Prayer is the opening up of one's deepest self to God abiding in the core of one's being. This divine indwelling is the Father generating the Son, and the Father and the Son spirating the Holy Spirit within us in space and in time. Our response then is that of loving receptivity to becoming "regenerated," (Jn. 3:3-8) loving openness to becoming "spiritual." (Rm 8:1-27)
Even in the initial phases of prayer, in which external and internal activity can be of great importance, what ultimately constitutes any way of praying as prayer is the fact that all one's activity is meant simply to open all the depths of one's being to God: "To meditate is to think. And yet successful meditation is much more than reasoning or thinking. It is much more than 'affections', much more than a series of prepared 'acts' which one goes through. . . In meditative prayer, one thinks and speaks not only with his mind and lips, but in a certain sense with his whole being. Prayer is then not just a formula of words or a series of desires springing up in the heart - it is the orientation of our whole body, mind and spirit to God in silence, attention and adoration. All good meditative prayer is a conversion of our entire self to God." (Thomas Merton, Thought in Solitude)
Nemeck & Coombs
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