Posted on by Kurt Bodling

theologians must pray

Note:
Cardinal Dulles says theologians must pray. It would seem like a ‘no brainer,’ but I’d bet he knew of some theologians who said they didn’t. Or maybe it was his way of saying that theologians can’t only be book-learning head-knowledge people.

Quote:
“So the theologian must participate in the prayer life of the church and be a praying person himself or herself in order to think the thoughts of God, as we theologians try to do. A theologian who does not pray could hardly be a good theologian.” [emphasis added]

Source: Dulles, Avery Cardinal. “Reason, Faith and Theology.” Interviewer: James Martin, SJ.  America. 5 March 2001 issue. Viewed online 12 December 2015.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

Jesus prayed in solitude

Note:
Wanting to be like Jesus also means wanting to spend time in solitude and prayer. There’s a place for action, but only after contemplative sitting. The latter needs to be a priority.

Quote:
“Solitude and prayer-time alone were important to Jesus. Why is it, I wonder, that we seem more ready to follow Jesus into service than into solitude? Especially before important decisions were to be made, the Bible shows that Jesus took time to be alone with his Father and to reflect before deciding to move to another locale for ministry, before choosing the disciples, before embracing the cross.” (p. 96)

Source: Sager, Allan H. Gospel Centered Spirituality: An Introduction to our Spiritual Journey. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1990.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

prayer first of all

Note:
It’s funny how everyone wants to claim our mornings. Studies now show that the “best” time for exercise is in the morning. Productivity mavens say that our most creative work hours are in the morning. Writing teachers (often) hold up examples of this or that famous writer who wrote prolifically by regularly taking advantage of the morning hours. And here Bonhoeffer (as well as elsewhere other writers on the spiritual life) writes about the benefit and even necessity of using the morning hours for prayer. So unless we decide that we will take a morning run in the spirit of continuous prayer while dictating our creative ideas for our novel’s next chapter into our cell phone, I guess we have to pick and choose. Or try to justify alternating a prayer morning with an exercise morning. Or find a way to stretch the morning. One can only get up so early before one is destroying one’s sleep; and one can only delay lunch for so long (especially if is actually also breakfast) before one is destroying one’s nutrition and metabolism cycles.

Quote:
“The prayer of the morning will determine the day. Wasted time, which we are ashamed of, temptations that beset us, weakness and listlessness in our work, disorder and indiscipline in our thinking and our relations with other people very frequently have their cause in neglect of the morning prayer. The organization and distribution of our time will be better for having been rooted in prayer.”

Source: Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1954, page 71. (original German pub in 1939)

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

prayer and work related

Note:
Bonhoeffer writes about “praying and working” and I can see in it Bill Haley’s refrain about “contemplation for kingdom action.” Two apparently opposite goods in tension, a creative tension, a necessary one. It’s like the way negative space in art defines where and what the positive space is. Or in the words of the secular song “you can’t have one without the other.”” Still, I might quibble with his pronouncement that “the bulk of the day belongs to work.” That seems to say that prayer is walled off over there or is in a box. Praying at all times, however, and contemplative living puts prayer at the core and wraps work and everything else around it. How big is the core in your life? How thick is the wrapping layer?

Quote:
“Praying and working are two different things. Prayer should not be hindered by work, but neither should work be hindered by prayer. Just as it is God’s will that man should work six days and rest and make holy day in His presence on the seventh, so it is also God’s will that every day should be marked for the Christian by both prayer and work. Prayer is entitled to its time. But the bulk of the day belongs to work. And only where each receives its own specific due will it become clear that both belong inseparably together. Without the burden and labor of the day, prayer is not prayer, and without prayer work is not work. This only the Christian knows.”

Source: Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1954, pages 69-70. (original German pub in 1939)

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

the root of prayer is desire

Note:
Prayer is an expression of desire brought alive in a look of love between two persons, between believers and God. Without the personal relationship there is only desire, and desire by itself can be perverse.

Quote:
“Prayer is the expression of desire; its value comes from our inward aspirations, from their tenor and their strength. Take away desire, the prayer ceases; alter it, the prayer changes; increase or diminish its intensity, the prayer soars upward or has no wings. Inversely, take away the expression while leaving the desire, and the prayer in many ways remains intact. Has a child who says nothing but looks longingly at a toy in a shop window, and then at his smiling mother not formulated the most moving prayer? And even if he had not seen the toy, is not the desire for play, innate in the child as is the thirst for movement, in the eyes of his parents a standing prayer which they grant?”

Source: Sertillanges, Antonin G., O.P. The Intellectual Life: its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1987, pages 69-70.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

one view of prayer

Note:
Prayer in this telling is first and foremost asking for (spiritual) stuff, or expressing our desires to God. It isn’t here the sitting with God that we read about in present-day spiritual literature (note that the source of this quote is over 100 years old!). Meditation, as a subclass of prayer, is described at the end of the quote.

Quote:
“An act of the virtue of religion which consists in asking proper gifts or graces from God. In a more general sense it is the application of the mind to Divine things, not merely to acquire a knowledge of them but to make use of such knowledge as a means of union with God. This may be done by acts of praise and thanksgiving, but petition is the principal act of prayer.”

“It is therefore the expression of our desires to God whether for ourselves or others. This expression is not intended to instruct or direct God what to do, but to appeal to His goodness for the things we need….

“Meditation is a form of mental prayer consisting in the application of the various faculties of the soul, memory, imagination, intellect, and will, to the consideration of some mystery, principle, truth, or fact, with a view to exciting proper spiritual emotions and resolving on some act or course of action regarded as God’s will and as a means of union with Him. In some degree or other it has always been practised by God-fearing souls.”

Source: Wynne, John. “Prayer.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 12. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

praying and mulling over the Psalms

Note: The reason we spend so much time praying with the Psalms is that their broad range of content and expression touch all our needs. It could be that we feel one thing when the appointed Psalm goes somewhere else, but that just indicates (I think) our need for broader and deeper familiarity with them so that we can recall and pray the verses that do, at that moment, speak our heart.

Quote:
“And with that gospel, it is very important during our periods of silence and personal prayer to repeat some psalms that we have prayed in the Liturgy of Hours. Why the psalms? I can find myself in the psalms. Through the psalms I can praise God with trust and hope, but I can also give free rein to my darker thoughts that might otherwise lie in wait within my heart. Above all, the psalms sing my own thirst for God, the joys and sufferings of my search for God. The psalms are a support for our prayer and lectio divina.” (p. 55)

Source: Barban, Alessandro. “Lectio Divina and Monastic Theology in Camaldolese Life” in Belisle, Peter-Damian, editor. The Privilege of Love: Camaldolese Benedictine Spirituality. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2002.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

first things first

God has commanded “that if you see that your neighbor errs, sins, is in need, and suffers in his body, possessions, or soul, then and there you should get busy, let everything else go, and help him with all you are and have. When you can do no more, then you should help him with words and with prayer.”

Martin Luther. ‘The Gospel for Christmas Eve’ from the Christmas Postil. Luther’s Works, American Edition, vol. 52. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974), p. 17.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

prayer bridges space-time

“We live in time and space; God exists beyond time and space. Prayer can best help us toward an in-depth understanding of this mystery of the alliance between the temporal and the timeless. When we pray, we are in time that goes beyond time, and without leaving the space we occupy, we go beyond it. We are in this world, but not of it. All true prayer, whatever its form, admits us  the paschal mystery of Christ who dies and rises again each day in this world.”

Okumura, Augustine Ichiro. Awakening to Prayer. Translated by Theresa Kazue Hiraki and Albert Masaru Yamato. (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1994), p. 63.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

ora et labora :: pray and work

“Praying and working are two different things. Prayer should not be hindered by work, but neither should work be hindered by prayer. Just as it is God’s will that man should work six days and rest and make holy day in His presence on the seventh, so it is also God’s will that every day should be marked for the Christian by both prayer and work. Prayer is entitled to its time. But the bulk of the day belongs to work. And only where each receives its own specific due will it become clear that both belong inseparably together. Without the burden and labor of the day, prayer is not prayer, and without prayer work is not work. This only the Christian knows.”

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1954), p. 69-70.