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 Twelve. And he came down with them and stood on a stretch of level ground. A great crowd of his disciples and a large number of the people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and even those who were tormented by unclean spirits were cured. Everyone in the crowd sought to touch him because power came forth from him and healed them all. (Luke 6:12-19)

Before Jesus chose the twelve apostles he spent the entire night in prayer. In His sacred humanity he shows us the pattern for our own lives, to live in continual communion with the Father. His prayer opened the heavens, healed the sick, raised the dead and brought provision to the hungry and the glory of heaven to earth. Prayer can still do all of this — for those who learn to live their lives immersed in God.

Yet even with our digital calendars, we often miss our appointment with the Lord. Yesterday’s relationship with the Lord is not sufficient for today. Yesterday’s prayer cannot keep us in the presence of the Lord. We need to cultivate an ongoing relationship of communion with the Lord. Jesus said, “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” (John 14: 21-23) This making a home for God is the essence of Christian prayer. It is, metaphorically speaking, to “become prayer.”

Isaac of Ninevah, an eighth century monk, bishop and theologian wrote,

When the Spirit dwells in a person, from the moment in which that person has become prayer, he never leaves him. For the Spirit himself never ceases to pray in him. Whether the person is asleep or awake, prayer never from then on departs from his soul. Whether he is eating or drinking or sleeping or whatever else he is doing, even in deepest sleep, the fragrance of prayer rises without effort in his heart. Prayer never again deserts him.

We become prayer as we empty ourselves of self-love and are filled with the life of God. Our daily life can become a classroom of communion. In that classroom we learn the truth about who we are — and who we are becoming — in Jesus Christ. We receive new glasses to see the landscape of life. Darkness is dispelled and the path to progress illuminated. Prayer opens us to revelation, expands our capacity to comprehend truth and equips us for ongoing conversion.

We are drawn into a deepening relationship with Jesus whose loving embrace on the hill of Golgotha bridged heaven with earth. His relationship with His Father is opened to us; the same Spirit that raised Him from the dead begins to give us new life. (Romans 8:11) In the words of the Apostle Peter we become “partakers of the divine nature.” (2 Peter 1:4) That participation will be complete when we are with Him in resurrected bodies in a new Heaven and a new Earth, but it begins now in prayer.

The beloved disciple John became prayer. He wrote in his later years:

See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:1-4)

Daily life becomes a field of choice and by the Spirit we are empowered to choose the “more excellent way” of which the Apostle Paul wrote. (1 Cor. 13) Prayer provides the flow of grace enabling ongoing reflection and conversion of life. The Holy Spirit exposes the darkness in us and helps us surrender it to the transforming light of love.

This way of becoming prayer is possible for all Christians, because God holds nothing back from those He loves. God hungers for this communion with His sons and daughters — and we hunger for communion with Him — because He made us this way. Nothing else will ever satisfy. The Church Father Origen wrote: “Every spiritual being is, by nature, a temple of God, created to receive into itself the glory of God.”

We were made in the image of God and are being recreated into His likeness through Jesus Christ. (2 Cor. 5:17) We can cry out with Jesus Christ, by the Spirit, “Abba Father.” (Romans 8:15) God dwells within us and we dwell in Him, through His Spirit. This experience of dwelling is the heart of Christian prayer. It is not just about getting but about being, becoming, receiving, giving, and loving. A twentieth century spiritual writer named Henri Nouwen expressed it this way in a book entitled Life signs:

Jesus, in whom the fullness of God dwells, has become our home. By making his home in us he allows us to make our home in him. By entering into the intimacy of our innermost self, he offers us the opportunity to enter into his own intimacy with God. By choosing us as his preferred dwelling place, he invites us to choose him as our preferred dwelling place.  …  Home is the place where that first love dwells and speaks gently to us. Prayer is the most concrete way to make our home in God.

Become prayer and begin to live in continual communion with the Lord.