(pp. 89-90):
Prayer in the Benedictine tradition, then, is not an exercise done for the sake of quantity or penance or the garnering of spiritual merit. Benedictine prayer is not an excursion into a prayer-wheel spirituality where more is better and recitation is more important than meaning. Prayer,..., if we "sing praise wisely," or well, or truly, becomes a furnace in which every act of our lives is submitted to the heat and purifying process of the smelter's fire so that our minds and our hearts, our ideas and our lives, come to be in sync, so that we are what we say we are, so that the prayers that pass our lips change our lives, so that God's presence becomes palpable to us. Prayer brings us to burn off the dross of what clings to our souls like the mildew and sets us free for deeper, richer, truer lives in which we become what we seek.Comments?
1 comment:
Wow, Jim, you sure can pick out the "best" to keep us thinking and evaluating!! My first thought was about how I so easily get caught up in the "recitation" and forget to think about the "meaning" (I think this happens so easily with the Episcopal form of Sunday worship). I know the "sing praise wisely" wasn't necessarily meant to literally mean "sing" however it made me think about the hymns we sing and how I often REALLY think about the hymn as a prayer, and certainly as praise, NOT just a song. I like to think that the "prayers that pass my lips help to change my life...AND the lives for whom I pray". I know I still have a lot of "mildew on my soul" but I like to think I'm working at getting it burnt off!
I hope Sunday's class was a good one.
Blessings,
Linda
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