Prayer Memory vs. Bible verse Memory

  • Thread starter Thread starter graceandglory
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
If I had to pick one or the other it would be bible verse memory. God’s Word is unchanging, but with prayer we don’t absolutely need pre-written ones
 
I teach in a Catholic school. We memorize prayers in English and in Latin, as well as praying every day in the classroom and at all school prayer. I was asked by an evangelical, “Do you have bible memory verses?” My first thought, was “where would I find the time to do that?” Then I realized that my students are always memorizing prayers, and praying, and while we use our bibles, and read from our bibles, and have a focus verse of the week, I’m not having them memorize these.

I really hope I can get some more responses.

Anyone here raising Catholic kids?
Do you teach them prayers so they could have that ongoing relationship with Christ? Or do you have them memorize verses, so they can talk about their faith?

Comments?
 
Prayer and bible reading are not in competition with each other. Each are important aspects of the Catholic faith. Both deserve attention in the home and in religious education classes.

If you are teaching in a Catholic school, make sure you are following the curriculum laid out by the diocese.
 
1ke said:
Prayer and bible reading are not in competition with each other. Each are important aspects of the Catholic faith. Both deserve attention in the home and in religious education classes.

If you are teaching in a Catholic school, make sure you are following the curriculum laid out by the diocese.
Click to expand...
Bible memory would not be in our diocesan curriculum. For that matter, neither is bible reading.:rolleyes:

My question, 1ke, was specifically regarding memorizing bible verses like the protestants do. I raised my kids protestant, and they were bible memory champs in Awana. They would earn Awana bucks on Awana nights for their memory verses, and gummy bears at Sunday School.

Their strong background in bible memory made their conversion with me, at age 12, make sense to them. Tomorrow they will be confirmed!
 
graceandglory said:
Bible memory would not be in our diocesan curriculum. For that matter, neither is bible reading.:rolleyes:

My question, 1ke, was specifically regarding memorizing bible verses like the protestants do. I raised my kids protestant, and they were bible memory champs in Awana. They would earn Awana bucks on Awana nights for their memory verses, and gummy bears at Sunday School.

Their strong background in bible memory made their conversion with me, at age 12, make sense to them. Tomorrow they will be confirmed!
Click to expand...
Reading the bible, and *studying *the bible, are very important and should be part of every Catholic home and every Catholic religion curriculum. Memorizing individual verses, less so.

I know my bible verses from hearing them at Mass and from studying the bible, not from a memory verse reward system. But, I don’t have everything memorized. I do have a good concordance when I need to look things up.

Many children in groups like AWANAS are learning ‘proof text’ verses-- verses memorized and taken completely out of context with the purpose of whacking people over the head with their version of Christianity.

Catholics do not approach the bible in this manner. Therefore, no, I don’t believe it’s important, and can actually be detrimental. It is a foundation built on sand, not rock.
 
1ke said:
Many children in groups like AWANAS are learning ‘proof text’ verses-- verses memorized and taken completely out of context with the purpose of whacking people over the head with their version of Christianity.
Click to expand...
That is definitely true, and a part of their “systematic theology.” ****

That’s why I hesitate. I could spend a few weeks having my students memorize the Act of Contrition, for example, and they have that prayer for repentance in their hearts for their whole life. Included in the Act of Contrition is basically all the theology of the memory verses in “The Four Spiritual Laws,” that the protestant kids memorize:
  • I am a sinner.
  • Everyone is a sinner.
  • Jesus is God.
  • Jesus died on the cross for my sins.
  • I need to confess my sins, and turn from my sins in order to be forgiven.
  • I will try to sin no more with God’s grace.
I was very good at bible memory. It has only enriched my spiritual walk. As a teacher, I can see that memorizing prayers “does” the same thing.
As a Christian, I can tell you that when I needed God’s forgiveness, (without the sacrament), “Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended You” was always there, and even more powerful than Psalm 51.

I’m trying to come up with a supplemental program, maybe for extra credit, to memorize the verses each week. We cover so much more in religion than the same age kids do in Sunday school each week.
 
I think it’s important to both know the Bible and to know prayers.

The one thing I put no priority on is memorizing the Chapter and Verse number of a Bible passage. That’s not for me. Knowing what is in the Bible is one thing. Memorizing chapter and verse numbers just doesn’t seem to be all that important to me. I realize some people may have a facility for that, and that’s great. It’s not for me.
 
graceandglory said:
That is definitely true, and a part of their “systematic theology.” ****

I’m trying to come up with a supplemental program, maybe for extra credit, to memorize the verses each week.
Click to expand...
Did you ever develop a supplemental program to help memorize bible verses? There are several websites that are by Protestants, but they skip the good Catholic verses which we should know. Thank you for any help or direction.
 
I agree with most of the comments here. However, it should be noted that we are commanded to always give a defense for our joy i.e. our faith. I was raised protestant and learned to memorize verses just as mentioned above. (Sword Drills i think they were called) While they can and are taken out of context, once I learned what the Church taught about the verses and the correct context etc. these memories became powerful tools.

I think we can, and should, do both. We as Catholic Christians are under a steady assault from the culture of death, non-believers, and even, in my part of the country, non-Catholic Christians. We need to remember what Christ told the Apostles “I send you out as sheep among wolves…be as wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” (Case in point ;))
 
Memorizing Bible verses is not only about apologetics and defending your faith, although the ability to do so is extremely important. Knowing the word of God also draws you closer to him and protects you from the snares of Satan.

I just remembered, that’s right, remembered, Psalm 119:11.
I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
Click to expand...
The beautiful thing is that the Holy Spirit beings all things to our remembrance, but you have to be somewhat familiar with the Bible.

Sometimes when faced with difficult situations in life, it is good to remember a verse that is helpful to you. I don’t mean you need to remember it verbatim. With the advent of the internet, all you need to remember is part of it and you can find the rest.

I believe any sort of Christian religious education should involve studying the Bible in addition to everything else.
 
Do both. They’re of equal importance. Of course, if you’re teaching Catholic students, you need to follow the “lesson plan” given by the diocese.

But, at the home or for personal study you can do both.

But, there’s a difference in the purpose of both - in which they are somehow opposite.

The purpose of memorized prayer is first, as a guide to a young Catholic to make them familiar and comfortable with prayer as they understand its purpose and blessings - with the eventual goal of being able to pray with their own words for their own pleas and gratitude as they mature. It is a terrible tragedy when one learns to pray through memorized prayers and never progress beyond that so that they can’t pray unless they have a prayer book to read off of.

The purpose of memorized bible verses is to always know what, why, and where a particular doctrine can be found in the Bible. Therefore, first you need to understand the teaching, put it in its proper context in the entire Holy Word of God. After that, then you may memorize the verse so that when you are pondering other parts of theology, you can bounce any discussion against the word of God with surety, without having to re-read the entire Bible to make sure what is said is what you think it says. And the terrible tragedy here, of course, is when one learns the word of God by memorizing Bible verses without truly understanding what the verse means, so that - yes, you form a habit of throwing out Bible verses here and there in response to a discussion that doesn’t even relate to the discussion at all (usually just a word or a phrase triggers the memory, but the context of the Bible verse is not applied)!

Make sense?
 
graceandglory said:
That is definitely true, and a part of their “systematic theology.”

That’s why I hesitate. I could spend a few weeks having my students memorize the Act of Contrition, for example, and they have that prayer for repentance in their hearts for their whole life. Included in the Act of Contrition is basically all the theology of the memory verses in “The Four Spiritual Laws,” that the protestant kids memorize:
  • I am a sinner.
  • Everyone is a sinner.
  • Jesus is God.
  • Jesus died on the cross for my sins.
  • I need to confess my sins, and turn from my sins in order to be forgiven.
  • I will try to sin no more with God’s grace.
I was very good at bible memory. It has only enriched my spiritual walk. As a teacher, I can see that memorizing prayers “does” the same thing.
As a Christian, I can tell you that when I needed God’s forgiveness, (without the sacrament), “Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended You” was always there, and even more powerful than Psalm 51.

I’m trying to come up with a supplemental program, maybe for extra credit, to memorize the verses each week. We cover so much more in religion than the same age kids do in Sunday school each week.
Click to expand...
I think that Bible memorization is a good thing, but memorizing individual verses not so much. Learning whole Psalms, for instance, would be awesome. And even if you memorize a whole book and forget much of it, you will still have the basic content and structure in your head. I memorized all of Matthew at one point for a Bible quizzing context (OK, I only had the whole thing down for a couple of days!). I couldn’t quote you Matthew now (for one thing, it was in the NIV, which I didn’t use much at the time and don’t use much now), but I do have a good knowledge of the structure of the Gospel of Matthew thanks to that experience.

I’m also grateful to AWANA, but I have to agree that the verses chosen are highly selective, and I think trying to learn whole passages is much better. The emphasis shouldn’t be so much on being word perfect, in my opinion (though that’s always nice), but on having the basic structure and content in your head so that you know how to find things and know what the context is of any given passage.

And devotionally, memorizing Scripture is surely even better than memorizing non-inspired prayers. As I said, why not learn Psalms?

Edwin
 
When I was Protestant, Bible memorization was a big part of my tradition. I knew friends who memorized books of the Bible, and not for just a mental exercise, but to really know and understand what the Bible had to say. We are told to have an answer for our hope, so I believe that memorizing the Word of God is very instrumental in doing that, plus it never hurts in knowing God’s Word!
 
Contarini said:
I think that Bible memorization is a good thing, but memorizing individual verses not so much. Learning whole Psalms, for instance, would be awesome. And even if you memorize a whole book and forget much of it, you will still have the basic content and structure in your head. I memorized all of Matthew at one point for a Bible quizzing context (OK, I only had the whole thing down for a couple of days!). I couldn’t quote you Matthew now (for one thing, it was in the NIV, which I didn’t use much at the time and don’t use much now), but I do have a good knowledge of the structure of the Gospel of Matthew thanks to that experience.

I’m also grateful to AWANA, but I have to agree that the verses chosen are highly selective, and I think trying to learn whole passages is much better. The emphasis shouldn’t be so much on being word perfect, in my opinion (though that’s always nice), but on having the basic structure and content in your head so that you know how to find things and know what the context is of any given passage.

And devotionally, memorizing Scripture is surely even better than memorizing non-inspired prayers. As I said, why not learn Psalms?

Edwin
Click to expand...
I memorize Psalms through song. It is so lyrical and beautiful to put into song. And a lot of them are prayers!

I teach a lot of scripture to my children this way. I teach the concept, then we learn the song (which is basically memorizing the verse). One of my favorites is Psalm 23 - Shelter me O God. I LOVE THAT SONG!

So yeah, next time you get a chance, pore through your hymnal and find where in the Bible those hymns are from and learn those. It’s easier to do than memorizing Bible verses. Or get the music for the year’s responsorial psalm - it’s just like Bible verse memorization but in a fun manner, good for children!
 
graceandglory said:
Which is better? And Why?
Click to expand...
Both is best but if it were really a case of one or the other, prayer is preferable and in a classroom setting memorized prayer would be the only practical way to pray. Silent, individual prayer would lead to kids daydreaming when they should be praying, praying to toys, that kind of stuff.

People were being before the Bible was written, much less read and memorized. People who only heard of Biblical events were being saved, without and without memorizing what they heard. But how many people who don’t pray are being saved?

Again this is all hypothetical because the reality is that both are good and both can be accomplished, in my opinion.

Maybe more Bible memorization could likely be accomplished as homework for your students. Maybe it could even involve the parents of the kids? Maybe as an extra credit assignment?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top