Prologue to The Rule (paragraphs 1-2)
This, then, is the beginning of my advice: make prayer the first step in anything worthwhile that you attempt. (From para. 2 of Prologue to The Rule of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)
At the beginning of the Prologue, Benedict links prayer to obedience, and so it seems to me that prayer becomes my request, my consent, for the grace to be obedient. Through obedience, anything I attempt becomes worthwhile, and so gradually my prayer for obedience becomes the song of my day.
At the beginning of the Prologue, Benedict links prayer to obedience, and so it seems to me that prayer becomes my request, my consent, for the grace to be obedient. Through obedience, anything I attempt becomes worthwhile, and so gradually my prayer for obedience becomes the song of my day.
"Make prayer the first step in anything worthwhile that you attempt." Lately, I have had trouble in "saying" prayers, rote prayers, liturgical prayers, prescribed prayers for this particular purpose or that. In Day Nine of the little reflection book on the Cloud of Unknowing, titled, "Where Only Love Can Go", there are these words on prayer, "Prayer is a time for entering into the presence of God stripped of everything but our very existence, for simply being in the presence of God who is." Hasn't the meditation practice been just that? Hasn't the meditation practice prepared me in exactly this way? So if I simply be and let God simply be, then my prayer words have to flow from that simple relationship with honesty, sincerity and loving truth as if with a dear friend. I need to listen as well and allow my actions to move me from that God relationship experience with faith.
ReplyDelete