Reflection from Fr. Tristianto: Types of Prayer (Part 2)

Mental Prayer

When we pray discursively, using our minds and imaginations to unite ourselves with God or to consider some divine mystery, we are doing mental prayer. Meditation is the most common form of mental prayer.

The Bible is a particularly rich source for meditation. We can ponder a passage of Scripture, reading it over, savoring its language and imagery, letting the Lord speak to us through the text. We can meditate on a scene from the life of Jesus, imagining the cure of the blind man for example, placing ourselves in the scene, taking the part of one of the characters in the story, seeing ourselves as the blind man, calling out to Jesus (or perhaps finding ourselves reluctant to approach him), feeling his touch, opening our eyes as for the firs time. When we meditate on the life of Jesus in the Gospels we allow its imagery and language gradually to become our own. More importantly, in making a kind of imaginative contact with the person of Jesus presented to us in the gospel mysteries, we discover the correspondence between his humanity and our own; Jesus becomes more real to us, and so we grow in love and appreciation of the Lord we cannot see.

One very fruitful way of growing in prayer is to take each day a brief passage from a particular Gospel, not a whole chapter but one a miracle story, a teaching or saying-and using it for our prayer. Some people find it helpful to see the readings for the liturgy of the day, listed in any missalette, for their daily prayer. This has the advantage of uniting them in their prayer with the liturgy or of preparing them for the liturgy if they are able to participate in the Mass on a daily basis. Others find helpful using a book of brief meditations such as the classic Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis.

Other forms of mental or discursive prayer might include a meditative reading of Scripture, a spiritual reading, doing an examination of conscience or "consciousness examen"-which means looking for God's presence in the events of our daily lives-or keeping a personal journal in which we reflect on our prayer experience and our personal spiritual journey. Those who pray regularly often find that they are led gradually from discursive prayer to a simpler, more contemplative way of praying.