'Lord, Teach me To Pray' emerged in response to 9/11 terror

By Carol Weiler
Contributing writer

Fear is he fuel of the anxiety that is plaguing all people today.

With the pandemic, the shutdowns and isolation, anxiety intensifies. People are realizing how little control and security there is in the world. As a result, people are longing to know the purpose of their lives.

What some thought was security, protection and purpose seem to be quickly fading away. People have listened to all the empty promises of the world, which, of course, never materialize. And now, the confusion over what is the truth has all of us reeling. We are seeing the church, the government and society all battling over what is truth.

I guess we could say it’s a feeling of having the “rug pulled out from under us.”

Lord Teach Me To Pray started at 9:30 a.m. in New Orleans on Sept. 11, 2001 – the day in our country when the unimaginable happened, a terrorist event that threw our country into conflict and confusion never imagined.

Now, 20 years later, we are drowning in conflicts and confusion. But, at these times, God is at work with abundant blessings for us!

Lord Teach Me To Pray started as a grassroots work of the laity desiring to deepen our faith and develop a personal relationship with God while at the same time making the new evangelization happen. Lord Teach Me To Pray has been doing just this by putting in the hands of the laity, who desire a personal relationship with God, the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola.

The training to facilitate the prayer group has been offered at parishes and retreat houses across the country for the past 20 years to laity who want to pray and invite others onto the Ignatian journey.

Just about the time the pandemic started, Lord Teach Me To Pray had begun to put the facilitator training in a digital format for all three parts of the prayer series. This was done so that the prayer series could be sent out for free to anyone anywhere to start a group praying the Spiritual Exercises.

Lord Teach Me To Pray had no idea the response would be so great from the laity. People want to learn to pray. People want to experience the living God, Christ Jesus, personally. No one is ever the same once he or she encounters God.

We desire to be conformed to Christ to be made new in Christ. We are swept away in our encounters with absolute truth, Christ Jesus; divine mercy, Christ Jesus; divine love, Christ Jesus. The laity is hungry to know the living God who alone frees us from all fear and anxiety and fills us with great desire to know him and to love him.

If you desire to pray and facilitate the Ignatian tradition of prayer in your home or parish, please go to lordteachmetopray.com to order the free digital training and manuals.

God is calling the laity!

Carol Weiler is the director of Lord Teach Me to Pray.