St. Arbucks Chapel – November 12, 2025
I always want to learn how to deepen my prayer life. A person I have never met but who greatly influences me is Fr. James Martin. A Jesuit priest who writes a lot about prayer. He recently talked about how to pray through anxiety.
Let’s learn together from Fr. Jim.
“Let’s face it. Almost everyone who is anxious and prays to God is probably praying for God to solve whatever problems are making them anxious, or for God to remove their anxious feelings. Whether it’s emotional upset over a medical diagnosis, a ruptured relationship, financial woes, a failed job, or the latest political uproar, most of us want God to either remove the problem or the anxiety. But sometimes, even when we pray, neither seems to happen. So, what are we to do?
One piece of helpful advice comes from Ronald Rolheiser’s superb book, “Sacred Fire,” about living a mature Christianity. Fr. Rolheiser writes, ‘When we are hurting or obsessed, the problem is that we are able to think about only one thing, the object of our hurt or loss.’ Thus, in times of anxiety, we end up ‘oppressively focusing’ on the cause of our upset. And that can make us even more anxious!
The key is to turn our focus from ourselves to God. For me, this means first being honest with God about the problem. Then I turn the problem over to God. Sometimes I imagine this physically, as if I were handing over a package: ‘This is yours now, God!’ Next, I focus on a Gospel story in which I can imagine myself in Jesus’ company, focusing on him rather than me. This method helps me a great deal. It takes me away from myself and reminds me that there is more to life than my problem, and that in Jesus’ company, I can relax. Ironically, then, praying through anxiety often means, after handing things over to God, not praying with your anxiety, or at the very least, not focusing on it.”