Bishop Chandler Jones considers the role and practice of prayer:
Your desire to enter more deeply into the life of prayer and mystical communion with God is a wonderful movement and grace of the Holy Ghost. Prayer is an art, but it is also, and most fundamentally, a discipline of order and rule of life, which brings structure to our lives and continually sets us on the path to God. It is vital for one's own spiritual life to develop and rigorously maintain a rule of daily prayer and devotion, for the freedom of the Spirit only takes on its fullest expression and works most powerfully when there is consistency and regularity in the life of the soul. 'Order brings freedom' says Saint Augustine. I would encourage you to develop the holy habit of regular, daily, patterned and directed prayer - most especially I should recommend the daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer from the Book of Common Prayer, which is the Liturgy of the Hours, the daily work and round of prayer to God which unites us to the prayer of the Lord Jesus our Head and to the prayer of the whole Body of the Church in paradise and on earth and across the world. The Offices are opus Dei, the work of God, the prayer of the whole Church throughout time and space. We contribute to it and share in it by our participation in the Divine Offices.
Read the rest here.
Comments