by Fr Ian
I've still got two final posts on prayer to add to the eight sections already available.
In the first two posts, I tried to give a broad definition of Christian prayer, and Roland responded with some observations and criticisms in a post of his own. There was a good discussion in the comments below the posts.
Since then I've quickly added a further six posts, focusing on different aspects of prayer.
It occurred to me that we might be able to look at these six posts as a whole (because they're really just separate sections of a single essay) and have a kind of seminar using the comments box below this post.
So to make it easy to read them in order (by clicking on them, of course) here are the other posts so far:
Post 3: the necessity of prayer
Post 5: vocal prayer and mental prayer, or meditation
Post 6: affective prayer and contemplative prayer
Post 8: A method of contemplative prayer
I hope that at least some readers of these posts will find them interesting and even helpful. And I hope we might have an interesting and productive discussion below.
Here are all the posts, in the form of two PDF documents. Part 2 includes a section on the drift towards prayerlessness in the modern Church and another section containing some reassuring facts about prayer.
5 comments:
Who is still on board?
See below Post 3 The necessity of prayer.
Ian's comments on prayer methods are very similar to meditation practices in any religion and very helpful for those who already do a lot of prayer/meditation and want to go deeper. But that isn't many people and I'm not sure there is much to discuss . It's similar meditational processes in most religions- just different symbolism.
I used to enjoy the email discussions, with everybody chipping in, but since going on the blog, it seems to be a series of lectures about the Catholic church. Some insight is interesting and helpful, but I originally joined the discussions because I thought we were looking at why people don't go to church and whether we could salvage the relevant parts of Christianity. What can the Christian church offer the average atheist on the street? So I think I'm now in the wrong place and will bow out. jasmin
Please don't bow out, Jasmin. I find your writing very interesting. Richard.
Maybe I could respond here to some of the comments made recently.
Roland mentions two interesting things.
First, he thinks that my notion of faith prayer, response to God is 'elitist'.
Well, I suggested that in our secular and materialist society some people become dissatisfied spiritually and find their way to the true and living God, the God of Christ and the Gospel. Over the years I've been able to welcome new members into the Catholic church community who have lived a permissive and self-indulgent morality, worked hard for money and possessions and the admiration of other people, treated others as objects for their own use and pleasure - and they've turned away from all that in disgust to become Christian.
But most people don't turn in this radical way, as Jesus said in his parable of the sower. But the people who do aren't so much an elite, with its hint of superiority over others, they're more a minority, especially today. That's a different matter, surely. Conversion to the Gospel doesn't make us look down on other people, but it would be good if we started to pray that they will also be led by God to convert.
Roland also talks about human beings being spiritually inept and asks rhetorically if God has been guilt of shoddy workmanship in creating us.
The classical Christian response to this is that we were made in a state of original goodness and harmony with God but 'fell' from that 'state of grace'. Christian moderns might not like the classical interpretation but then you have to suggest a better explanation, not just wring your hands and say dear me the world is such a mess.
Someone asked what we have to give thanks and praise to God for.
As I wrote, the more we're drawn to God and discover his perfect love and holiness, we learn that praise, worship, honour and glory of God is our only appropriate attitude as creatures and sinners.
Our vocation as human beings is to glorify God our maker and to become holy as he is holy. People who don't know God, and what he's like, obviously have no idea what I'm talking about here. It seems more like an affront to their dignity and sense of self-worth.
Regarding thanksgiving and gratitude to God, we learn, as we're led forward by God's grace, to see his providential guidance of our life in every aspect and we learn to thank him, like Job, for everything that has ever happened to us, good and bad.
We experience gratitude for the gift of salvation through Christ. It wasn't deserved and God didn't have to do it. The well-known hymn Amazing Grace expresses this sentiment.
Another issue: today there's a tendency that some people call 'Spiritual But Not Religious' (S.B.N.R.). Similarities between S.B.N.R meditation practices and Christian prayer are actually very superficial. The objects of Christian prayer are to glorify God, to become united with God in a person-to-person communion of love, to become holy as he is holy under the impact of his grace. An important aspect of Christian prayer is to express sorrow for sin and ask for forgiveness.
SBNR-type meditation is very different in its purposes and goals, usually much more focused on the self - relaxation, freedom from stress, inner calm at one level, or various pantheistic notions of tuning-in to higher reality, ultimate being, or some such, at another level. That lacks all the specifics of Christian faith, so there are big and definitive differences.
As a contributor to the Forum I would welcome a lot more posts on faith, prayer, meditation, spirituality - whatever - from anyone and everyone, Christian or non-Christian. That would remove the impression that, as Jasmine says, the Forum has been dominated so far by my 'Catholic lectures'.
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