According to a Biography on Pope John Paul II the pontiff spent seven to eight hours in prayer meditative form of prayer. If you look at Catholic Online there is a whole section devoted to prayer. Prayer is an important part of our daily and weekly mass at church, but how much of us really believe it works. St. Monica dedicated ten years of her life to prayer to save her son, St. Augustine from sin. It works!
Perhaps prayer cuts too deep for most of us. We are mislead by doubters. I asked Sr. Innes Telles in researching another article on the Soledad Enrichment Action organization to tell me about her prayer life and she told me she dedicated much of her time to meditative prayer in the morning.
Meditation and reflection can spend a lot of time reflecting on your life. Many people spend hours avoiding their problems. They do not need prayer to reflect on them, but ths is not what meditative prayer is.Confronting our problems maybe the sole obstacle to conquering our lack of spirituality. This is the wrong view of meditation. Rather the goal of meditative prayer is to seek God and not to dwell on your problems. You go to God for help and you seek his presence and after your time with God you should feel refreshed and invigorated. People who dwell on their problems are not with God. They are filled with doubt and guess who is filling their minds with this doubt! It ain't God!
Catholic Meditative prayer is not reflection on your weaknesses rather it is a strengthening of the mind, and Catholic meditative prayer is not the clearing of the mind. It is the opposite. It is the filling of the mind with God, hope and love of God.
After this filling and being in God's presence you are transformed.
The site I took this from is on meditative prayer, (http://rickmk.com/rmk/Cath/meditation.html) and it states the person should be comfortable sitting or kneeling and place yourself in God's presence and it tells you how to get comfortable as part of the first step. The next step is to ask for God's help or the blessed mother to intercede. The third step is to pick a part of the gospel to think about and then place yourself in Gods presence.You picture the Gospel scene and think of the people, then you place yourself in that setting. You want to be very detailed in placing yourself in the setting by visualizing what the people are wearing down to the expressions on their faces and what they are saying. Detail according to this technique is important.Listen to what the people are saying and get involved in the conversation and think about what you would have said. If you can do all this you are there. The last step is thanking God.
Now think of the rosary and how close to meditative prayer it is. Why, because that is the type of prayer the rosary is. You are actually meditating on the scenes provided by the mysteries. Often times we let our minds wander and well you know, it is human nature to do so. The bottom line is that prayer is important to a Catholic and one should put some effort into it. Practice by praying for strong family values and asking God to protect us from the impure thoughts of pornography. Join us in prayer here. Once a week! Get involved and Pray!
Tags: Meditative Prayer
