Why formal prayers?

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This thread was inspired by another where someone was asking about some prayers dedicated to a certain purpose.

Anyway–this is something I don’t understand. Why do we have these formal prayers? For example. EWTN’s website provides us with this prayer for employement:
*God, our Father, I turn to you seeking your divine help and guidance as I look for suitable employment. I need your wisdom to guide my footsteps along the right path, and to lead me to find the proper things to say and do in this quest. I wish to use the gifts and talents you have given me, but I need the opportunity to do so with gainful employment. Do not abandon me, dear Father, in this search, but rather grant me this favor I seek so that I may return to you with praise and thanksgiving for your gracious assistance. Grant this through Christ, our Lord. Amen
  • My version would simply be: “Dear God, please help me find a new job.”
What’s the point of all the flowery verbiage? Isn’t this the type of thing that Matthew 6:7-8 tells us to avoid? Am I doing it wrong?
 
as long as you’re seeking to talk with God, with your heart, you’re not ‘doing it wrong’. the question here is not wrong or right, but poor or well.

formal prayers actually liberate us. i am a convert from a baptist background. we believed in praying ‘spontaneously’, or ‘from the heart’ and had no use for formalized prayers.

the problem was, we didn’t pray spontaneously most of the time. i heard the exact same prayers, the same phrases, the same frustrations and anxieties, over and over and over.

formal prayers free us from the tyrrany of our time and place. they allow us to pray with those who have lived long before us, in other places, where people didn’t think just like we do.

they also free us from the strictures of our own minds. when you pray formal prayers, it allows you to speak things to God that were thought of by much holier and much more intelligent people than i am, and that, probably, you are. 🙂

the Bible says that the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. learning to pray formal prayers, i think, teaches us to pray the right way - the way that God responds to. the Bible makes it clear that some prayers are answered and some are not (you don’t get what you ask for because you ask only to spend it on your lusts). formal prayers teach us to pray in agreement with God.

if we weren’t to pray formal prayers, i think Jesus’s reply to His disciples would have been different when they asked ‘Lord, teach us to pray.’
 
I, too, am converting from a Pentecostal > Baptist background. I wanted to pray, but my prayer life really stunk. I’ve found that in using the formal prayers, including the Rosary and the LOH, and meaning what I am reading and saying, that I am spending sooooooooooo much more time in prayer and in the Word than I did before. Funny–I never thought that it would take becoming a Catholic to make me a serious pray-er.

DaveBj
 
In participating in some occasions with an ecumenical group of people working together, whenever we pray we take turns, the Catholics usually have a brief intro mentioning the reason we are gathered, followed by an Our Father (Lord’s Prayer to you Protestants), while the others usually are able to come up with more of a collect prayer. But what I see happening a lot is that the prayer begins well, but can end up being very narrow, very pointed–“help dear Joe stop cheating on his wife”, going into more detail than we need to hear about the persons being prayed for, rambling and discursive–“help Mary recover quickly from those nasty gallbladder attacks and to stop the drinking that causes them”–I am exagerating to make a humerous point, of course, but sometimes what starts out to be spontaneous prayer ends up more about the pray-er himself rather than the group. I guess it is a gift.
 
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Timidity:
What’s the point of all the flowery verbiage?
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One thought: If you loved someone, you wouldn’t ask ‘what is the point of flowery language’ and insist always on the simplest and most direct language. 🙂 Likewise with God, Whom we love.
 
The first formal prayer was that given by Christ Jesus Himself, which is the Lord’s Prayer, everything that exists in The Holy Mass is what Christ gave to us, either by Himself .i.e. Last Supper or by the work of the Holy Spirit which is made infallible by the Holy Spirit and the confirmation of our Holy Father. So now, every learnt prayer that is recognised within the Catholic church is relevant and as such is Holy and if said will be heard and honoured for it’s use and devotion. If of course you wish to say your own words they will also be heard but the prayer as laid down by The Holy Mother Mary etc, who have indeed trodden where we have not in our Lord, will be honoured in a sense that gravitates towards the faith you have in their faith in the Lord, if you revere the Mother you revered the Son also.

These prayer are a benefit of wealth of the Holy Spirit in others gone before us marked with the sign of faith and even Sainthood, that we can draw upon for the benefit of our own faith.

God Bless you and much love and peace to you always xxx
 
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Timidity:
What’s the point of all the flowery verbiage? Isn’t this the type of thing that Matthew 6:7-8 tells us to avoid? Am I doing it wrong?
Click to expand...
Sometimes the language seems “flowery” because the prayers were originally composed in another language and translated poorly into English. Unity of language matters only when one is reciting the prayers in a group. In private devotions feel free to speak your own mind: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come…etc.”, “Hail Mary, full of grace, blessed are you among women…etc.”

DaveBj
 
I’m a convert from an evangelical protestant background. At first, I was kind of turned off by the idea of saying pre-determined prayers rather than just saying what is on my mind. I found, though, that saying prayers like the rosary actually helped me in my worship and concentration. When I prayed free-form, I would sometimes get distracted and realize that I was saying something silly or lose my train of thought. It also was hard for me to pray in a group because I was self concious about the words that I chose. So, again, it would leave me distracted and not focussed on the fact that I was talking to God. I really enjoy being able to pray in groups now and to actually all pray together by all saying the same words. That really shows your community. I think that both forms of prayer have their time and place, and that the most important thing is one’s sincerity. 👍
 
I, too am a convert and it took me way too long to get over my biases against Our Lady. However, once I learned how to pray the Rosary, I actually found that prayer has a wonderful ability to help my ADHD. The Rosary helps me focus and concentrate.

I tend to have an overactive mind – racing thoughts that won’t slow down or stay focused, anxiety and hyperfocus on small problems, solving problems when I should be sleeping, etc.

Praying the Rosary helps me with much of that.

I also love to collect prayers now. I have a great collection of prayers to the Holy Spirit. Great spiritual people who have a wonderful gift for developing prayer have given me so much understanding of prayer and the Holy Spirit than I would have gotten just trying to pray all by myself without their inspirations.

Formal prayers are a gift. We are not limited to them, but given wings to lift our souls to heaven.
 
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