Teach Us to Pray

 From Neal Obstat, a post on The Grandparents of God:

...I remember vividly in 1989 when an older Russian woman at my father’s Orthodox Church told me, “We have a saying in Russia. Old age is for prayer. As we are relieved in our later years of the burdens of life, we pick up the burden of prayer and carry our children and grandchildren who are too weighed down to pray much.”

When I was younger, I saw elderly woman who seemed to walk in an atmosphere of prayer.   That was what I wanted to be and do, and now I am a grandmother as well as a mother and aunt and great-aunt.   That's a lot of prayers right there.   Then there are the various people you meet in person or through the miracle of modern communications.   Sometimes I remember to write them down in my journals, and then when I pick up the old notebooks I see the people I was praying for 5 or 25 years ago.  

I live near a Benedictine abbey.  Since I'm an oblate, my prayers are united with those of my brothers, the monks, as well as with the other oblates who live all over the country.  

As Christians we are members of a Church that goes far beyond those we see in daily life -- there are members throughout history, throughout the world -- more that have not been born yet, perhaps.   Our prayers are heard -- we have a "cloud of witnesses".   

This is an account of some of the notable American saints; this part is about Rose Philippine Duchesne:

The story is recounted there that in her older years she would be found deep in prayer in the church within the mission with the Potawatomi tribe in eastern Kansas. Even when someone quietly crept up beside her when she was at prayer and stealthily arranged beads and seeds in an intricate pattern on her lap, she didn’t notice, so deep was she immersed in her conversation with God. She had come on the mission at the age of seventy-one on the insistence of Father Peter Verhaegen, who was one of the missionaries, who said, “She is coming with us. She may not be able to do much work, but she will assure success to the mission by praying for us.” Since Duchesne was unable to master their language, she could not teach, so she would spend long periods in prayer. The children named her “Quah-kak-ka-num-ad,” which translates as Woman Who Prays Always.

Something similar is told of Katharine Drexel, who had to retire from her active missionary life at age 77 after a heart attack, and spent the next 2 decades in deep prayer.