1 / 81

Good Shepherd Parish Ministry of Lectors and Commentators

Good Shepherd Parish Ministry of Lectors and Commentators. 2011 GENERAL ASSEMBLY SESSION ONE. HOW IS YOUR PRAYER LIFE?. HOW DO YOU DESCRIBE PRAYER?. How is Your Prayer Life?. It is told that prayer is a dialogue between God and you. How is Your Prayer Life?.

marina
Download Presentation

Good Shepherd Parish Ministry of Lectors and Commentators

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Good Shepherd Parish Ministry of Lectors and Commentators 2011 GENERAL ASSEMBLY SESSION ONE

  2. HOW IS YOUR PRAYER LIFE?

  3. HOW DO YOU DESCRIBE PRAYER?

  4. How is Your Prayer Life? • It is told that prayer is a dialogue between God and you.

  5. How is Your Prayer Life? • But most of the time, it is a MONOLOGUE… by US.

  6. How is Your Prayer Life? • We need to learn to discipline ourselves to LISTEN to God in prayer…

  7. How is Your Prayer Life? LISTEN Jumble the letters and you get SILENT We need to be SILENT in order to LISTEN

  8. God communicates with us in various ways…

  9. The people we encounter in our daily lives…

  10. The events that come along our way…

  11. The signs of the times…

  12. Good Shepherd Parish Ministry of Lectors and Commentators 2011 GENERAL ASSEMBLY SESSION ONE

  13. How is Your Prayer Life? “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son… through whom He also created the world. He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of His nature…” Hebrews 1: 1-2a, 3a RSV

  14. How is Your Prayer Life? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through Him… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…” John 1:1-3a, 14 RSV

  15. What is referred to by the writer of the letter to the Hebrews as the Son is no less than Jesus himself…

  16. How is Your Prayer Life? • Jesus revealed to us the Father. And after Jesus left, those who followed Him recorded what he told us about the Father and His kingdom for the following generations to heed and know…

  17. ”This Gospel had been promised in former times through the prophets, and Christ Himself had fulfilled it and promulgated it with His lips. This commission was faithfully fulfilled by the Apostles who, by their oral preaching, by example, and by observances handed on what they had received from the lips of Christ, from living with Him, and from what He did, or what they had learned through the prompting of the Holy Spirit. The commission was fulfilled, too, by those Apostles and apostolic men who under the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit committed the message of salvation to writing.” (Dei Verbum no. 7)

  18. Thus, the scriptures, the word of God in our own words, is the record of Jesus’ revelation of the Father and His kingdom…

  19. How is Your Prayer Life? • Reading the bible should be part of EVERY Christian’s prayer life…

  20. How is Your Prayer Life? “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life?” John 6:68b RSV

  21. How is Your Prayer Life? • The Church wants each and every Catholic to read the Bible…

  22. [I obey] the precepts of Christ who says "examine the Scriptures" (John 5:39) and "seek and you will find." (Matt 7:7)  Let me not hear with the Jews: "you are wrong because you do not know scriptures nor the power of God." (Matt. 22:29)  For if, according to the apostle Paul, Christ is "the power of God and the wisdom of God" (1 Cor. 1:24) and who does not know Scripture does not know the power or the wisdom of God, then ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. St. Jerome Doctor of the Church, Translator of the Scriptures

  23. How is Your Prayer Life? "And such is the force and power of the Word of God that it can serve the Church as her support and vigor, and the children of the Church as strength for their faith, food for the soul, and a pure and lasting fount of spiritual life." Hence "access to Sacred Scripture ought to be open wide to the Christian faithful.“ (CCC 131, quoting Dei Verbum nos. 21 and 22)

  24. How is Your Prayer Life? • But for many of us, reading the bible (and understanding what it says) is a tedious task…

  25. The Equation PRAYER (MONOLOGUE) + DISCOURAGEMENT IN READING SCRIPTURES = NO SPIRITUAL LIFE

  26. How is Your Prayer Life? What do we do???

  27. Introducing:LectioDivina

  28. What is LectioDivina • A way of prayer using the scriptures… • It is a kind of prayer that trains us to listen to God FIRST followed by our own response…

  29. “The documents produced before and during the Synod mentioned a number of methods for a faith-filled and fruitful approach to sacred Scripture. Yet the greatest attention was paid to lectiodivina, which is truly “capable of opening up to the faithful the treasures of God’s word, but also of bringing about an encounter with Christ, the living word of God…” (Verbum Domini, no. 87) POPE BENEDICT XVI

  30. What is LectioDivina LectioDivina has four elements: Lectio Meditatio Oratio Contemplatio

  31. Lectio • “It opens with the reading (lectio) of a text, which leads to a desire to understand its true content: what does the biblical text say in itself? Without this, there is always a risk that the text will become a pretext for never moving beyond our own ideas…” (Verbum Domini, no. 87)

  32. Meditatio • “Next comes meditation (meditatio), which asks: what does the biblical text say to us? Here, each person, individually but also as a member of the community, must let himself or herself be moved or challenged.” (Verbum Domini, no. 87)

  33. Oratio • “Following this comes prayer (oratio), which asks the question: what do we say to the Lord in response to his word? Prayer, as petition, intercession, thanksgiving and praise, is the primary way by which the word transforms us.” (Verbum Domini, no. 87)

  34. Contemplatio • “Finally, lectiodivina concludes with contemplation (contemplatio), during which we take up, as a gift from God, his own way of seeing and judging reality, and ask ourselves, what conversion of mind, heart and life is the Lord asking of us?” (Verbum Domini, no. 87)

  35. What is Contemplation? • “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2)

  36. What is Contemplation? • “Contemplation aims at creating within us a truly wise and discerning vision of reality, as God sees it, and at forming within us ‘the mind of Christ’ (1 Cor. 2:16). The word of God appears here as a criterion for discernment (see Hebrews 4:12)” (Verbum Domini, no. 87)

  37. To What End? • “We do well also to remember that the process of lectiodivina is not concluded until it arrives at action (actio), which moves the believer to make his or her life a gift for others in charity.” (Verbum Domini, no. 87)

  38. Brings in Discipline • LectioDivina can help to discipline us in our prayer life… • μαθητης (ma-thei-teis) – Greek for learner, pupil, apprentice, follower… this is where the term disciple is derived… • In this sense, discipline means “developing the attitude of a disciple”

  39. The Discipline of Prayer • Any follower of the Christ is expected to listen to Him and allow Him to teach them… • In our practice of LectioDivina, we will be taught to LISTEN to the voice of the Master and allow Him to TEACH us His ways… • In order to do this we must be able to establish the following…

  40. TIME ALONE WITH GOD

  41. Time Alone with God • Set a special time for prayer… Keep and defend that time… • Set a place for prayer… • Write it down! Journalize…

  42. SILENCE

  43. Silence • Many of us are afraid of silence, mainly because it is in silence that we are confronted with our self and who we are… • But it is only in silence that God comes to encounter us… (see 1 Kings 19:9-18)

  44. Silence • God is also present in the storms that come along in our lives, but it is in the silence that we get an opportunity to build our faith, and it is during these storms that we get to exercise it… (see Matthew 14:22-33)

  45. BE PATIENT HACHIKO

  46. Be Patient • Sometimes, God will seem to be absent in our prayer life… • This may lead to discouragement, but it is the time that we should be hanging on and keeping on, persevering in prayer…

  47. Be Patient “Are you mourning before God because you have not had an audible response? You will find that God trusted you… with an absolute silence, not of despair, but of pleasure, because He saw you could stand a bigger revelation…”

  48. LectioDivina vs. Plain Reading • LectioDivina differs from the plain reading of the bible since LectioDivina requires another style and a different set of attitudes…

  49. Plain Reading • Directed at: study, gathering information • Concerned with: learning (whether theological or literary) • It is a process of acquiring facts and knowledge • Brings one to a subject-object relationship

More Related