Three Expressions of Prayer: Vocal Prayer, Meditation and Contemplative Prayer
21.3 هزار بار بازدید -
11 سال پیش
-
Vocal prayer is an essential
Vocal prayer is an essential element of the Christian life. To his disciples, drawn by their Master's silent prayer, Jesus teaches a vocal prayer, the Our Father. He not only prayed aloud the liturgical prayers of the synagogue but as the Gospels show, he raised his voice to express his personal prayer, from the exultant blessing of the Father to the agony of Gethsemane.
The need to involve the senses in interior prayer corresponds to our human nature which is body and spirit. We experience the need to translate our feelings externally.
Meditation is a quest of our mind to understand the how and why of how our Catholic spiritual life raises and enriches our daily life bringing us to a deeper spirit of holiness and mission. We meditate on the Sacred Scriptures through a lectio divina that engages thought, imagination, emotion and desire. We meditate on liturgical texts of the day or season, writings of the spiritual fathers, works of the great saints and modern authors.
Entering into contemplative prayer is like entering into the Eucharistic liturgy: we 'gather up' the heart, recollect our whole being under the prompting of the Holy Spirit, abide in the dwelling place of the Lord which we are, awaken our faith in order to enter into the presence of him who awaits us. We let our masks fall and turn our hearts back to the Lord who loves us, as to hand ourselves over to him as an offering to be purified and transformed.
Our 21st century world equates productivity with hyperactivity. But the great pray-ers of the Old Testament and New Testament, the great saints and mystics of Church history who walked to the crossroads of crisis in history with faith and mysticism teach us that true productivity in the realm of action is grounded in contemplation in the realm of silence.
Contemplative prayer is the simplest expression of the mystery of prayer. It is a gift, a grace. It can only be accepted in humility and poverty. Contemplative prayer is a gaze of faith, fixed on Jesus. "I look at him and he looks at me."
Contemplative prayer is silence, the 'symbol of the world to come' or 'silent love.' Words in this kind of prayer are not speeches. They are like kindling that feeds the fire of love.
St. John Vianney, the Holy Cure of Ars, expresses it this way: "Prayer is nothing but union with God. When one has a heart that is pure and united with God, he is given a kind of serenity and sweetness that makes him ecstatic, a light that surrounds him with marvelous brightness."
The need to involve the senses in interior prayer corresponds to our human nature which is body and spirit. We experience the need to translate our feelings externally.
Meditation is a quest of our mind to understand the how and why of how our Catholic spiritual life raises and enriches our daily life bringing us to a deeper spirit of holiness and mission. We meditate on the Sacred Scriptures through a lectio divina that engages thought, imagination, emotion and desire. We meditate on liturgical texts of the day or season, writings of the spiritual fathers, works of the great saints and modern authors.
Entering into contemplative prayer is like entering into the Eucharistic liturgy: we 'gather up' the heart, recollect our whole being under the prompting of the Holy Spirit, abide in the dwelling place of the Lord which we are, awaken our faith in order to enter into the presence of him who awaits us. We let our masks fall and turn our hearts back to the Lord who loves us, as to hand ourselves over to him as an offering to be purified and transformed.
Our 21st century world equates productivity with hyperactivity. But the great pray-ers of the Old Testament and New Testament, the great saints and mystics of Church history who walked to the crossroads of crisis in history with faith and mysticism teach us that true productivity in the realm of action is grounded in contemplation in the realm of silence.
Contemplative prayer is the simplest expression of the mystery of prayer. It is a gift, a grace. It can only be accepted in humility and poverty. Contemplative prayer is a gaze of faith, fixed on Jesus. "I look at him and he looks at me."
Contemplative prayer is silence, the 'symbol of the world to come' or 'silent love.' Words in this kind of prayer are not speeches. They are like kindling that feeds the fire of love.
St. John Vianney, the Holy Cure of Ars, expresses it this way: "Prayer is nothing but union with God. When one has a heart that is pure and united with God, he is given a kind of serenity and sweetness that makes him ecstatic, a light that surrounds him with marvelous brightness."
11 سال پیش
در تاریخ 1392/10/27 منتشر شده
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