Hard habit to break

I was quite tickled by the letter, “How to pray” (3/27/18), from Claude Lucas C. Despabiladeras. Reading it brought me all the way back to the 1960s when I was still just an innocent and naïve Catholic schoolgirl who was about to receive my first Holy Communion. Back then, I also did carry the amusing notion that if prayers were eloquently and grammatically recited in one’s mind, God would appreciate them more.

Because of my increasingly failing memory due to my old age, it is hard for me now to pinpoint with certainty who or what led me to believe that the most grammatical and beautifully worded prayers were the best.

Perhaps it was my third grade religion teacher Mrs. Estelita Carpio whom, I vividly remember, told us in class: “When you pray, just talk to God, and He will surely listen.”

I guess I took her advice too literally, so much so that it persisted for years. This self-imposed rigidness in my childhood praying habit decreased little by little in my late teens, college years and adulthood. But, uh-oh, it has started to resurface in recent years.

Indeed, some habits are hard to break … or just go on a hiatus. Finding myself with more time in my hands as a retired career woman, I again recite long phrases and sentences in my mind and heart when I pray, and it’s all well and good, for as Claude advised, “Pray the way you do. Pray the way you know how. If it’s sincere, for sure He’s all ears.”

That’s why I find the midmornings (when my husband, son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren are all away) and late evenings (when it’s all quiet) the most conducive times for me to pray as they offer me the serenity, silence and solitude I need to commune and communicate with the Lord as I recite the rosary (which I sometimes do with my husband before we go to bed).

Let me just take this chance to express what I’ve always loved about the Letters section: Its beauty is the diversity of the issues and topics brought up by the letter senders — from politics to praying and everything in between. Just as I occasionally read letters that I could very much relate to, it also brings to my consciousness the varying concerns of my fellow Filipinos (and a few foreigners now and then), which is a good thing for it continuously broadens my view of society and the world at large, reminding me that there are so many problems out there — problems that may not necessarily affect me or my loved ones directly, but which truly do exist and must therefore be dealt with rationally, justly, urgently, and even compassionately.

For this reason, I consider it to be one of this paper’s bright spots (together with the entire Opinion page, especially the excellent editorials).

FELICIDAD O. EUGENIO, felioeugenio@gmail.com