The Catholic Weekly - The Catholic Times at 1520 Court Street, Saginaw, MI 48602 US - Priest offers youth 'two-for' at Jubilee

LANSING — After 40 years as a priest, Fr. Larry Delaney knows a thing or two about prayer. As the director of St. Francis Retreat Center in DeWitt for the past 18 years — a place to go to pray — he was just the right person to explain prayer techniques to the young people gathered Sunday, Nov. 4, for the Jamboree at the Lansing Center. His workshop, “Prayer Styles,” aimed to teach teen participants how to improve their prayer life. “When it comes to prayer, it’s about maintaining a relationship with God,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons we pray. To maintain a relationship with a God that we cannot see.” In order to maintain that relationship, he said, “we have to have the communication of prayer. “We also pray to be able to see God in other people.” Finding the time to pray can be a challenge for both teens and adults. “I think we all suffer from busyness,” said Fr. Delaney. “Maybe at the end of the day we find ourselves saying, ‘Oh, my gosh, I didn’t even pray today.’” Fr. Delaney believes his “Two-for” prayers can help fix the problem of an otherwise prayer-less day. “First of all praise God for two things,” he said. “I always praise God for being God — and thank Him that I’m not. The second thing I like to praise God for is creation. Sit back in your prayer life and really praise God. “Secondly, we need to thank God for two things.” He asked the assembled teens to name some things they would thank God for right now. It’s easy to thank God for the good things in life, he said. “But learning to thank God for things that don’t go our way is not nearly as easy.” And don’t stop being thankful in your prayer even when your prayers don’t get the answers you want. “When things we pray about don’t go our way,” he said, “it’s easy to want to give up on prayer all together. All of us will, in our lifetime, have times when we need to learn to thank God even when our prayers don’t go the way we want them. With maturity and after time we can realize that God did answer our prayers — by giving us strength to get through the times when we thought He didn’t answer them but He really did.” Fr. Delaney’s “two-for” plan doesn’t end there. “Tell Him two things you are sorry for,” he said. “Pray for two people. Pray for two groups of people and finally pray for two things for yourself.” By Lisa Briggs, The Catholic Times

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