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Index of topics on this page link The Masai Creed out of Africa Rahner and Teresa of Avila on prayer Position of The Our Father in Catholic Catechism |
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The Credo
If you wish a copy of the Masai Creed, out of Africa, shown in the panel to the right, make a right click on it and follow the menu directions: to either file it as a picture, or paste it into one of your own documents. You will then be able to print it out as a book mark for your bible, a theology book, or prayer manual.
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Importance of The Our Father
The Catechism of The Catholic Church is too often thought of as only a list of do's and don'ts. Yes, it does discuss the Ten Commandments (Decalogue) in detail. But that is only one of the four main topics of the CCC. Organized along the lines of what the Church calls the "four pillars of exposition," or the four dimensions of faith, the CCC is outlined in this fashion. All of those headings are URLs; you may click on them and go directly to the Internet version of the CCC. The approximate percentage of space occupied by each of the four major pillars of exposition is based on a page count of the text. It might be a heavy duty, and somewhat difficult, to commit yourself to plowing through the entire CCC , section-by-section in the order of presentation, until you come up to the presumed conclusion of the Our Father. Try starting with the Our Father. Then, move up a few pages to the various forms of prayer and the problems of distractions. Energized from the beautiful final pages of the CCC, you will probably have substantial motive and understanding to work through the rest of the Catechism at you own pick and choosing. And, to quote Tertullian again: The Lord's prayer is truly a summary of the whole gospel. (CCC Paragraph 2761) |
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Here is an interesting comparison and contrast between the opinions of two authentic figures in our Christian tradition. |
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Karl Rahner |
St. Teresa of Avila |
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Some of The Difficulties with Routine Daily Prayer
It 'is difficult to prevent everyday prayer from disappearing imperceptibly and withering away. It is even more difficult to make everyday prayer real prayer and to prevent its degenerating into mere routine. We must ask ourselves how far our everyday prayer is more than mere words. Heart and mind are often far away from what we are saying. Instead of speaking heart to heart to God, we recite set formulas. Our main concern is to get through the formulas, and there is no attempt to establish vital contact with God. Thus everyday prayer becomes an everyday matter in the worst sense of the word. It becomes a superficial, mechanical, slipshod lip-service, the performance of an external task to be got through as quickly as possible in order to get back to more pleasant things.
Such prayer is, as it were, time grudgingly conceded to God, because this concession is better not omitted, lest we should get into His bad books. Thus we slip into that terrifying state of everyday Christian life, where in praying, our hearts remain far from God. Our lips honor God, but our heart does not join with them; and yet we imagine that we thus fulfill our duty towards God. Towards Him Who alone knows our heart, however, there is no fulfillment of duty unless our life and words are filled with the pure spiritual intention of the heart.
In many cases, a man suffers because of the difference between what his prayer is and what he knows it should be. He suffers from his heart's refusing to enter into the lofty words of adoration, praise, thanks, petition, awe or contrition, which are the subject and expression of prayer. He suffers from the contrast between his willingness to pray, often and every day, and his apparent incapability. His heart seems to be paralysed, and he fears he may be labeled a hypocrite through pretending to do something which in reality is beyond his power. He thinks that in sincerity towards himself and towards God, he must wait. until the fountains in the depths of his heart spring up again, to provide the healing waters of grace, of spontaneous emotion and of vital spiritual experience, thus making true prayer possible in a sincere outpouring of the heart. This difficulty tempts many a responsible and good person to pray infrequently. These are persons whose everyday life becomes void of prayer, not because they have succumbed to the superficiality of mundane routine, but because they are conscientious and honest. They refuse to pray unless their prayer comes from the heart. They do not believe that it needs only the will of man to make his prayer the voice of the heart.
Nevertheless, in spite of all these difficulties, it remains true, as the wisdom of our forefathers and our own precious inheritance teach us, that we must make prayer part of our daily life. We must not restrict prayer to the rare moments of sensible devotion when prayer wells up spontaneously within us. Such moments do indeed occur as long as faith in God lives in the soul. We must realise the necessity of everyday prayer, which is both the prerequisite and the result of great moments of spiritual exaltation.
Optically Scanned into the Computer from Karl Rahner’s book ON PRAYER, pages 46-47. Scans as 10th grade reading level. Some spelling corrections made, but then avoided to maintain the correct English spelling of this text.
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Beware of thinking you are unworthy of prayer
5. The good that one who practices prayer possesses has been written of by many saints and holy men; I mean mental prayer-- glory be to God for this good! If it were not for this good, even though I have little humility, I should not be so proud as to dare speak about mental prayer.
I can speak of what I have experience of. It is that in spite of any wrong he who practices prayer does, he must not abandon prayer since it is the means by which he can remedy the situation; and to remedy it without prayer would be much more difficult. May the devil not tempt him, the way he did me, to give up prayer out of humility. May that person believe that God's words cannot fail. For if we are truly repentant and resolve not to offend God, He will return to the former friendship and bestow the favors He previously did, and sometimes more if the repentance merits it.
Whoever has not begun the practice of prayer, I beg for the love of the Lord not to go without so great a good. There is nothing here to fear but only something to desire. Even if there be no great progress, or much effort in reaching such perfection as to deserve the favors and mercies God bestows on the more generous, at least a person will come to understand the road leading to heaven. And if he perseveres, I trust then in the mercy of God, who never fails to repay anyone who has taken Him for a friend. For mental prayer in my opinion is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us. In order that love be true and the friendship endure, the wills of the friends must be in accord.
The will of the Lord, it is already known, cannot be at fault; our will is vicious, sensual, and ungrateful. And if you do not yet love Him as He loves you because You have not reached the degree of conformity with His will, you will endure this pain of spending a long while with one who is so different from you when you see how much it benefits you to possess His friendship and how much He loves you.
Optically scanned into the Computer from Vol. 1 of the collected works of St. Teresa of Avila, Inst. of Carmelite Studies edition, page 67.
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| Jean Cardinal Danielou, God’s Life in Us, Dimension Books, 1960, pp. 30-32. (Translated from the French edition: La Trinite et le mystere de l’existence, by Jeremy Leggat) |
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Trinity and prayer
<< By dwelling within us and thus recreating our lives, the Holy Trinity establishes a new kind of relationship with us, in which we are caught up in the movement of the life of the Trinity. As Saint Ireneaus says, the Spirit takes hold of us and gives us to the Son, and the Son gives us to the Father. “…If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23). Every baptized soul possesses in his most secret depths a sanctuary where the Trinity dwells and where, under every conceivable circumstance, he can always enter the presence of the Trinity –provided he can leave behind him the successive stages of his spirit in order to sink himself, like a stone sinking to the bottom of the sea, into the abyss which is in us and which is God’s abode. The great mistake we make in our spiritual lives is to tarry at these intermediary zones instead of going straight to God. We let ourselves be infiltrated with regrets, plans, desires, cares. Even if we move forward, it is only to pine over our spiritual wretchedness. Basically, our inner life is often merely another way –more subtle, more refined, less crude, more dangerous-- of worrying about ourselves. The object of prayer is to plunge us into the abyss where the Trinity dwells, to unite us with the Trinity within us. Even if we were guilty of the gravest errors, we must begin by uniting with the Trinity before thinking of our sins. If we begin the other way around, we shall never succeed. We must aim for what Saint Augustine called the delectatio victrix, the taste for victory. For only pleasure can triumph over pleasure. Pleasure will always be mightier than duty. As Saint Augustine said: “We can conquer pleasure only through pleasure.” But the delectatio victix, the holiest of joys, is in fact a pleasure greater than all others. When we have renounced pleasure in order to attain joy, we have triumphed on the level of pleasure itself: hilarem datorem diligit Deus –“God loves a cheerful giver.” There are so many who serve God almost with reluctance. Yet from time to time God likes to be loved for Himself, and not simply as a duty! This, in fact, is the very essence of prayer: to discover the splendor of the Trinity, which is the archtype of all beauty, the archetype of all love, and to realize that the Trinty dwells within us, beckoning us to an exchange of love.”>>
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The Liturgy of The Hours, or The Divine Office, is the official prayer of the church. The Liturgy of The Hours has been under constant revision, ever since its beginnings in Israel, when Christ learned of his earthly mission through recitation of the Psalms and Prophets. A major highlight in liturgical development was the singing of the Office in monasteries under the Gregorian Chant format. Then, when the Divine Office was herded into the city streets by the Franciscans and other pastorally active religious orders, it took the shortened form that we call the (Roman) Breviary. It became vest pocket prayer, so to speak. However, the most significant modification in the Office affecting our lives is the reform carried out under Vatican II. [1] Instead of restricting the text to the Latin language, Vat II instituted the translation of the Office into the vernacular of every country. And [2] “Nevertheless, since the Office is the prayer of the entire people of God, it has been drawn up and prepared in such a way that not only the clergy but also the religious and even the laity are able to participate in it.” (Apostolic Constitution, Laudis Canticum, 1) Now this points to a mystery: The sacrifice of the Mass is the ultimate redemptive act of Christ. But a priest need not say Mass every day. The Liturgy of The Hours, however, is The Official Prayer of the Church, the people of God “continually” responding with Christ in prayer and praise. So, a priest is required to say the Office every day of his life. One of the many elements enhancing the present day format of the Office, and making it more interesting and appealing to the laity, is the rhythmic weaving of the scriptural canticles into morning and evening prayers. “Some new canticles from books of the Old Testament have been added at Morning Praise to increase the spirituality of that Hour, while canticles from the New Testament have been introduced, like pearls, for the adornment of Vespers.” (Ibid. 4). |
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The main prayers (but not the entire Office) of the LOH may be found daily at the Universalis web site: http://www.universalis.com/-400/today.htm In the USA, two versions of the LOH are usually available: A One volume edition of morning and evening prayer; and the four volume edition with all the hours of the day: Office Readings, Morning Prayer, Daytime Prayer (in 1, 2, or 3 brief readings), Evening Prayer and Night Prayer. |
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Scripture Readings for the daily Mass are available on line from: |
