Personal Prayer to God?

[mesl4]

Are Catholics encouraged to pray intimately/personally /their own thoughts w/God? With all the recitation, it seems to lose the personal touch or authenticity. I’ve been told that as penance one prays a certain # of “Hail Marys” or “Our Fathers.” for absolution. Is that right? Can’t the person just pray their heart out to God? It seems it would be much more meanigful.

 

[LilyM]

Are Catholics encouraged to pray intimately/personally /their own thoughts w/God? With all the recitation, it seems to lose the personal touch or authenticity. I’ve been told that as penance one prays a certain # of “Hail Marys” or “Our Fathers.” for absolution. Is that right? Can’t the person just pray their heart out to God? It seems it would be much more meanigful.

Firstly, each single prayer is us saying ‘I love you’ to God. Does anyone who truly loves get tired of saying ‘I love you’ to their beloved, regardless of how many times they’ve said it before? Does anyone who truly loves get tired of hearing ‘I love you’ from their beloved, regardless of how many times they’ve heard it before?

Secondly, the prayers themselves are infinitely rich in meaning if we just choose to think about what they say. St Thomas Aquinas preached every day for 40 days straight just on the Hail Mary prayer and all its many layers of meaningfulness. I’m sure others have similarly plumbed the depths of the ‘Our Father’ without reaching the bottom. There’s a whole huge section of the Catechism which is just devoted to going through the ‘Our Father’ phrase by phrase and exploring it.

Finally, it’s certainly not a case of doing one (repetitive prayer) or the other (spontaneous prayer). We do both, and both are highly encouraged. There are certainly meditative and highly personal kinds of prayer like lectio divina, and most saints and spiritual directors would recommend spending some minutes each day in completely freeform prayer.

But those same spiritual directors would never advise neglecting time-honoured prayers like the Rosary either - they are ideal, for example, for times of grief or other high emotion where the heart may be too full to speak to God in spontaneous prayer. And straight after confession, for many people, overwhelmed by their sinfulness and God’s mercy, is one of those times when we might fall back on those traditional prayers that we know so well.

At such times I might take out my Rosary or prayer book and think of how many others before me, in similar situations, have prayed those same prayers, how many even at the same time as me may be praying them. It reminds me of Revelation where all of those in heaven, on earth and under the earth are not just united in praising and praying to God, but are doing so with the same words even.

And the Rosary is really a case where we are being BOTH traditional AND sponaneous in our prayer. We have mysteries to contemplate upon while we say it, so it’s not really about the Hail Marys themselves at all. And we contemplate those episodes of Christ’s life in any fashion we see fit - we DO have our own thoughts regarding them and we DO bring to God the unique responses they evoke in each of us as we pray it.

I’m sure 100 different people would get 100 different insights praying the same mystery. And I know I get new insights each time I pray, or deeper appreciation of previous insights, regardless of how many times I’ve said the Rosary before. So it never becomes boring.

So no, those particular prayers need not lose even a bit of their ‘personal touch’ or ‘authenticity’ unless you let them.

 

[FCEGM]

Are Catholics encouraged to pray intimately/personally /their own thoughts w/God?

Absolutely; the formal prayers that we pray together (such as at Mass) strengthen us as Christ’s One Body. The intimate prayers of our hearts flow from that essential union each soul has in Christ that has been liturgically expressed in unity when we are together in worship. We are encouraged to form a deep and intimate relationship with Christ and in Him with the Most Holy Trinity through our personal prayer. But more than praying just our own thoughts, we are to grow in responsive attentiveness to Him, attentive not just to what we would like to have Him do for us, but to Who He Is in Himself.

With all the recitation, it seems to lose the personal touch or authenticity. I’ve been told that as penance one prays a certain # of “Hail Marys” or “Our Fathers.” for absolution. Is that right? Can’t the person just pray their heart out to God? It seems it would be much more meanigful.

Part of the beautiful experience of the Sacrament of Penance is the growth of our humility through obedience to Christ as expressed through the penance that we receive from the priest. IOW, we don’t just “go it alone”, but express our gratitude for the forgiveness we have received from Our Savior through the ministration of the priest by following-through on the penance he has given us.

mes, I’d like to suggest that a good way to better know the Church is through reading biographies and autobiographies of the Saints and Blesseds who have been formed in Christ through His Church. One such classic autobiography is that of St. Therese of Lisieux, The Story of a Soul. In that book you will encounter a young girl absolutely devoted to Our Lord and His Church and how this brought her to give herself to Him through a life of prayer and daily immersion in the little things of life that spoke to her of Him.

Another book that will greatly help you understand the importance of formal prayer and united liturgical prayer is Thomas Howard’s Evangelical Is Not Enough.

 

[OutinChgoburbs]

The others have done such a beautiful job of explaining Catholic prayer, I will only supply you with links to explanations of the rosary, so you can better understand the duality of the repetitious prayers with the mysteries and the spontaneous prayer, all at once:

http://www.catholic.com/library/Rosary.asp

http://www.catholic.net/RCC/Indices/Inspirations/rosary.html (Does not include Luminous mysteries, but is a pretty good explanation.)

http://www.familyrosary.org/main/rosary-explanation.php

http://www.scborromeo.org/prayers/rosary.htm

http://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/rosary_scripture.htm (Scriptural basis of the Hail Mary)

http://www.vatican.va/special/rosary/index_rosary.htm

http://www.catholicity.com/cds/rosary.html

http://www.catholicity.com/cds/corapi.html

 

[marthagreys]

The “written” prayers bothered me, too, when I first started investigating the Catholic Church. But I finally came to realize that a prayer is a prayer - no matter who first used the words. If I’m the one praying (saying) them to Jesus, then He hears me. I think it’s similar to buying a birthday or anniversary card for a loved one: the words on the card aren’t written by me, but the card is from me, and what’s written on it comes from my heart to my loved one even though somebody else wrote them.