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Quote of the Week on Prayer
I've been thinking of this quote ever since I read it a few years back. It grips me and challenges my paradigm of prayer in a really refreshing way. It brings prayer into a visionary futuristic orientation. Why not?
"Prayer and meditation have an important part to play in opening up new ways and new horizons. If our prayer is the expression of a deep and grace-inspired desire for newness of life--and not the mere blind attachment to what has always been familiar and “safe”--God will act in us and through us to renew the Church by preparing, in prayer, what we cannot yet imagine or understand. In this way our payer and faith today will be oriented toward the future which we ourselves may never see fully realized on earth."
Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a world of Action.
Thoughts? posted by John David Walt | at 11/07/2009 10:35:00 PM
Today...
2 Comments:
You know I love me some Big Tom. It's a good quote. I'd only say that I'm betting he didn't mean to say that we should jettison all the "old ways" of prayer that are familiar. Rather, that we should enter into them from the heart.
Also, this last part of the quote: "In this way our payer and faith today will be oriented toward the future which we ourselves may never see fully realized on earth." makes me sad in a way. I think of dreams and "visions" I have about things and wonder if I'll live to see them come to pass.
So if I've understood this rightly; God is able to work through our prayers to improve the Church in ways we can't comprehend so long as our prayers are focussed on a changing of the self.
It's an interesting case but I can't think of how we can use practical examples of it in our own lives. I suppose it really puts an emphasis on individual responsibility within Church. Most things that seem to be wrong with a community can be fixed by a willingness to change spurred on by a passion for God. "Community is an effect, not a cause" almost.
I'm not very good at this whole theology thing so please enlighten me with your own thoughts!
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