Here’s an excerpt from St. Patrick’s Confessions:
“After I had come to Ireland I daily used to feed cattle, and prayed frequently during the day; the love of God and the fear of Him increased more and more and faith became stronger, and the spirit was stirred; so that in one day I said about a hundred prayers, and in the night nearly the same; so that I used even to remain in the woods and in the mountains; before daylight I used to rise to prayer, through snow, through frost, through rain, and felt no harm; nor was there any slothfulness in me, and I now perceive, because the spirit was then fervent within me.”
Wow! Patrick was a man of prayer!
This is incredibly convicting for me. I’ve woken up very early many mornings to simply roll over and hit the snooze button. So many opportunities to pray wasted.
Patrick recognized the connection between prayer, the awareness of God’s love, and a fervent spirit, and he gave himself to seeking God.
How about you? What can you learn about your prayer life from St. Patrick’s example?
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I do not sleep all night long. I never really have. I wake at least 4 times a night. When I wake and before I go back to sleep, I pray. Sometimes I wake up knowing for whom to pray. Other times I ask God who needs my prayer. Still other time I pray for whatever situation in the world God puts on my heart. Then when I wake for the last time before getting out of bed, I start with the Lord’s Prayer and go from there. Yet I still know that throughout my waking hours, I could take more time to pray so that like Patrick I am saying 100s of prayers or like Luther I can count my prayer time in hours instead of minutes.
I have really been encouraged with the little I have learned of St. Patrick this Spring. I hope to grab a biography sometime soon.
This word from him is strong, and what spoke to me was how he understood that fervency FOR prayer is something that grows BY prayer. But not just a fervency for prayer specifically, but a fervency in spirit. I think what we all are longing for is this fervency of spirit – not so much the desire to go the distance in prayer, but a desire for the fire that delights in going the distance.
The avid joggers say that running is an addiction. I’ve yet to find this love myself, but I understand where they’re coming from. It’s true that the more they run, the more stamina they have, but that isn’t why they run. I like the idea of running, like we often like the idea of prayer, but the true runners move past the idea to the thing itself. The act of running becomes something life giving, a reciprocal gift. Like Eric Liddell who says in “Chariots of Fire”, “When I run I feel his pleasure”, I think this is what Patrick is speaking of concerning prayer. Or like Forrest Gump who said, “I just felt like running”, Patrick seems to be the man who says, “I just felt like praying”; not because he had to, or got to, but because something in him was compelling towards God. That is what I long for and am believing for more of.
“For him who thirsts, out of his belly flows the Spirit.” I then ask, “I want the fire of the Spirit, so how do I get thirsty?” Prayer, among the other wonderful things it accomplishes, seems to be the working up of that thirst.
Thanks for sharing this word from St. Patrick. It obviously moved me to some thoughts.