Oratio or Prayer:

(Praying the text and our life experiences)

Spontaneously we feel to turn to God in prayer.

This prayer usually finds expression in three types.

Three types:

1.    Thanksgiving

2.    Repentance

3.    Petition

Our prayer can take the form of any one of these or of all three.  Using a combination of our own words and the words from the passage puts our own life experience of the word on a par with the word of God in scriptures.

A Thanksgiving:

Primary prayer

The desire to pray a prayer of thanksgiving is the hallmark of a good meditation.  In recognising the passage in life experience – events, happenings, encounters in our own personal lives or the life of our neighbourhood community parish community, society, country and world – there arises a spontaneous desire to give thanks for the passage, for the memory of such events etc. and for the same presence of God (work of God) encountered in the passage and in the memory of life experience.

We are invited to talk to God directly in our own words expressing the gratitude, repentance or petition that is in our heart.

In relation to all three types of prayer there is a further invitation to bring some of the words of the passage, indeed as many as possible, into our prayer.  Praying our life experience in the language of the passage lifts it up, gives it a new dignity, clothes it with the word of God in scripture.

B Repentance:

At the same time we also feel humbled by the experience: while we recognise a little bit of the movement of grace (activity of God) in our story we know it could have more. Certainly there were other times and situations where we fell short and just feel to say “Lord have mercy”.  Every passage is at the same time an invitation to profess the story of grace – God’s activity, God’s work – in our lives and world, and to confess the story of sin – when we or others have been obstacles to that movement of grace.  Every passage is calling us to grow in holiness.  Again we address God directly expressing sorrow or regret in our hearts.

C Petition:

At the same time we just feel to ask God’s help, that more of the attitudes and actions of Jesus (movement of grace) that we have experienced in meditation might live in us, in our church, our world.

The prayer of petition can be expressed beautifully in the words of “Maranatha” – come Lord Jesus!

“Come more perfectly than you have come before”!

“Increase your presence within me and within all of humanity “.

“Your kingdom come”.

In the context of a Lectio Divina Community:

An individual offering of “meditation” is followed immediately by prayer of this kind and this prayer is often followed by “silence” before another individual makes an offering.

© Newry