Friday, October 3
Liturgical Color: Green
The Church dedicates the month of
October to the Blessed Virgin of the
Rosary. As we pray each decade, we
meditate on one of the mysteries of the
Rosary, celebrating God's love for us.
Are there various ways to pray?
Yes, there is vocal prayer, meditation, and contemplative prayer. All three ways of prayer presuppose recollecting one's mind and heart.
What is vocal prayer?
In the first place, prayer is lifting the heart to God. And yet Jesus himself taught his disciples to pray with words. With the Our Father he left us the perfect vocal prayer as his testament to show how we should pray. While praying we should not try to think pious thoughts. We should express what is in our hearts and offer it to God as complaint, petition, praise, and thanks. Often it is the great vocal prayers - the Psalms and hymns of Sacred Scripture, the Our Father, the Hail Mary that direct us to the true substance of prayer and lead to a kind of free, interior prayer.
What is the essence of meditation?
The essence of meditation is a prayerful seeking that starts with a sacred text or a sacred image and explores the will, the signs, and the presence of God. We cannot "read" sacred images and texts the way we read things in the newspaper that do not immediately concern us. Instead, we should meditate on them; in other words I should lift my heart to God and tell him that I am now quite open to what God wants to say to me through what I have read or seen. Besides Sacred Scripture, there are many texts that lead to God and are suitable for meditative prayer. (YOUCAT questions 500-502)
Dig Deeper: CCC section (2699-2708) and other references here.