Prayer and prayerfulness

This evening reading the latest May-August 2008 Salesian Animation Notes, I came across this interesting reasoning proposed by a certain Francis Ring. He hypothesises that had Jesus' disciples approached Jesus twenty years after being taught the 'Our Father', with the same request, 'Jesus teach us to pray', then Jesus would have had a different answer. Why? During those intervening years they should have improved and their prayer far deeper than the early stage. If our prayer is restricted to the prescribed patterns that we have grown up with, then we are still at a very primitive level in our prayer life.

Another interesting observation the author, Fr PO Jose makes is the distinction he draws between prayer and prayerfulness. While prayer is the conscious effort we make to be aware of God's presence, prayerfulness is the constant awareness of God's presence in our lives - it is being rooted in God.

Karl Rahner adds: Allow the basic ultimate human experiences to come first. Don't go talking about them, making up theories, but simply endure these basic experiences... silence, fear, the ineffable longing for truth, for love, for fellowship, for God, loneliness...

The Salesian Project of Life too invites us to make of our existence an attitude of faith...