It is 2:30 am. You wake up and look at the clock. As you turn over and hug your pillow, you hope, hope, hope that you go back to sleep. But now your mind is going—just drifting at first, but then fixing on something—an emotion, a worry, a problem, a conversation of the day before. Soon you realize you are not going back to sleep. You groan with the awareness. What now? Perhaps you are being invited by God to a time of deep intimacy with him. Perhaps God is calling you to prayers in the night.
The Gospel today begins, “Jesus departed to the mountain to pray, and he spent the night in prayer to God. When day came, he called his disciples to himself, and from them he chose….”
The gospels are sprinkled with one line notations that Jesus prayed in the night. He did it when he had a big decision, as in our reading today. In this instance Jesus spent the night in prayer before he chose the “inner twelve” disciples who were to walk with him throughout his three years of public ministry and eventually become his apostles.
Jesus also prayed in the night after he fed the 5000. The Jewish leaders and Judas came to arrest him in the night in Gethsemane where he had gone to pray the night before he died. Jesus went away to pray on a regular basis. Many times it probably had to be in the night, because that was the only free time he had. At other times, perhaps he simply knew the quiet and darkness of the night was a good time to be intimately alone with his Father.
St. Dominic, founder of the Friars Preachers and evangelist extraordinaire of the 13th century, prayed in the night every night. From the time he began to walk the roads of Languedoc to preach against the Albigensian heresy until the end of his life, every evening he spent at least part of the night in prayer. He found a church when he could, and went in to pray before the reposed Blessed Sacrament, sleeping only when his prayers allowed for it. If he was not near a church, he would withdraw from any companions to pray in the outdoors. Much of his success during the day he and his followers attributed to his habit of prayers in the night.
Most of my life I have prayed in early morning while everyone else remained asleep. Until the last few years, I did not pray in the night. I could be wakened in the night by hungry infant, snoring husband, or returning teen and be back asleep as soon as I closed my eyes again. Not so these days. Whether it is aging bladder, arthritic joints, or too much stress at work, I am awakened in the night far more often than I would like.
I have gradually come to appreciate these times because they give me prayers in the night. For me, morning prayer is focused, substantially mental, with at least some eye on the day ahead. Evening prayer is often dominated by the burdens of the day. In the night I have discovered that God has more opportunity to challenge me, to let me take my thoughts and emotions where they go, then help me see that I am backing myself into a corner, onto a cliff, or cutting through some new path. My observation is that my prayers in the night bring my will into alignment with God’s will.
In prayers in the night, I can enter into a holy darkness. Sometimes that darkness is holy because it enables me to see and face temptations. I have learned that my will and quoting Scripture can make temptations go away. I have come to face that sometimes I am not ready for them to go away. In the holy darkness God and I wrestle.
Last Friday night was one of those times. I woke up at 2:30 am and realized before too long that God had invited me into holy darkness. For more than four hours God and I wrestled. It was not pleasant prayer. It was a time of self-questioning. It was what I call “Psalmist prayer”—prayer in which I cried out to God anything and everything that was on my mind and in my heart. It wasn’t pretty prayer or holy prayer—but it was wonderfully intimate prayer. I talked. God listened. As God listened to me, I also truly listened to myself. I faced myself.
Then God began to speak. I began to listen to him. No, there were no clear words from God—nothing Teresa of Avila would write about. God spoke first through a very painful conversation with a family member Saturday morning. That conversation helped me see issues more clearly. Then God spoke through Father’s homily at Saturday evening mass. Father named what I had been skirting around through those long hours of wrestling. By communion I could speak back to God with my will. I could give my heart in a deeper, fuller way than I had before.
As I faced the difficulty of that and shared it with a friend, my friend knew just the right words to comfort me without relieving me of awareness of what I need to do now. God sent that friend to me. Then, Saturday night, in the night, my soul must have prayed more, prayed without thought, because I slept well, but I woke up Sunday morning with clarity of what I must do and how I should do it.
Finally, now on Monday morning, an unexpected conversation with another family member confirmed the wisdom of the path God gave me in my prayers the night. With that confirmation came both peace and joy. Today I am beginning to do it.
Others who pray regularly in the night tell me this is not the least bit unusual for those who pray seriously. They talk about awaking in the night with an impulse to pray for a particular person or intention. They talk about habits of waking up at 3 am to pray chaplets of Divine Mercy. They talk about turning any of their fears in the night into prayers in the night.
The psalm response today is, “The Lord takes delight in his people.” I think the Lord takes delight in his people who pray in the night.
So, the next time you wake up in the middle of the night, you might try prayer instead of worry, prayer instead of mindless midnight TV, prayer instead of tossing and grumbling. Be a psalmist: pour out your heart and mind to God. Wait for him to speak through movements of your mind, emotions, or will. Watch for him to open or close something in a way that gives you light, strength, joy, love, or peace. He may speak directly to you. He may speak through others. Either way, it can be an invitation to intimacy with him.
Closing Prayer today comes from Night Prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours:
“Protect us, Lord, as we stay awake; watch over us as we sleep, that awake, we may keep watch with Christ, and asleep, rest in his peace.”
Link to today’s readings: I Corinthians 6:1-11; from Psalm 149; Luke 6:12-19
