What is Prayer?
How many of us struggle with this, and say that we haven't time to be always in Church or on our knees. The excerpt below is taken from a history of the Trappists in America: ‘Burnt Out Incense (The Saga of Citeaux: American Epoch)’ by M. Raymond O. C. S. O. and it reminds us that prayer is not something which separates us from life, but which sanctifies and elevates every one of our actions, even the most apparently trivial. If we only make one New Year Resolution this year, let it be this; to say our daily Morning Offering, and renew it as often as possible.
++++++++
"I must tell you that a prayerful person is one who always prays, but not one who is always saying prayers. A life of prayer is not a life spent on ones knees, incessantly talking to God; it is a life where one is ever conscious of God within and outside of oneself, above and below, over, under and all around. To be a person of prayer then, is to be someone whose every thought, word, and deed is not about God, but directed to God; a person who eats and drinks, sleeps and works laughs and cries, suffers and rejoices, triumphs and fails in God and for God’s honour and glory.
Prayer knows more divisions than vocal and mental, actual and virtual, habitual and transitory; it allows of other definitions than the ‘lifting of the heart and mind to God’, ‘converse with the Creator‘, ‘the employment of the faculties of the soul on God’. Prayer is more than attention given to, and awareness of, the Divine One; prayer is an atmosphere. … chiefly it is the taking of a direction. One fixes ones thoughts, words, mind, heart, even ones acts and gestures - and the lightest and most meaningless of these - towards the Light which alone gives them worth.
(Even) driving a team of mules, or a bulldozer, harnessing a horse or a waterfall, digging a ditch or potatoes, waxing floors or wiping a dish, planting, ploughing, harrowing or harvesting, writing a book or typing a letter - so long as you point all these towards God - it is praying! That orientation, that deliberate choice of direction, that aiming everything at God alone, makes every act an act of praise and adoration. "
"I must tell you that a prayerful person is one who always prays, but not one who is always saying prayers. A life of prayer is not a life spent on ones knees, incessantly talking to God; it is a life where one is ever conscious of God within and outside of oneself, above and below, over, under and all around. To be a person of prayer then, is to be someone whose every thought, word, and deed is not about God, but directed to God; a person who eats and drinks, sleeps and works laughs and cries, suffers and rejoices, triumphs and fails in God and for God’s honour and glory.
Prayer knows more divisions than vocal and mental, actual and virtual, habitual and transitory; it allows of other definitions than the ‘lifting of the heart and mind to God’, ‘converse with the Creator‘, ‘the employment of the faculties of the soul on God’. Prayer is more than attention given to, and awareness of, the Divine One; prayer is an atmosphere. … chiefly it is the taking of a direction. One fixes ones thoughts, words, mind, heart, even ones acts and gestures - and the lightest and most meaningless of these - towards the Light which alone gives them worth.
(Even) driving a team of mules, or a bulldozer, harnessing a horse or a waterfall, digging a ditch or potatoes, waxing floors or wiping a dish, planting, ploughing, harrowing or harvesting, writing a book or typing a letter - so long as you point all these towards God - it is praying! That orientation, that deliberate choice of direction, that aiming everything at God alone, makes every act an act of praise and adoration. "
How very consoling for the rest of us. Let us remember that this is what our Morning Offering means - and then act on it.
No comments:
Post a Comment