Christian prayer

The prayer of a Christian is the subject of his daily care in the process of spiritual development. We can say that without it and its dynamic development it is not possible for the spiritual progress of the Christian and the Church in which he or she lives. It is also a very extensive subject of research and scientific work in the field of theology and especially the theology of spirituality. Hence, it must be treated in a multi-faceted and multi-directional way. Among all the different categories of prayer, community prayer and common prayer are very important. This distinction is necessary because it reveals to us the truth that every prayer has a communal character, but it is not always common. However, prayer celebrated together is the source of Christian life and the Church, and it is the clearest and most readable testimony of faith.

Mark the Ascetic is opposed to the Messalians. According to them, Satan inhabits the human heart from the fall and must be removed through constant prayer and expelled by receiving the Holy Spirit. For Mark the Ascetic it is the Holy Spirit who lives in the human heart from his baptism. The believer must be vigilant because Satan wants to come from outside to take the place of the Spirit. The continuous prayer is therefore not a way of getting closer to God. It is a weapon in a spiritual battle trying to distance us from God. It is even more than a weapon: it is love, because God and man are from the baptism in a love relationship which is expressed by prayer. Mark the Ascetic confronts the Messalians, who use the continuous prayer as a way of achieving salvation, a way which should result in the coming of the Holy Spirit. In this way, the Messalians “instrumentalise” prayer. The studies on Mark’s works, especially on his vocabulary to describe prayer, show his clearly defined position, which is completely different from the approach of the Messalians. Prayer for Mark the Ascetic is neither means, nor instrument. It is a sign of love, an exchange of intimate love with God. By reaching for wedding terminology, Mark clearly shifts the accenton love with God. Prayer becomes a place of love that is experienced in the heart of the faithful.

The Arrow Prayer is the practice of continuous prayer that was developed
in the early church and was later formulated and regularly practiced
by the desert monks in Egypt. The prayer itself consisted of a repeated
Psalm, a short prayer, or a Bible verse. While we do not know where or when the name originated, we know that the practice of the prayer has always been associated with war imagery.

Some Christians who are citizens of the United States lament the current state of affairs in their country.  Enthusiasm for morality is waning.  Furthermore, support for anything religious is in decline, including protestant evangelicalism.  Some believers claim that increased natural disasters and human-made calamities are a result of turning away from God.  In support of this, they cite 1 Chronicles 7:14: “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” 
        The claim is made that if Christians will do what is commanded in this verse, then God will fulfill His promise to forgive sins and heal the United States.  Entire sermons of encouraging humble prayer and repentance before God are preached on this verse alone.  Beloved songs are written based on this verse.  Some hope for a new Great Awakening as a result of applying this verse to our contemporary context.

In this Master's thesis, Fr. Ian lays out a theology of Christian transformation whereby Christians are brought into relationship with God and discover his will. The work integrates insights from Catholic and Orthodox theology as well as both post and pre-Vatican II developments in Spiritual Theology.

La Sainte Écriture, lue dans la Tradition de l’Église, est le fondement de la vie spirituelle chrétienne catholique. C’est dans les Écritures, dans l’Ancien Testament et le Nouveau Testament, que nous rencontrons la Parole de Dieu destinée à prendre chair en nous et nous rendre ainsi participant du plan bienveillant de Dieu pour l’humanité. Dans cette brève étude, nous allons considérer les approches qui relèvent de notre responsabilité et, dans la dernière partie, l’œuvre de l’Esprit Saint en nous, dans notre homme intérieur et dans notre corps, pour la réalisation de cette œuvre de synergie avec le Dieu Trinité.

This essay attempts to analyze Augustine’s hermeneutics and homiletics in his De doctrina christiana. I will offer a succinct synopsis of the work and highlight various points showing Augustine’s hermeneutical and homiletical characteristics. Augustine stresses the importance of humiliation in the study of Scripture. He also regards the duplex commandment of love in Matthew 22 as the heart of Christian faith. In Augustine’s hermeneutics, sign has an important role. God can communicate with the believer through the signs of the Scriptures. Thus, humiliation, love, and the knowledge of signs are an essential hermeneutical presupposition for a sound interpretation of the Scriptures. Although Augustine endorses some teaching of the Platonism of his time, he corrects and recasts it according to a theocentric doctrine of the Bible. Similarly, in a practical discipline, he modifies the classical theory of oratory in a Christian way. He underscores the meaning of diligent study of the Bible and prayer as more than mere human knowledge and oratory skills. As a concluding remark, Augustine encourages the interpreter and preacher of the Bible to seek a good manner of life and, most of all, to love God and neighbor.

* Key words: Augustine, hermeneutics, humiliation, love, prayer

This paper seeks to show that the history of the Divine Office (the Church's daily "pensum servitutis" or "bounden duty"), is but the gradual unfolding of the image with which the Evangelist Luke closes his Gospel “They were continually in the Temple, praising and blessing God”, and which he immediately resumed in the Book of Acts, speaking of perseverance in apostolic teaching, eucharistic communion, and “the prayers” (tais proseuchais). 

This and other NT texts, when situated in their proper Jewish apocalyptic context, reveal a primitive community understanding itself to be the universal doxological community foretold by the Prophets, "a kingdom of priests" (Exod. 19:6, Apoc. 5:10) offering up unbloody, rational sacrifices upon earth, in a way mirroring the heavenly ministrations of Christ the High Priest and the Angels who serve him. 

Brief consideration is given to the problem of historicism in liturgical scholarship, which has tended to de-emphasise or deny altogether a sense of continuity with the "Temple idea" — even as, ironically, biblical scholarship more and more confirms the vital importance of Jewish temple mysticism in solving some of the most difficult puzzles regarding Christian origins.  Far more important, however, than debates among contemporary scholars is the Church's living memory, witnessing to a divine reality which mere historical investigation cannot access.

In order to show the pervasive nature of Temple concepts and imagery in traditional Catholic worship, the paper concludes with a brief mystagogy of the Office of Vespers according to the traditional Roman Breviary, celebrated in the solemn pontifical form.

The paper was originally delivered at the Fota XI International Liturgical Conference, July 7-9, 2018.  The proceedings have just been published by Smenos Publications.

In the Orthodox Christian school of hesychasm, the Holy Spirit's energies, or actions, can act within and sanctify a Christian's life and heart. Internal, constant prayer is an important practice for allowing this to happen, and it involves the body as well as the soul. In this summary of the subject, I will look at internal prayer's theological background as well as its spiritual effects, as described in such works as "The Way of a Pilgrim."

Research on the influence of praying the Psalms (PTP) on family life in a local church community within the Swiss state reformed church. Firstly, a deeper exploration of my continuing personal interaction with resources that aid the flourishing of an authentically Christian lifestyle, particularly PTP. Secondly and centrally, how PTP has been contextualised into the community and family life of the JAHU community and the influence this has had. Finally, this work is positioned as a study within the field of missional work called Scripture Engagement (SE).

In the age of secularisation, prayer is becoming an increasingly difficult act of believers to understand. Extremely dangerous individualism and subjectivism is the contemporary threat to common and community prayer. All of this makes it necessary to take a new look at this category of prayer so that it leads to an authentic testimony from Christians in the world. In this way, it also prevents the dangerous exclusivity of believers themselves when faced with challenges. Among the whole variety and categories of prayers, communal prayer and the prayer of community are very important. This distinction is necessary because it reveals to us the truth that every prayer has a communal character even though it is not always a common prayer. However, prayer celebrated together is the source of life for the Christian, the Church and the clearest and most readable testimony of faith.

The Sarum Rite, also called the Use of Salisbury, was a variation of the Roman Rite developed in the 1100s that was known to be high in ceremony. It also had a wealth of richly worded prayers that have influenced Christian worship ever since. Many prayers from the Sarum Rite were used in the Book of Common Prayer. This book gathers prayers from the original Sarum Missals, Breviaries and Psalters and presents them in a single collection in contemporary liturgical English, and may be useful in public or private devotions.

NOTE: "God Be in My Head... Prayers from Old Sarum" includes the psalm prayers in "Psalm Prayers from Sarum."

My fellow Americans, Last month, on November 8th, 2016, we voted to elect a new president. The outcome of that election sent a wave of surprise and trepidation around the world. We knew at that moment, that the United States of America has reached a new crossroad that may forever change our cause for humanity. Many of us are afraid, many of us alarmed, many are still deeply troubled by the possibility of re-experiencing the drastic results of racial arrogances that culminated in blatant destruction of precious human lives across time. We all remember the Trail of Tears, Shark Island, Greenwood in Tulsa, ButcherQaeda, ISIL, Boko Haram, Abu Ghraib, 9/11, Guantanamo, and so many other tragic death traps that marred human history across time and around the world. The progress that we have made in the tenure of human civilization was marked by a speech delivered by President Ronald Reagan to the people of West Berlin a little over two decades ago. That faithful afternoon, in West Berlin on June 12, 1987, Reagan said, " We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! " The Berlin Wall, referred to by the President, was built by Communists in August 1961 to keep Germans from escaping Communist-dominated East Berlin into Democratic West Berlin. The twelve-foot concrete wall extended for a hundred miles, surrounding West Berlin, and included electrified fences and guard posts. The wall stood as a stark symbol of the decades-old Cold War between the United States and Soviet Russia in which the two politically opposed superpowers continually wrestled for dominance, stopping just short of actual nuclear warfare. We have since come a long way in the progress of human development and world peace. Because of the peace between the East and the West, we have made a huge leap in the world of technology, medicine, humanities, and trade; the world has become more cohesive and tolerant. However, a new wave of religious defiance, civil unrest, and sectarian wars persist especially in the middle east. Disharmony and divisions are once again encroaching upon us all, as we found ourselves at the mercy of leaders whose yearning for power and record of arbitrary decisions reflects uncertainty and high level of risk. The new leader of the free world threatens to build a wall between our nation and its neighbor; threatens to pull U.S. out of World Trade Organization and threatens to pull U.S. funding for the United Nations. This is revealing of perhaps unintended retraction of the advancement of human civilization. He has reawakened unprecedented apostles of greed and racial arrogances who are nihilistic of everything we hold dear and erode the cultural rapprochement and civil right improvement we have made in our society. This brings the gravity of the challenges we face with the new administration in the new year and coming years to a new level of concern. We are in a time where we can predict weather patterns, we can predict volcanic eruption, we can see far into other galaxies. We understand the lessons of historical challenges, we can interpret previous experiences in-order to engage current challenges, as well as to prepare for future challenges. Our diversity is our strength, it provides us with so many resources and it is time to tap...

Can we pray together anymore?

In this collection of prayers for Lent, RW Walker explores what difference traditional, queer, and Christ-centred common prayer might make in a chaotic and divided world, a wilderness that seems so filled with death and despair. May these prayers fan a flame of hope in our hearts as we walk the wilderness journey of Jesus—together.

The Catholic Servant (November 2014): 5. In this Q & A I explain why Catholics will often pray the Hail Mary instead of a more expressive extemporaneous petitions or acts of praise. I explain both why such set prayers are used and why addressing Mary is not a way of putting God off but of recognizing his action in our lives.

Bible as a school of Christian meditation
Summary
Liturgy is the clearest expression of faith. Because of this, Christian meditation cannot lose reference to the liturgy (Verbum Domini 52). It must to lead and take its beginning from liturgy. Reflection over God's Word must be done in the context of new life in the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit is a soul of Christian meditation.

Au 16e siècle, la Communion fréquente n’existait pas encore, c’est pourquoi sainte Thérèse conseillait la « Communion spirituelle » fréquente, même plusieurs fois par jour. Aujourd’hui encore ce poème "La source" de saint Jean de la Croix peut être proposé à ceux qui sont privés du sacrement à en faire une célébration et être un chant de joie pour nous tous qui, à la Messe et à l’adoration eucharistiques, connaissons Dieu par la foi.

«[Recensión nº] 78. Martial d'Étampes, "Maître en oraison". "Exercise du silence intérieur". "L’Exercice des trois clous amoureux et douloureux", Éditions du Carmel, Toulouse 2008, 254 pp. 14 x 21 cm.», 2011.

Recensión (en español) de dicho libro (en francés).

This paper explores whether Buddhism contains any practices that can be classified as 'prayer.' With a focus on 'Kannalavva' (plaint) texts of Sri Lanka, it explores whether they can be taken as functional prayer texts. Ideas on prayer by Reginald S. Copleston, Anagarika Dharmapala, and D.T. Suzuki are discussed. Meal prayers of Theravada and Zen traditions are taken into account. The paper ends with a brief discussion of prayers of the New Kadampa Tradition of Geshe Kelsang Gyatso.