This article is dedicated to helping my readers develop their spiritual lives. One of the possible approaches is to reach out to God through prayer. As I suggested, there are several forms of personal prayer. One is reciting prayers that we have memorized. Periodically we need to renew the practice of saying prayers. However, merely reciting the words can degenerate into mumbo jumbo, the kind of babbling in prayer against which Jesus warned. We often find, unfortunately, that we tend to rattle off the prayers that we know. Periodically I think it is important that during the Divine Liturgy we slow-up reciting the prayers, especially the Creed. The Creed recites all the basic beliefs we have as Christians. It should not be rushed. We should think about what it is that we believe. Saying special formulas a specific number of times can be a way of trying to manipulate divine power to get something, rather than being a genuine reaching out to God. If said prayers become a mindless recitation of words or if they assume a magical quality, we will stunt our spiritual growth and make little or no progress on the spiritual journey.
The key to transforming familiar prayers into more than an automatic recitation of words is taking time to consider what we are saying. We have to note where our heart is when we say them. The Lord’s Prayer, which most of us have learned before we were capable of truly understanding the depths of meaning in it, can be rediscovered by saying it thoughtfully and slowly, savoring the meaning of the words. When we join the human experiences of suffering, loss, or joy to the slow and thoughtful praying of the Lord’s Prayer, our eyes will begin to see new dimensions of God’s will and of the coming of God’s rule in our lives. We will become more trusting of God’s daily care for us. We will realized that God forgives us and that an essential condition for the spiritual journey is that we forgive others. In fact, we may find that it is the best and most comforting prayer we can say.