Having a faith conversation with old and new friends is as easy as setting the table.
FAITH FEEDS GUIDE PRAYER
CONTENTS
Introduction to FAITH FEEDS 3
Conversation Starters 6
• Catholic Spirituality in Practice by Colleen M. Griffith 7 Conversation Starters 8
• Hail Mary by William Critchley-Menor, S.J. 9 Conversation Starters 10
• The Intimate Journey of Relationship with God by Daniel Horan, O.F.M. 11
Conversation Starters 13
• The Examen by Dennis Hamm, S.J. 14 Conversation Starters 16
• Keep on Practicing, You’ll Get Better at It by Thomas Groome 17
Conversation Starters 19
Additional Prayer Resources 20
Gathering Prayer 21
The FAITH FEEDS program is designed for individuals who are hungry for opportunities to talk about their faith with others who share it. Participants gather over coffee or a potluck lunch or dinner, and a host facilitates conversation using resources from the C21 Center.
The FAITH FEEDS Guide offers easy, step-by-step instructions for planning, as well as materials to guide the conversation. It’s as simple as deciding to host the gathering wherever your community is found and spreading the word.
All selected articles have been taken from material produced by the C21 Center.
The C21 Center Presents
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Who should host a FAITH FEEDS?
Anyone who has a heart for facilitating conversations about faith is perfect to host a FAITH FEEDS.
Where do I host a FAITH FEEDS?
You can host a FAITH FEEDS in-person or virtually through video conference software. FAITH FEEDS conversations are meant for small groups of 10–12 people.
What is the host’s commitment?
The host is responsible for coordinating meeting times, sending out materials and video conference links, and facilitating conversation during the FAITH FEEDS.
What is the guest’s commitment?
Guests are asked to read the articles that will be discussed and be open to faith-filled conversation.
Still have more questions?
No problem! Email church21@bc.edu and we’ll help you get set up.
READY TO GET STARTED?
STEP ONE
Decide to host a FAITH FEEDS. Coordinate a date, time, location, and guest list. An hour is enough time to allocate for the virtual or in-person gathering.
STEP TWO
Interested participants are asked to RSVP directly to you, the host. Once you have your list of attendees, confirm with everyone via email. That would be the appropriate time to ask in-person guests to commit to bringing a potluck dish or drink to the gathering. For virtual FAITH FEEDS, send out your video conference link.
STEP THREE
Review the selected articles from your FAITH FEEDS Guide and the questions that will serve as a starter for your FAITH FEEDS discussion. Hosts should send their guests a link to the guide, which can be found on bc.edu/FAITHFEEDS.
STEP FOUR
Send out a confirmation email a week before the FAITH FEEDS gathering. Hosts should arrive early for in-person or virtual set up. Begin with the Gathering Prayer found on the last page of this guide. Hosts can open the discussion by using the suggested questions. The conversation should grow organically from there. Enjoy this gathering of new friends, knowing the Lord is with YOU!
STEP FIVE
Make plans for another FAITH FEEDS. We would love to hear about your FAITH FEEDS experience. You can find contact information on the last page of this guide.
CONVERSATION STARTERS
“Pray as if everything depended on God and work as if everything depended on you.”
—St. Ignatius of Loyola
Here are five articles to guide your FAITH FEEDS conversation. For each article you will find a relevant quotation, summary, and suggested questions for discussion. We offer these as tools for your use, but feel free to go where the Holy Spirit leads.
This guide’s theme is: Prayer
CATHOLIC SPIRITUALITY IN PRACTICE
by Colleen M. Griffith
“Spirituality” is a buzzword in our time, one that generates much positive reception. Spiritual seekers abound, and there are myriad resources available to draw upon that bear the name “spiritual practice.” Spiritual materials in bookstores and on the Internet continue to multiply at a staggering pace, as people from all walks of life and religious persuasions identify “becoming spiritual” as a primary life goal.
From a Christian perspective, spirituality gets traced back to the letters of Paul in which he uses the Greek term pneuma to signal a life lived in alignment with God’s Spirit. Christian spirituality presumes, through God’s grace, a human desire and capacity for growing in union with the Triune God. It encompasses the dynamic character of human life lived in conscious relationship with God in Christ through the Spirit, as experienced within a community of believers. To live a Christian spirituality is to attend to what is of God and to deepen in a life of conversion that has discipleship as its goal.
Christian spirituality gets expressed most authentically in the living out of our Christian baptismal promises. At the heart of these promises stands the rejection of everything that is not of God and the decision to live in accord with the energies and ways of the Triune God. Renewed commitment to our baptismal promises is made possible by God’s grace, sustained by Christian community, and supported through engagement in meaningful spiritual practices.
Eucharist remains “the source and summit” of Catholic Christian faith, and participation in the sacraments is arguably the most well known spiritual practice of Catholic Christianity. But what additional and lesser known practices form the spiritualities of Catholic Christians?
Spiritual practices are concrete and specific. They are consciously chosen, intentional actions that give practical purpose to faith. Situated between life as we know it and life in its hoped-for fullness, practices are imbued with a sense of our relatedness to God, others, and the earth. Influencing our dispositions and outlooks on the world, spiritual practices render us more open and responsive to the dynamic activity of God’s grace, and move us toward greater spiritual maturity.
The “how to” question regarding spiritual practices is usually everyone’s first interest. Ultimately, however, the “why” question proves more significant than the “how,” particularly over the long haul in maintaining the discipline of spiritual practice. What are we practicing for?
We engage in spiritual practices because we seek a way of life rather than just a conglomeration of doctrines or a set of moral principles. Desiring an embodied faith that touches us and changes us, we opt in spiritual practice for a “knowing” that springs from the heart’s core, the lev, spoken about in the Hebrew Scriptures as the center of our affections (Ps. 4:7), the source of our reflection (Is. 6:10), and the foundation of our will (1 Sam. 24:5). The point of such practice is never mastery, but deeper relational life, a kind of living that makes appropriation of one’s faith all themore possible.
Colleen M. Griffith, ThD, is Professor of the Practice of Theology and Faculty Director of Spirituality Studies at Boston College School of Theology and Ministry
Excerpted from Catholic Spiritual Practices: A Treasury of Old and New, Paraclete Press, 2012.
CATHOLIC SPIRITUALITY IN PRACTICE
“There are as many forms of prayer as there are states of soul....A person prays in a certain manner when cheerful and in another when weighed down by sadness or a sense of hopelessness. When one is flourishing spiritually, prayer is different from when one is oppressed by the extent of one’s struggles.”
—John Cassian
Summary
Colleen Griffith invites us to consider the “why” of spiritual practice in order to ground the “how to” of spirituality. As the intentional practices of an embodied faith life, spiritual practices express our desire to grow in loving relationship with God. Connected with the sacramental experiences that ground Catholic life, spiritual practices keep us open to God’s presence as we grow in relation with God, self, others, and creation.
Questions for Conversation
1. Griffith describes spiritual practices as being “concrete and specific...consciously chosen, intentional actions that give practical purpose to faith.” How is this similar or different from your idea of spiritual practice? What opportunities do you think this definition provides to your life?
2. How do spiritual practices help provide “a way of life” for you? Are your practices drawn from a specific tradition within or beyond the Catholic tradition? Do these “sources” of spiritual practice affect your use of such practices?
3. Griffith identifies spiritual practices as including communal sacramental actions and individual practices as well. How do your personal spiritual practices inform your sacramental practices?
HAIL MARY
by William Critchley-Menor, S.J.
The first time I met with my spiritual director after entering the Jesuits, he asked me how I pray. One of the things I mentioned was regularly rattling through Hail Marys. I told him that I tend to pray them throughout the day—on the bus, on walks, during dinner—whenever. I also tend to pray them during set times of prayer, and sometimes with the Rosary.
I remember being embarrassed by that response. I felt like I should have been engaged in “deeper” forms of prayer—meditation, contemplation, or imaginative prayer with Scripture. But I had little experience with those. I felt that my prayer was in some way inadequate.
I prayed Hail Marys because I didn’t know how else to pray. I’d had other experiences of prayer, but when it came down to it, rattling through some memorized words was the easiest way for me to pray when I knew I needed to or when I felt a desire. The Hail Mary and the Rosary were like training wheels, and I thought eventually they’d come off.
They haven’t yet.
I still say Hail Marys all the time. Most often, I say them in times of stress or anxiety. When I am walking into a room full of people, walking into a classroom the first day of the semester, or waiting to get feedback on a paper I worked hard to finish. I pray them when I finish conversations with people on the street, every morning when I look at the cover of the New York Times, or whenever I hear news of someone’s death.
It’s not uncommon for me to recognize myself going through Hail Marys and wondering, “How long have I been doing this for?” My Hail Marys can be subconscious. Praying them seems to be my first reaction to most things. My Hail Marys and my Rosaries are frequently unexciting, unmoving, imageless, and emotionless.
Yet, there is a simple gratification in the touch of Rosary beads and the sound of
ancient prayers. They don’t bring me into an immediate conscious connection with God or His Blessed Mother. They often fail to satisfy a never-ending desire to hear God speak or to feel His touch. Sometimes, it is hard to even sense His presence in the moment of my rote praying.
Nonetheless, I find that it continues to be a most valuable use of time and a sincere act of devotion. The Rosary is helping me learn that the fruit of prayer is quite often experienced outside of itself. Sometimes in completely unrecognizable ways.
I met Dorothy Day’s granddaughter once. She left the Catholic Church when she was younger and eventually came back. When I asked her why, she told me that some old priest told her to pray the Rosary every day. She took his advice, and there you have it.
St. Therese of Lisieux said that the Rosary is a long chain that links heaven and earth. That feels true for me. Hail Marys and the Rosary are indeed like training wheels, but ones that I will need forever. They train my mind, my body, my eyes, and my heart to live as though I am linked to heaven. Linked by things that may seem meaningless—touching beads and uttering words—but that do have a supernatural effect on my life.
It is often the moments outside of my Hail Marys when I can most feel their impact. I notice a deeper calm, less anxiety, and greater peace. I can more easily see God at work because my Hail Marys so frequently remind me of His existence.
And so, I continue to rattle to Mary my needs, wants, and fears. In turn, she helps me remember the long vision, the deeper desire, and the Fruit of her womb. Through my rattling to Mary, I’m reminded that there is much more to life than the present.
WILLIAM CRITCHLEY-MENOR, S.J., is a Jesuit Scholastic of the Midwest Province.
Originally published by The Jesuit Post.
HAIL MARY
“Our prayers may be awkward. Our attempts may be feeble. But since the power of prayer is in the one who hears it and not in the one who says it, our prayers do make a difference.”
—Max Lucado
Summary
William Critchley-Menor, S.J., shares about his life-long practice of praying the Hail Mary. Over the years the prayer has shaped Critchley-Menor’s awareness of God through an ongoing “rattling” to Mary through life’s many chapters. Through the simplicity of rosary beads and a well-traveled prayer, the Hail Mary has facilitated the author’s experience of each moment as always being connected to something more.
Questions for Conversation
1. What was the first prayer or prayer practice that you learned? Do you return to this practice today? How has it changed over time?
2. Critchley-Menor identifies the ways that rote prayer has helped him grow as a person of faith over time. What growth or change can you recognize in your faith or prayer over time? Has rote prayer been central to this process? How do you use it today?
3. Are there other things you’ve held onto throughout your life that continue to bear fruit? What are they? How do they support you today compared to the ways they supported you in the past?
THE INTIMATE JOURNEY OF RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD
by Daniel Horan, O.F.M.
Every relationship begins somewhere. Some begin romantically with our hearts alive in the excitement of getting to know someone who we are drawn to for the very first time. Some begin at our birth with our introduction to our family. Some begin at school or work, where we first meet our peers and colleagues. Some begin at our baptism, when the immersion into water symbolizing both our dying and rising with Christ signifies our inherent immersion into a set of relationships (the entire Body of Christ, which is the Church) that can never be undone. Yet, there is one relationship that begins before all others.
Some relationships are deeply intimate, where we reveal our true selves and are open to the other person’s true self, as with a spouse, close sibling, or best friend. Sometimes those same relationships are difficult or strained, causing us to become disinterested in another. Some relationships are simply professional, casual, or superficial and nothing more becomes of them. Some relationships will last for a lifetime, while others last for just a short stint. Yet, there is one relationship that will last forever.
Everybody, whether conscious of it or not, has a relationship with God. The fact that you or I exist, or that anybody exists, testifies to the reality that we are in relationship with our Creator.
One medieval theologian describes this relationship as that of an artist to her artwork. There is a preexisting relationship between a painting and a painter:
The choice to create when one does not need to do so can signal love, the reflection of the particular artist in the image through unique and unrepeatable brushstrokes can point beyond the creation to the creator, and the beauty of the image—even with its inevitable imperfection—brings to mind the truth that there is something wonderful about life. But we are more than paintings and God is more than a painter.
I believe that all human beings, by virtue of simply being human, have a capacity for God that is fundamental and part of the deepest core of who we are. I also believe that God is already and always extending an invitation to us to be in relationship. But how do we recognize this presence of God in our lives?
It can be difficult to consider the importance of intimacy in our relationship with God because, whereas we are all familiar with the effort and attention necessary to work on our relationships with various people in our lives, our connection to God can appear to be so different. In a sense, our relationship with God is indeed different from those experiences of intimacy with others in our lives, but we nevertheless bring ourselves to every relationship we form, including the one with our Creator. Our hopes and joys, our anxieties and sorrows are carried into how we relate to God just as much, if not more than, they are in relationship to others. We don’t even have to overtly express these things to God. The reason is, as St. Augustine wrote in his Confessions, because God is closer to us than we are to ourselves.
This inherent sense of intimacy can be daunting for those of us who live in a technologically saturated world, which allows us to keep a distance from one another through the creation of screens, masks, and social-media “profiles” that give us a false sense of control over what people can or cannot see of us. God does not need a Facebook account or an online-dating profile to learn about us. God already knows us better than we could imagine.
Awareness of God’s closeness has always felt like a two-sided coin to me. On the one hand, it’s intimidating to know that, unlike a social-media profile, there is nothing I can hide from God. God knows those things about me that might be considered good and those things about me that are not so good. Yet, on the other hand, there is a freedom and a peace that comes in contemplating the closeness or intimacy of being fully recognized, loved, and accepted—at times in spite of my less-than-perfect self. Because God cannot be fooled by the appearances we present to the world, we can take comfort in knowing that we are truly loved completely and without limit for who we really are and not what we pretend or wish to be. When considering this intimacy with God we might also recognize the challenge to live more authentically as ourselves created to love, forgive, and reflect the image and likeness of the Creator.
This lifelong, intimate and, at times, challenging relationship with God is not always understood or realized right away. Like any significant relationship, our connection with God is perhaps best described as a lifelong journey of discovery. As the Trappist monk and author Thomas Merton says in his book New Seeds of Contemplation, it is in discovering God that we come to discover our true selves. Because it is only through our intimate journey of relationship with God that we come to understand our own identity, our connection with God is the cornerstone and foundation of all of our relationships. Not only is God responsible for bringing each aspect of creation into existence and sustaining that reality, but every authentic relationship we share is also rooted in and made possible by our primary relationship with God, whether we are conscious of this or not. In order to truly know another I must also know myself, and to truly know myself I must first know God.
At the heart of the Franciscan tradition stands the primacy of relationship. St. Francis of Assisi eschewed the traditional forms of religious life in his day that kept women and men in consecrated life away from the rest of society within a cloister. Instead, St. Francis desired that the world be his cloister and that nothing should get in the way of his relationship with others. This was, after all, the example Jesus Christ set out for his followers according to the Gospels: no one should be turned away.
St. Francis intuited the significance of intimate relationships as the centerpiece of the spiritual life. He wished to be as aware of God’s closeness to him as possible while striving to follow in the footprints of Christ. This opened his eyes to the world around him, which included women and men that his privileged upbringing allowed him to ignore previously. He would embrace those people thought to be un-embraceable and love those that no one else dared to love: the poor, the sick, the forgotten, the outcast. Like Christ who always identified the will of God as the source of his mission, St. Francis lived his vocation of solidarity and service to others according to a life of prayer and humility, which continually reminded him that God was the primary source and ultimate goal of all he did.
As a Franciscan friar, I am able to look at the path that St. Francis has laid before all of us. It is an intimate journey of relationship with God that necessarily spills over into every other relationship we have. It challenges me to recognize my inherent connection to the entire created order that extends far beyond the boundaries of our human family to include the rest of creation. It calls me forward to focus on the ways I can reconnect with my Creator again and again to renew my awareness of the most intimate relationship in my life, a relationship that grounds and sustains all others.
DANIEL HORAN, O.F.M., is a Franciscan friar, theologian, and author.
Horan’s article was originally published in the spring 2014 edition of C21 Resources
THE INTIMATE JOURNEY OF RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD
“Mental prayer, in my opinion, is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us.”
—Saint Teresa of Avila
Summary
Daniel Horan, O.F.M., considers the central human experience of being rooted in God. At the heart of our being is an intimacy with God that reveals who we really are, and this self knowledge unfolds over a lifetime of intimacy and vulnerability with God. Through our ongoing journey we are invited to deeper intimacy with the One who knows us better than we even know ourselves, and so calls us to know and share our true selves in relationship with others.
Questions for Conversation
1. Prayer allows us to grow in relationship with God as we learn about our true self. What kinds of prayer help you cultivate this relationship? Do frequency, location, or circumstances help facilitate your connection?
2. How would you characterize your relationship with God today? How has that relationship changed over the course of your life?
3. How has your understanding of yourself changed through your relationship with God? What have you learned about your “true self”?
THE EXAMEN
by Dennis Hamm, S.J.
The Biblical phrase, “If today you hear his voice,” implies that the divine voice must somehow be accessible in our daily experience, for this verse expresses a conviction central to Hebrew and Christian faith, that we live a life in dialogue with God. We are creatures who live one day at a time. If God wants to communicate with us, it has to happen in the course of a 24-hour day, for we live in no other time. And how do we go about this kind of listening? Long tradition has provided a helpful tool, which we call the examination of consciousness today. “Rummaging for God” is an expression that suggests going through a drawer full of stuff, feeling around, looking for something that you are sure must be in there somewhere. I think that image catches some of the feel of what is classically known in Church language as the prayer of “examen.”
The Examen, or examination of conscience, is an ancient practice in the Church. In fact, even before Christianity, the Pythagoreans and the Stoics promoted a version of the practice. It is what most of us Catholics were taught to do to prepare for Confession. In that form, the Examen was a matter of examining one’s life in terms of the Ten Commandments to see how daily behavior stacked up against those divine criteria. St. Ignatius includes it as one of the exercises in his manual, The Spiritual Exercises.
It is still a salutary thing to do but wears thin as a lifelong, daily practice. It is hard to motivate yourself to keep searching your experience for how you sinned. In recent decades, spiritual writers have worked with the implication that conscience in Romance languag-
Photo by
Rubén Bagüés on
Unsplash
es like French (conscience) and Spanish (conciencia) means more than our English word “conscience,” in the sense of moral awareness and judgment; it also means “consciousness.”
Now prayer that deals with the full contents of your consciousness lets you cast your net much more broadly than prayer that limits itself to the contents of conscience, or moral awareness. A number of people—most famously, George Aschenbrenner, S.J., in a classic article for Review for Religious in 1971—have developed this idea in profoundly practical ways. I wish to propose a way of doing the Examen, as an approach in five steps:
1. PRAY FOR LIGHT:
Since we are not simply daydreaming or reminiscing but rather looking for some sense of how the Spirit of God is leading us, it only makes sense to pray for some illumination. The goal is not simply memory but graced understanding. That’s a gift from God devoutly to be begged. “Lord, help me understand this blooming, buzzing confusion.”
2. REVIEW THE DAY IN THANKSGIVING:
Note how different this is from looking immediately for your sins. Nobody likes to poke around in the memory bank to uncover smallness, weakness, lack of generosity. But everybody likes to savor beautiful gifts, and that is precisely what the past 24 hours contain—gifts of existence, work, relationships, food, challenges. Gratitude is the foundation of our whole relationship with God. So use whatever cues help you to walk through the day from the moment of awakening—even the dreams you recall upon awakening. Walk through the past 24 hours, from hour to hour, from place to place, task to task, person to person, thanking the Lord for every gift you encounter.
3. REVIEW THE FEELINGS THAT SURFACE IN THE REPLAY OF THE DAY:
Our feelings, positive and negative, the painful and the pleasing, are clear signals of where the action was during the day. Simply pay attention to any and all of those feelings as they surface, the whole range: delight, boredom, fear, anticipation, resent-
ment, anger, peace, contentment, impatience, desire, hope, regret, shame, uncertainty, compassion, disgust, gratitude, pride, rage, doubt, confidence, admiration, shyness—whatever was there. Some of us may be hesitant to focus on feelings in this over-psychologized age, but I believe that these feelings are the liveliest index to what is happening in our lives. This leads us to the fourth moment.
4.
CHOOSE ONE OF
THOSE FEELINGS
(POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE) AND PRAY FROM IT:
That is, choose the remembered feeling that most caught your attention. The feeling is a sign that something important was going on. Now simply express spontaneously the prayer that surfaces as you attend to the source of the feeling—praise, petition, contrition, cry for help or healing, whatever.
5. LOOK TOWARD TOMORROW:
Using your appointment calendar if that helps, face your immediate future. What feelings surface as you look at the tasks, meetings, and appointments that face you? Fear? Delighted anticipation? Self-doubt? Temptation to procrastinate? Zestful planning? Regret? Weakness? Whatever it is, turn it into prayer—for help, for healing, whatever comes spontaneously. To round off the examen, say the Lord’s Prayer. If we are to listen for the God who creates and sustains us, we need to take seriously and prayerfully the meeting between the creatures we are and all else that God holds lovingly in existence. That “interface” is the felt experience of our days. It deserves prayerful attention. It is a big part of how we know and respond to God.
Dennis Hamm, S.J., was a Scripture scholar, and held the Graff Chair in Catholic Theology at Creighton University, Omaha, NE.
Originally printed in America, 1994.
THE EXAMEN
“All the things in this world are gifts of God, created for us, to be the means by which we can come to know God better, love God more surely, and serve God more faithfully.”
—St. Ignatius Loyola
Summary
Dennis Hamm, S.J., expands the examination of conscience into an examination of consciousness through the Ignatian Examen. Beginning with a prayer of illumination and thanksgiving, the person praying reflects on the day with gratitude, while paying attention to the movements of their heart during the day. Taking time to pray with these movements in mind allows for contemplation and consideration of how to approach the events of tomorrow.
Questions for Conversation
1. St. Ignatius’s Examen is based on the principle that deeper knowledge of yourself leads to deeper knowledge and love of God (and vice versa). Can you describe an experience or time in your life when this was true for you?
2. One of the conditions for self-reflection and listening to God’s voice is creating time and space for stillness and/or silence. What are the opportunities in your daily or weekly schedule for quiet reflection or stillness? What might it take to introduce small windows of silence into your work or family life?
3. If you can only make time to introduce one part of the Examen into your daily routine, which do you think would be the most helpful and why?
KEEP ON PRACTICING, YOU’LL GET BETTER AT IT
by Thomas Groome
The young musician from Ohio was mesmerized by New York City and very excited about her upcoming audition. As she emerged from the subway at the corner of 56th and Seventh, however, she felt disoriented. She knew her destination was around here somewhere, but in which direction? Then, to her relief, she saw an elderly man coming toward her, with a violin case tucked under his arm. Ah, he must surely know, so she inquired, “Excuse me sir, can you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?” The old musician halted, looked pensive for a moment, and then offered, “Practice, practice, practice.” We can say the same about Catholic Christian faith; being any good at it requires lots of practice.
The Reformation era was occupied with an intense debate about the nature of Christian faith. A great battle cry of the Reformers was that “faith alone” by
“grace alone” brings salvation, granting little significance to people’s own efforts and “good works.” When the Catholic Church regathered at the Council of Trent (1545–63), it granted that we are saved by faith—which is always a gift of God—but this faith must be lived in every day of life. And even though we live as Christians only with the help of God’s grace, we are still held responsible for making our own best efforts. In sum, Trent insisted that “faith without works is dead” (Jas. 2:17), that good works are integral to the Christian life. We literally must practice our faith.
The daily practice of Christian faith, of course, cannot be reduced to saying prayers or doing spiritual exercises. The core Christian practices are to live the great commandment of love, to embrace the spirit of the Beatitudes, to do the works of mercy and compassion, to work for justice and peace in the world.
In sum, our practice of Christian faith should help to realize the reign of God. We cannot simply pray for its coming, as in “thy kingdom come”; we must also do God’s will “on earth,” that is, in daily life, “as it is done in heaven.”
This is what it means to live as a disciple of Jesus. This emphasis on practicing the faith, living as disciples, lends a particular distinction to Catholic spirituality. Far more than simply saying prayers or doing pious things, Catholic spirituality requires people to consciously put their faith to work in the ordinary and the everyday of lives. Catholic spirituality means that Christian faith should permeate and direct our every “thought, word, and deed”—as the old Morning Offering put it.
This being said—that Christians are to live their faith through their whole way of being in the world—we then recognize that good habits of prayer and spiritual practices can help to inspire, guide, and sustain such lived faith in the day-to-day. Prayer practices both heighten our God-consciousness about life and lend us access to God’s grace in Jesus that St. Paul says we need for doing “an abundance of every good work” (2 Cor. 6:8). In other words, we need practices of prayer and spirituality to nurture and sustain our efforts, which we mount by God’s grace, to live lives of Christian faith.
For example, a good morning offering can surely help orient one’s day toward living as a disciple of Jesus. It sharpens a person’s God-consciousness to permeate every aspect of the day that follows. If you don’t like [a] traditional one...make up your own. I did so about thirty years ago and have used it ever since. I call it my “foundation prayer” because it helps me to begin each day with a review of my groundings in faith, while asking God for the graces I need to live them. Likewise, to do an “examen” at day’s end helps us recognize whether we responded well or poorly to the movements of God’s Spirit this day, inspiring our efforts for tomorrow.
Besides helping to sustain and deepen lives in faith, consistent spiritual practices are key, as social scien-
tists now assure us (as any parent could intuit), to forming children and youth in Christian identity. In sum, the most likely way to raise Christians is to have them do Christian things. Young people need to become well informed in the beliefs of Christian faith, but more formative by far are regular faith practices. It’s practices more than theory that make Christians.
You’ll find dozens more practices of prayer, care, and growth within every instance of ethnic Catholicism. Hispanic cultures, for example, brim with popular spiritual practices including Las Posadas and Día de los Muertos. Much the same can be said of the Polish, Italian, Irish, and so on. And if you don’t like these or what you find in your tradition, make up your own. I know a single mother who performs a brief nightly ritual with her three young children. She simply takes each child in her arms at bedtime, gives them a hug, and says, “God loves you and so do I.” I’ll wager that those children will grow up knowing deeply that they are loved by God, as well as by their mom. What a great foundation for a life lived in faith.
The old adage that “practice makes perfect” is likely not true in the spiritual life; we never quite reach perfection. Even the greatest saints recognized their shortcomings. However, Jesus did say, “be holy as your heavenly Father is holy” (Matt. 5:48). What a high standard! It surely means that the journey into fullness of faith is lifelong; we cannot rest until we finally rest in God. In the meantime, good prayer practices and spiritual exercises will help to sustain our reach toward fullness of faith, to approximate the holiness of God. If we keep on practicing, we’ll surely get better at it.
Thomas Groome is Professor of Theology and Religious education at the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry and a former director of the C21 Center.
Groome’s article was originally published in Catholic Spiritual Practices: A Treasury of Old and New, Paraclete Press, 2012.
KEEP ON PRACTICING, YOU’LL GET BETTER AT IT
“I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass... how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day.” —Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day”
Summary
As something that forms and sustains Christian identity, prayer is an ongoing process of learning and practicing that guides and shapes the Christian life. Although practice likely does not make “perfect” in the life of prayer, Thomas Groome encourages us to keep journeying and practicing prayer as part of this ongoing process of faith life. In our ongoing reaching “toward the fullness of faith,” prayer practices provide structure and process as we grow in faith throughout the different movements of our lives.
Questions for Conversation
1. How do you view the different faith practices that you’ve learned throughout your life? How do they structure and inspire your faith journey?
2. Groome describes that faith practices are central to our ability to put faith into action in our ordinary lives. How have your practices enabled you to put faith into action? What does that mean for you?
3. How do you get “better” at prayer through practice? What challenges or successes have you experienced in your prayer over time? What have you gained from these different experiences?
LOOKING FOR MORE PRAYER RESOURCES?
“Keep on practicing” by trying out a new prayer practice! The guides below provide introductions to different prayer practices—try them out as part of your daily practice!
Lectio Divina
by Sandra M. Schneiders, IHM
Lectio Divina is the prayerful reflection on scripture that is a hallmark of many monastic communities’ prayer. Here scripture becomes a spiritual teacher through the soul’s movements in prayer.
Spiritual Direction
by
Kathleen Fischer
Practiced for centuries in the Christian tradition, Spiritual Direction provides accompaniment and guidance through regular meetings with a spiritual director. Through the relationship, a directee learns to notice God’s movement throughout daily life.
by
Jesus Prayer
Joseph Wong, O.S.B.
“Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me”: the Jesus Prayer provides an accessible form of contemplative prayer from Eastern Christianity. The practice develops stillness through prayerful repetition.
Praying with Images
by
Colleen M. Griffith
Developed from the icon tradition, imaged-based prayer invites us to gaze upon images that can “speak volumes” to us. Through a loving gaze, developed over time, praying with images opens our prayer to the beauty we might otherwise miss.
Join C21 for Pray It Forward, Wednesdays from 4–4:15 p.m. ET via Zoom. The Pray It Forward community gathers for 15 minutes each week to pray by reading the day’s Gospel, listening to a brief reflection, offering prayer intentions, and sharing a group prayer relevant to the week.
To sign up, learn more, or access these and other prayer resources, go to bc.edu/prayitforward, or use the QR code on this page.
