Prayer

As a former Protestant we were taught that repetitious prayer was vain and that Christ taught against such prayer. We were taught NOT to say the Lord's prayer everyday or to make it part of our "prayer chest." The Lord's prayer was merely a model by which we were to develop our prayers to God. This idea is pure mumbo-jumbo. Protestants have long taken out of context Christ's admonition against vain repetitious prayer (which I will not debate at this time) thus shutting the door on an amazing conversation with God.

Since I have begun my journey to become Catholic I have been exposed to the treasury of prayer used by the Church. My first real exercise in prayer was learning the Rosary. At first I found it hard to say the Rosary because of my Protestant understanding of prayer. After all wasn't saying 50 Hail Mary's vain repetition? But I made myself do it. Soon it became a joy to do and I was able to say the complete Rosary from memory. My only problem was how to meditate on the mysteries while saying the Hail Mary's. So I assumed that the only way to do that was to contemplate and meditate on each mystery first before preceding to the 10 Hail Mary's. But something happened along the way. I received a revelation, an understanding, an epiphany that made the Church's treasury of prayers come alive.

While praying for a dear friend, whom I met through RCIA I discovered something new. I told my friend I would pray the Rosary on her behalf and ask intercession from our Lady. As I began vocalizing the Hail Mary portion I found I could concentrate on my friend and ask specific things for her. Let me explain what I mean, it's kind of complicated.

The repetitious "ness" of the Hail Mary portion just came out. I no longer concentrated to make the words come out of my mouth, they just came. This freed my mind to talk to Our Lady in conversation about my friend. I heard myself saying the Hail Mary's while I was talking in my head like we do when we read a book to ourselves. It's like doing two different things at the same time. It was amazing. I decided to analyze what this meant and came up with this observation:

The words we speak out loud in prayer are designed to approach the Deity in holiness. They are a proper form of respect that opens the doorway to God himself. As the door opens we walk in with our mind and bring our petitions, our praises, our requests, our heart, our gratitude...US to the Lord.

Memorizing the great treasury of prayers of the Catholic Church opens the door to God. The language of each prayer becomes a door opener. As we chant these prayers that have become most familiar to us they begin to come out of our mouth without having to concentrate on saying the words. We hear ourselves and know what we are saying is the prayer we chose to pray, but our mind begins our personal conversation with the Lord. I hope I have shown what I have discovered in an understandable way. This type of repetitious prayer, frowned upon by Protestants is necessary to approach the Deity in such a way as to free the mind to speak our hearts.

This is how I pray. This is not the only way to pray, but to me it has become a complete joy and something I look forward to each day. Try it if you can. It does take time to learn to do. The spiritual reward is tremendous!