Categories: uncategorized
Date: 30 October 2005 13:39:30
I have been told many a time that there are no magical words when you pray. Saying the right words will not mean God will hear you any better than if you say any other words. But I have in fact believed that there are magical words to pray, and those words I believed were my own words.
Reading a prayer, in my, until today subconcious belief, is not praying at all, because it is not in my own words. "Pray the Lord's prayer for 10 minutes a day, translating and expanding each phrase into my own words, translate the scripture into my own words, jargon is meaningless, religious words are meaningless, words without feelings are meaningless, words without understanding are meaningless, non-specific prayers are meaningless and will not be answered by God." I have believed all this.
As I held my little book of liturgy, preparing to pray the same words again, while the priest prayed the same words again, I doubted that these words would be meaningless to God.
The other night I had the feeling that all was not right in the spiritual world. I sung the thrice holy hymn over and over for about an hour I guess. It's the longest piece of liturgy I've remembered so far, and as I found out later, I'd remembered it wrong, but it didn't matter. I was glad to have someone else's words, and as it turned out, I'd added my own words anyway.
"Holy God, Holy Immortal, Holy Invisible, Have mercy on us." If you're familiar with the thrice holy hymn you're probably laughing right now since the actual words are, "Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, Have mercy on us." I didn't think Invisible sounded right, but hey, I thought, I wouldn't know.
So as a little illustration to my half baked thoughts it's pretty silly really, since I'm back to where I started, translating things into my own words. But I hope it was a world changing prayer heard by God all the same.