Prayer, Catholic and Baptist

Psalm,

I think the fact of the matter is that he didn't say either way. We pray in many and various ways that aren't "commanded" in Scripture. Where does it say to have a common table prayer? I'd say the majority of Christian families have a prayer that they recite at meal time. This isn't in the Bible, and I doubt you frown upon it.

Jesus said not to pray in "vain repetitions." He did not say to not pray in "repetitions." The word "vain" is there because it's important. Do not pray over and over again with absolutely no purpose. Think about what you say when you pray, and do it from the heart, and your prayer is not in vain.

Thus, prayers like The Lord's Prayer and the Hail Mary, when said (and repeated) with purpose and meaning, is not vain.

Could people pray the Rosary in vain? I'm sure they can. But the Rosary is a lengthy prayer, and to pray five decades takes a good 20-30 minutes. I hardly think that anyone who is willing to devote this much time to prayer at once is doing so without a sincere and contrite heart. To desire to be in prayer for long periods of time means just that, a desire to pray. And when prayer is desired and from the heart, it's not in vain.

Again, since Jesus did not say not to pray in repetitions, this is not forbidden by his words. Sometimes, when under a great amount of stress, I pray "Help me, Lord" over and over again for about 15 seconds, in usually the stress is lifted right off my back. I'm repeating, but I'm meaning it every single time.

I hope that clears up some issues/misconceptions.

[ August 31, 2002, 02:53 PM: Message edited by: GraceSaves ]

 

PS104:

I just want to add a few thoughts here to what Gracesaves said. Jesus taught us to pray directly to God, to give Him praise, unite our will to His, and pray that His will be done. He wants us to daily ask forgiveness of our sins as we forgive others. He wants us to ask for the graces we need for the day, and ask to be delivered from evil. He didn’t tell us not to overuse this prayer. He didn’t say that if we pray it too much He will get bored as you brought up earlier. To say the “Our Father” Prayer before thinking about the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in each mystery of the rosary is not condemned in scripture.

When I pray an “Our Father” before the first decade of the rosary and meditate on the agony in the garden, I am not offending God. When I pray another “Our Father” and meditate on Jesus Christ being scrounged with whips for my sins, I am not offending God with a pagan repetitious mantra. When I then say an “Our Father” before meditating on the crowning with thorns on Jesus’ head, I am not boring God with repetition. When I pray another “Our Father” before meditating on Jesus carrying His cross, as scripture says I must also, I am not engaging in a pagan repetitious mantra. When I pray another “Our Father” before meditating on the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, I am not offending God, but praying the words of Jesus Christ gave his church.

Scripture does not tell us to not say the words of our Lord more than 1X per day, or not to think about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection and what He has done for us. I have noticed that all the attacks on the Catholic recitation of the rosary leave out the heart of the rosary which is the meditations on the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
True Christian prayer to God no matter how often is said is not the same thing as meaningless repetition, like a pagan mantra. This isn’t what God wants. He wants to be in our hearts when we pray.

God Bless

Kathryn

 

[Are you not being presumptuous? ]

How so?

 

I think the real question here is, aren’t you the one being presumptuous about Catholic prayer being offensive to God? By the way do you know that Catholics pray to God in our own words anytime we want to?

We also sometimes repeat ourselves, but because Jesus Christ is our brother, Lord, God, and Savior, we know in our hearts he is not going to hold this against us or be bored.

Do you think God hates to hear the prayer from the rosary the "Glory Be" : “Glory Be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”?

Or how about praying the Catholic prayer, “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts, heaven and earth are filled with your glory, Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.”? These are some of the typical Catholic prayers that are said daily all over the world. Do you know that scripture teaches that anyone who can say Jesus is Lord belongs to Him?

1 Corinthians 12:3
Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.

Catholics all over the world say, pray, and believe, Jesus is Lord. By the way, the rosary starts with the Sign of the Cross and the Apostles Creed. The Creed is our common profession of faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.

God Bless

Kathryn

[ August 31, 2002, 08:29 PM: Message edited by: Kathryn S. ]

 

There is no teaching in Scripture, the Church Fathers or the Catholic Church to repeat the same prayer over and over. This isn’t a teaching of the Church. The point isn’t how many times someone says something over and over again, like in a pagan mantra. No magic formulas. It does no good to say Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, 62 X. The point is the relationship and the union with God during the prayer. For example

Did Jesus repeat Himself at all? Did he pray something like the “Our Father” and meditate on His own life and coming death, and resurrection? Did He pray more than once that God’s will be done? I don’t know. The important thing was he prayed and was in communion with God all through the night.

Could Jesus have done His prayer by just getting to the point asking for what He needed once and because God knows everything anyway made it a lot shorter…. Probably, but this isn’t what prayer is about. It is about knowing, loving and serving God.

If Catholics do it by praying prescribed prayers while meditating on the life and death of Jesus Christ, this isn't that much different than a Protestant praying from his heart for God to listen to his prayers. I also suspect many Protestants prayers are repeated more than once.

God Bless

Kathryn

[ August 31, 2002, 06:54 PM: Message edited by: Kathryn S. ]

 

Are you not being presumptuous that it DOES offend God? And if you're both presuming, then no conclusion can be derived.

Further, if we can't presume that our prayers are meaningful to God, what's the point in praying? If I pray, and I feel better, and I feel that God heard me and my intentions, I can stop presuming. That's where faith kicks in.

 

Hi Ps104_33,

You wrote, "Which type of praying do you think is most Biblical. Baptist, which is extempoaneous and from the heart, or the cold much repeated vain repititions of the rosary and Christ's example prayer the "our Father"."

First, Catholic prayer incorporates every sort of prayer. For instance, I just returned home from a "Festival of Praise" where less than two thousand students at my university prayed in charismatic song, in tongues, out loud in shouts, quietly amongst small groups, and silently among oneself.

Earlier this morning, these same students gathered around the table of the Lord in the chapel and prayed the ancient divine liturgy.

The Rosary is a beautiful combination of vocal prayer and meditation that centers upon the greatest Gospel mysteries in the life of Jesus Christ and secondarily in the life of the Mother of Jesus. It is an "incarnational" prayer, a prayer consisting of both vocal and mental prayer that serves to incorporate both body and soul into the spiritual communion with Our Lord.

The physical use of the beads and formation of the words in vocal prayer are important in this body-soul complement of the Rosary. As we count the prayers by the physical use of beads, the soul is freed from the practial distraction fo counting and able to focus upon the prayers and meditations. This helps keep the body at the disposition of the soul, to keep the body focused and subordinated to the soul soaring higher in prayer.

Meditation can, therefore, be considered the "soul" of the Rosary, while vocal prayer (coupled w/ the physical use of beads) can be considered the "body" of the Rosary. The beads are there for the sake of the prayers, and the prayers are there for the sake of the Mysteries.

"They are in error who consider this devotion a boresome formula repeated w/ monotonous and sing-sing intonations... Both piety and love, although always breathing forth ethe same words, do not, however, repeat the same thing, but they fervently express something ever new which the loving heart always sends forth" (Ingravescentibus malis, Pope Pius XI)

A German Lutheran minister, Richard Baumann, stated in the early 1970's, "In saying the Rosary, truth sinks into the subconscious like a slow and heavy downpour. The hammered sentences of the Gospel receive an indelible validity for precisely the little ones, the least, to whom belongs the Kingdom of Heaven... The Rosary is a long and persevering gaze, a meditation, a quieting of the spirit in praise of God, the value of which we Protestants are learning more and more."

"Vain" means "worthless". Repetition that leads to greater filial love through slow and constant meditation upon the Gospel reaps abundant spiritual fruits - a result far from prayer that is "worthless", "futile", "unsuccessful", or "of no real value" - all of which are definitions of "vain".

Jesus, in Matthew 6:7, condemns the heaping up of "empty phrases". Surely, no Christian would consider the Our Father or the scriptural salutation of the Hail Mary (Lk 1:28, 42) as "empty phrases," without meaning or content.

And, the legitimacy of repetitious prayer is obvious by its unquestionable presence in the Bible. For example, Psalm 117 is completely structured upon the frequently repreated phrase: "His mercy endures forever." So, too, is repetitious prayer an integral part of the cantical of Daniel 3:52-88, which is built upon the constantly repeated phrase, "praise and exalt him above all forever."

The repetitious nature of the Rosary prayer is a means of entering more deeply into the revealed Gospel mysteries of Jesus Christ thereby promoting Christian meditation. Far from being an empty repetitional structure, the peaceful repetition of the Hail Marys is an incarnational way of keeping the body focused on the disposition of the soul in order to penetrate the mysteries of Christian salvation.

Our Lord condemns the "empty" repetition and quantity of words that are bereft of the attentionof the mind and devotion of the heart. The Rosary is vocal and mental prayer form that utilizes a prayerful repetition of the Gospel-based Our Father and Hail Mary and has no intrinsic connection with the "heaping of empty phrases" condemned by Christ.

But it is important to remember that every prayer form can be abused by a type of formalism that practices the external act without the proper internal intention of the heart to "communicate with the One whom you know loves you," in the words of St. Teresa of Avila.

When the Rosary is used as an authentic form of Christian vocal prayer and meditation and is prayer with the proper internal disposition of love of God, necessary for any true Christian prayer form, it is then a litany-like succession of Hail Marys that, in the words of Pope Paul VI, "becomes in itself an uneasing praise of Christ."

To learn more about the Rosary and our Blessed Mother, consult the $6.95 text, "Introduction to Mary" by Dr. Mark Miravalle (Queenship Publishing Co. 1993), available from Barnes & Noble Booksellers.

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam!

Carson Weber

 

I love the way we always exclude our own singing of hymns in a baptist church as "vain repetition", but we jump over the Catholics for reading prayers from a missal, or, God forbid, doing readings from the Bible!!

Am I the only one who's aware that the typical Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox masses contain more verbatim biblical text than do non-liturgucal protestant services?

And I can't tell you the number of times I've been to evangelical services that contain a great deal of vain free prayer, or the number of times I've been to a liturgical service that contains a great deal of meaningful repetition.

 

The Didache (Teaching of the 12 Apostles) was considered inspired Scripture by many churches throughout the early Church. In fact, it would be in our Bibles were it not the tradition established by the Catholic Church to exclude the Didache from the canon of Scripture.

Visit http://www.earlychristianwritings.com

and decide for yourself which writings are inspired.

[ September 07, 2002, 12:33 AM: Message edited by: Carson Weber ]

 

I hate to sound mean, but I think this thread is rather silly.

"Does Catholic prayer mean anything?"

You bet it does. As long as they are praying to the God of the bible, the Jesus of the NT, it means something.

"Does repetition mean it is worthless?"

No. Just like most anything else, it depends on the individual. For me, I can't pray in repetitions. The way my mind works, as soon as I have something memorized and start to say it over and over again, my mind will start to think of about 100 different things at once. This is just the way I am. I know this so I also know that praying the same prayer over and over again would be meaningless for me and to God.

That being said, some people probably concentrate on God better with repetition. They may find it a very structured way to get all their thoughts in and they relect upon these thoughts whenever they pray this prayer.

Everyone is different. Just keep praying how it works for you. The point is though, KEEP PRAYING.

"Does God care how we pray?"

I don't know. But, I'll bet he much prefers us to be praying than arguing over which way is the better way to pray.

Though I am no longer Catholic, I will use a quote from a Catholic site that I really like.

I think this way about prayer as well. Which ever way works best for you, making you totally concentrate on God.

In Christ,
jason

 

So, which Bible is the best? Perhaps the best answer is this: The one you’ll read.

Ooohhh!!! High five! Two thumbs up! Well said!!! Huzzzah!!!!!!