Day 346: Meditation and Vocal Prayer (2700-2708)

• It’s Day 346!!

• Let’s chill while Fr. Mike reviews previous days…

• ARTICLE 1: EXPRESSIONS OF PRAYER

• Paragraph 2699 says, “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.”

• Prayer is very personal and can be very individual

• VOCAL PRAYER

• MEDITATION

• Let’s pray!!

Prayer by Fr. Mike: “Father in Heaven, we give you praise and glory. Thank you for bringing us to this day. Thank you for bringing us to day 346, for bringing us to this place, where we can hear the teaching of your Church in such a brief way on what it is to express vocal prayer, what it is to have meditative prayer. And you invite us into this, Lord. You invite us into this expression of our love for you, of our pleading with you, your expression of praising and glorifying you through vocal prayer. And we ask that you help us to enter more deeply into meditative prayer, into that silent prayer, that quiet prayer in the depths of our hearts. Lord God, in this day, we ask you to help us. Make us pray-ers. Make us people who pray, people who talk to you and seek you at all times. And Lord, as we heard yesterday, we cannot pray at all times unless we pray at certain times. So we ask you, please help us to make the decision. Help us to make the choice to spend time just with you, to spend time just with you in prayer today. Bless this time. Help us to learn more about you and how we can talk to you. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen”

• So there we have it!!

• VOCAL PRAYER

• Paragraph 2700 says, “Through his Word, God speaks to man. By words mental or vocal, our prayer takes flesh. Yet it is most important that the heart should be present to him to whom we are speaking in prayer: ‘Whether or not our prayer is heard depends not on the number of words, but on the fervor of our souls.’”

• The reality is that we are body and spirit

• We give expression to what is in our hearts

• We give expression to what is in our minds

• We give expression to what is in our souls

• We do this through words in vocal prayer

• There are some of us who may dismiss vocal prayer

• There are some of us who think like Mike Gormley, “We are not taught to pray. We are taught to repeat.”

• We still need to have those words and we need to learn how to repeat those words

• It’s not a matter of merely repeating

• The words are an expression of what is in our hearts

• Paragraph 2701 says, “Vocal prayer is an essential element of the Christian life. To his disciples, drawn by their Master’s silent prayer, Jesus teaches a vocal prayer, the Our Father. He not only prayed aloud the liturgical prayers of the synagogue but, as the Gospels show, he raised his voice to express his personal prayer, from exultant blessing of the Father to the agony of Gethsemane.”

• Vocal prayer is a good thing

• Vocal prayer is something that Jesus Himself did

• WE NEED TO DO THIS!!

• We must pray with our whole being to give all power possible to our supplication

• This doesn’t just mean our voices

• This doesn’t mean just our hearts

• It means our hearts and our voices UNITED TO EACH OTHER

• Paragraph 2703 says, “This need also corresponds to a divine requirement. God seeks worshippers in Spirit and in Truth, and consequently living prayer that rises from the depths of the soul. He also wants the external expression that associates the body with interior prayer, for it renders him that perfect homage which is his due.”

• God calls us to ACTIVE and EXTERNAL WORSHIP, not merely interior conversion

• Pray with your words, and let those words be an expression of the depth of your heart

• If you are praying the Rosary, or with holy cards, or a chaplet, the Lord’s Prayer, all of them are good

• We must be attentive to ensure that those words are connected to our hearts

• MEDITATION

• Paragraph 2705 says, “Meditation is above all a quest. The mind seeks to understand the why and how of the Christian life, in order to adhere and respond to what the Lord is asking. The required attentiveness is difficult to sustain. We are usually helped by books, and Christians do not want for them: the Sacred Scriptures, particularly the Gospels, holy icons, liturgical texts of the day or season, writings of the spiritual fathers, works of spirituality, the great book of creation, and that of history-the page on which the ‘today’ of God is written.”

• We can seek out the Lord in all of these books, but also in creation and in history

• We can even bring our own personal history to prayer and meditate on that

• What is the goal?

• The goal is Jesus

• Paragraph 2706 says, “To meditate on what we read helps us to make it our own by confronting it with ourselves. Here, another book is opened: the book of life. We pass from thoughts to reality. To the extent that we are humble and faithful, we discover in meditation the movements that stir the heart and we are able to discern them. It is a question of acting truthfully in order to come into the light: ‘Lord, what do you want me to do?’”

• How many times have we read a book but we didn’t meditate on what we read?

• We didn’t reflect deeply on what we read

• So we think it’s a nice insight, or we even may not remember what we read

• If you ever prayed Lectio Divina with the Scriptures, like the Gospels, and you want to apply it to yourself and ask the question what is the condition of our hearts?

• Fr. Mike is using the example of the Parable about the different soils so let’s listen because I’m sure many of us have already heard this in one of his or another priest’s homilies 😉…

• Take the time today to have some expression of vocal prayer and some attempt at meditative prayer

• There are so many different ways to do this

• LECTIO DIVINA How Do You Pray with the Bible? Fr. Mike explains in this video… 😀

• We can do this at any point

• We can talk to the Lord when we drive, even

• “God, what do you want me to do with this? How can I carry this piece into the future?”

• Fr. Mike is praying FOR YOU!!

• Please pray for Fr. Mike and for each other!!

• I cannot WAIT…