Another of the three Lenten basics is prayer. Writing a blog post about prayer is a bit like writing about love. Either overwhelm all internet servers with terabytes upon terabytes of words, and still not do the subject justice, or be brief. This shall be brief.
The final 76 pages of the Catechism of the Catholic Church is devoted to Christian Prayer. Reviewing this, I was struck anew by this insight: That, though a thoroughly spiritual exercise, a movement of the heart, prayer is necessarily related to our physicality as well. "...it is the whole man who prays." {2562}
For one thing, the practice of fasting and other ascetics is essential to cultivating a healthy prayer life. A very common cause of sloth in prayer [2733], the spiritual masters say, is related to a failure to discipline the body through ascetical practices.
Secondly, true prayer is connected to living one's faith [2745] in concrete ways, else the prayer is hollow and meaningless.
Thus: Prayer, fasting, giving.
No comments:
Post a Comment