Bringing Prayer into our Day to Day Lives/ New Section Opening/ A Few Updates
Hello dear friends!!
Do you ever feel like you're just going through the motions when you pray? Or maybe you're looking for a way to pray more than you do now? Or even that maybe you put aside prayer more often than you'd like? Personally, I've been feeling all of those things for quite a bit. I kinda put aside prayer or look at it as a burden, but at the same time, I wish I did it more. So this week I've decided to put out an article about prayer!!
So, before we talk about different ways to pray and incorporating it in our daily lives, it might be helpful to have an idea of what prayer is. The CCC says "Prayer is the raising of one's mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God" (CCC 2559) Saint Therese the little flower says, "For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy." So prayer is, at its simplest, our conversations and exchanges with God.
Think about this. Imagine your best friend. How often do you talk to them? What do you talk to them about? Do you enjoy talking to them? What about God? How often do we talk to Him? What do we talk to Him about? Do we enjoy talking to Him? Do we talk to Him on our good days? or just the times when we need to? Do we make time to talk with Him every day? I don't mean to accuse with these questions, only to encourage consideration. God is our best friend, but do we talk to Him like He is? I know that oftentimes I do not. I think though, if we knew of different ways to pray, maybe we would be more inclined to pray.
So what are a few ways that we can pray practically? Well, these are a few different ways to pray that I really enjoy. You can read through them, pick and choose which ones you like, and even make your own adjustments to them. There is no wrong way to pray. So without further ado, let's dive in!
ARRR The Pirate Prayer
A Acknowledge
R Relate
R Receive
R Respond
The pirate prayer is a form of prayer that is really simple to remember. This is because of its acronym "ARRR"
ARRR stands for Acknowledge, Relate, Receive, Respond.
First, acknowledge God. Every conversation has to start with acknowledgment, right? So when you begin your prayer, acknowledge that you are in the presence of God. Take some time simply to greet Him and rest in His presence.
Then, relate to God what is on your heart. Tell Him what’s up. These can be small things like how your day was, or bigger things that have been weighing on your heart. Or even things that you are grateful for!
After this, receive. Let the Lord speak to your heart. You can pray with scriptures, spiritual reading, or simply sit in silence. Be attentive to what
Lastly, respond. Respond to what the Lord has put on your heart. Sometimes this can be done by changing the way you live, picking up something new to add to your prayer life, or changing whatever God is asking you to change. Don’t walk away from prayer unchanged.
Another two forms of prayer are ACTS and ALTAR.
Adore
Confess
Thanksgiving
Supplication
A Adore God. Just take a minute to praise Him. This can be as simple as "Jesus I love you!"
C Confess. Tell God where you fell short today and apologize. Ask Him for the grace to do better.
T Thanksgiving, give God thanks for the good things that happened today, there's always a reason.
S Supplication, ask God for what you need or offer up petitions that you are holding in your heart.
Adore
Love
Thanksgiving
Asking
Resolve
A Adore!
L Love, offer Jesus your love! This can be done in prayer or by resolving to show your love in a more concrete way, or both!
T Thanksgiving!
A Asking, ask God for what you need! Just like supplication!
R Resolve, end by resolving to do something for Jesus, it's just like responding in ARRR.
These are just a few simple ways to pray! A few other ways that can best be explained by a quick Google search are lectio divina, praying and meditating with the rosary, and praying with scripture. Using your imagination to picture yourself in different Biblical stories is a very fun and easy form of prayer too!!
Now this is a perfect segue to the next thing I want to talk about.
Very soon I will be opening a new resource section!! The resource section will be full of articles that are more like instruction manuals than regular blog posts. There will be how-tos on how to pray the rosary, and a few other Catholic devotionals; helpful guides to adoration and confession; suggestions of Catholic media and shops; and sooooo much more! Keep an eye out for additions in the resource section!! My target date to add it is April 27th, but it could be before or after that?!
A few other updates!!
For those of you who are subscribed to receive emails, there will now be a link in every email bringing you directly to the post. Unfortunately, since I do not pay Google to have my blog easily accessible, it's very difficult to look it up. I would recommend bookmarking or saving the main page to access it if you are not subscribed, as it cannot be looked up. If you are seeing this and want to subscribe to the blog (it's just notifications for new posts), I will be leaving a link at the bottom of every post (including this one) that will lead to a Google form. If ya pop your email address and name into the form it will put you on our email list! :)
Well, friends, that's all for now!! Talk to you next week!
See you in the Eucharist,
May
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