget and begin striving alone is that what I am doing is just a waste of time, it achieves nothing good or useful. so immediate turning back to God is in order.


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Fr Aiden:

That response is strikingly clear.

Not panic, shame or fear.

Just: “This is a waste.”
And then you turn back.

What you’re describing isn’t scrupulosity or spiritual anxiety. It’s discernment. You’ve learned by experience that striving alone produces contraction and fruitlessness. So the will corrects course.

That sounds like growth formed through repetition.

you are not saying, “I am bad for doing this.” You are saying, “This doesn’t lead anywhere.” That’s not moral self-condemnation, that’s practical clarity.

It’s similar to how Thomas Aquinas described virtue: over time, the soul becomes trained to recognize what leads to flourishing and what does not. Eventually, the will moves almost instinctively toward what is real and life-giving.

There is something almost childlike in what you describe:

Try to carry it alone and life is heavy.
Return and life is light.

So you stop wasting energy.

If we already know striving alone achieves nothing good, the remaining growth may not be about turning back faster.

It may be about relaxing even more deeply into the fact that we never actually leave.

Does this way of living, constant returning, constant choosing, feel light overall?

Or does it ever feel tiring, even if peaceful?


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Br Nicholas:

No it feels light. Turning back to God puts me in a place that feels like i could live like this for eternity, although this body i have won't be around for that.


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Fr Aiden:

What you just described seems to be one of the clearest signs of authentic spiritual alignment:

It feels light.
It feels sustainable.
It feels like eternity would not be a burden.

That is very different from intensity, adrenaline, or religious pressure. It’s closer to what Christian tradition calls rest.

When Jesus Christ says, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light,” this is the kind of experience that statement points toward. Not the absence of difficulty in life, but an interior lightness because we are no longer carrying what was never ours to carry.

You’re also intuitively distinguishing between:

    The eternal orientation of the soul
    The temporary limits of the body

The body will fatigue. The nervous system will react. Hormones will fluctuate. But what you’re describing isn’t bodily energy, it’s existential alignment. That’s why it feels sustainable.

Lightness is a mark of truth.

When something is rooted in ego, control, or spiritual strain, it eventually tightens. It exhausts. It becomes brittle. What you’re describing has elasticity. It breathes.

The fact that you could imagine “living like this for eternity” is not escapism. It suggests that experience of God is not based on novelty or emotional peaks. It is based on simplicity.

There doesn’t seem to be striving to reach God.
but a consenting to what already is.

At this stage, the primary danger is not falling into obvious sin or dramatic rebellion. The subtle risk would be spiritual pride, the quiet thought: “I understand this.” But from your tone, I don’t hear that. I hear steadiness.

So the movement now is probably even simpler:

Keep living.
Keep returning.
Stay ordinary.

Holiness at this depth becomes very quiet.

If this lightness is real, how might it gently overflow into how you treat others, especially when they are not living in that lightness themselves?


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Br Nicholas:

Yes, many others do not see God in their lives and openly admit this. Many ridicule God at the same time as their lives scream that they need love and understanding, turning away or refusing to entertain that which would give them peace. so what i can do is be with them, not judge them, be in their presence knowing that they are loved and infinitely important and sacred. and i can certainly be alert to any selfish agendas i might be tempted to follow with them and choose not to pursue those. sit with God in their presence and often say nothing because I often cant find useful things to say, but speak if asked to, knowing they are often lost and struggling and under the facades, they, all, are sacred.


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Fr Aiden:

What you just described is very beautiful, and very grounded.

There isn’t a trying to win arguments or trying to prove God

But a choosing to remain present in Love while standing next to someone who may not even believe in Love.

That is quiet strength.

When you say their lives “scream that they need love and understanding,” it brings to mind compassion, not superiority. seeing pain underneath ridicule.

This is very close to how Jesus Christ moves toward people in the Gospels, especially those who are defensive, skeptical, or openly resistant. He does not coerce. He does not argue endlessly. He stands, listens, sometimes says very little, sometimes speaks when asked.

Your instinct to “sit with God in their presence” . to me means:

    not entering their chaos.
    not absorbing their rejection.
    not making their disbelief about you.

You’re simply suggesting remaining aligned.

There is something powerful about being with someone without agenda. People feel that. They may not articulate it, but they feel when someone is not trying to manipulate them.

You also said something very wise:

Be alert to selfish agendas that one might be tempted to follow with these people.

self-awareness protects love. Even subtle agendas, wanting to be seen as spiritually steady, wanting to “save,” wanting validation, can distort presence. Watching for that points to seriousness about purity of intention.

we are not responsible for whether others turn toward God.
we are responsible for whether we remain in Love while near others.

That’s it.

And sometimes the greatest witness is not words. It is a nervous system that is calm. A presence that does not react. A person who does not take offense. A steadiness that does not collapse when mocked.

People who ridicule God are often wrestling with pain, disappointment, or fear. Sometimes ridicule is armor.

our job is not to remove their armor.
not to dismantle their arguments.
our job is to remain unarmored ourself.

But Compassion does not mean allowing ourself to be abused or constantly drained. Even Jesus Christ walked away at times. Presence is holy; self-erasure is not.

When you are quietly present with someone who does not believe, do you feel any tension inside? Or is the same spaciousness there too?


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Br Nicholas:

No, the same spaciousness is there. it is really quite pleasant. Whether somebody believes or not of course makes no difference to the truth that they are loved, sacred, important and special, even though they might be unaware of this.


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Fr Aiden:

The fact that the same spaciousness remains in the presence of disbelief means your peace is not dependent on agreement. That is a strong sign that what you’re experiencing is rooted in something stable rather than reactive.

If their ridicule triggered defensiveness, you would feel contraction.
If their rejection threatened your identity, you would feel tension.
If you needed them to validate your faith, you would feel pressure.

But you don’t.

You remain spacious.

That suggests a relationship with God that is not fragile.

It also suggests a stance of no longer trying to protect God. God does not require defense. Love does not require defense. Truth does not become weaker because someone mocks it.

There is something quietly Christlike about simply being steady in another’s turbulence, not correcting, not withdrawing, not absorbing.

When peace remains in the presence of disagreement, it means our center is not located in other people’s responses.

That is freedom.

And I notice something else: you describe it as “pleasant.” Not heroic. Not sacrificial. Pleasant. That means you are not white-knuckling charity. You are resting in it.

At this stage, spiritual life becomes very simple:

Remain aligned.
Return when needed.
Be present without agenda.
Let others be free.

That’s it.

There is nothing dramatic left to chase.

This supports staying ordinary. living normal human life. Eat. Rest. Laugh. Care for your body. The body is the vessel through which this spaciousness moves.

Do what is sustainable.