500 VARIOUS WAYS TO PRAY

YOUCAT Lesson 500

YOUCAT the catechism for Catholic youth

500  Are there various ways to pray?

Yes, there is vocal prayer, meditation, and contemplative prayer.  All three ways of prayer presuppose recollecting one’s mind and heart.  [2699, 2721]

Sunday Mass at St. Peter Catholic church, Ashton, WI. The church was built in 1901.  At the left edge of the photo is a beautiful carved pulpit but the reader for the Mass uses a modern microphone and a lecturn.  Photo by Don L. Bragg …..500

 

”There are many paths of prayer.  Some people follow only one, while others walk along all of them.  There are moments of a lively certainty: Christ is there, he is speaking inside us.  In other moments he is the silent one, a distant stranger…For everyone prayer remains in its infinite variations, a passageway to a life that does not come from ourselves but from somewhere else.”  Brother Roger Schutz

[2699, 2721]

2699 The Lord leads all persons by paths and in ways pleasing to him, and each believer responds according to his heart's resolve and the personal expressions of his prayer. However, Christian Tradition has retained three major expressions of prayer: vocal meditative, and contemplative. They have one basic trait in common: composure of heart. This vigilance in keeping the Word and dwelling in the presence of God makes these three expressions intense times in the life of prayer. --Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition

IN BRIEF

2721 The Christian tradition comprises three major expressions of the life of prayer: vocal prayer, meditation, and contemplative prayer. They have in common the recollection of the heart. --CCC

This is well explained by a contemporary spiritual writer, Fr. Thomas Dubay. As an elderly peasant once explained when St. John Vianney asked him how he prayed: “I look at the good God, and the good God looks at me.”