How to pray (9)
Our weekly reflections are paused for the summer, so in their place there will be a short extract from how to pray in ten easy steps. This guide is taken from The Oratory Prayer Book, a new prayer book of old prayers that we are publishing and will be available in the coming months.
9. Listen to him
Prayer is a conversation. That means you can’t do all of the talking! Some people give up on prayer because they don’t hear a booming voice from heaven the first time they give it a try. God can speak to people like that, but he tends not to, because he doesn’t need to. God has already said what we need to hear in the words of Scripture. He also uses his Church to speak to us today. Only when we are familiar with the sound of his voice from these two sources will we be able to distinguish his voice from our own in our times of quiet prayer. Lectio divina is a special way of praying by reading the Scriptures (or another holy text like the writings of a saint). It’s a great way to get started in listening to God’s voice. You can find help in doing this in the next section, ‘How to Read Scripture’.
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