|
Source: (consider it)
|
Thread: Pray like this
|
mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
|
Posted
I have long been interested in the Lord's prayer. The verse before the prayer in Matthew 6:9 has ηουτο meaning "in this way" or "like this".
It seems that almost all church traditions have taken this to mean that the following verses are to be repeated as a form of liturgical prayer, but I have often wondered with the intention is to pray "in this kind of way" rather than "using these exact words".
Is there anything helping us to understand whether this was intended to be a liturgical or repeated text rather than a model of prayer?
--------------------
arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
|
Posted
Can't it be both?
With little children, it's common to give them something to copy--even to the point of tracing--before they feel confident enough to improvise. I think some musicians do this too as they get acquainted with music--start off with everything exactly as written, then add their own take on it later.
I use the Lord's Prayer this way--I do the word by word repetition to keep me on track, so I don't slide off into "me me me" so much or some other problem. But then it becomes a framework for all my other stuff I want to pray about.
--------------------
Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
|
Posted
Possibly, but I was asking about the meaning and context of the Greek words and whether they suggest one more than the other in Matthew.
--------------------
arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
|
Posted
Well, seeing as the Jews had 'set' forms of prayer as far as I understand it - then presumably it did mean that these were a form of words to use -- but I also think it's a both/and thing rather than an either/or one ...
But then that's pretty much my standard response to most things ...
I aim for consistency ... ![[Biased]](wink.gif) ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
--------------------
Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I have long been interested in the Lord's prayer. The verse before the prayer in Matthew 6:9 has ηουτο meaning "in this way" or "like this".
It seems that almost all church traditions have taken this to mean that the following verses are to be repeated as a form of liturgical prayer, but I have often wondered with the intention is to pray "in this kind of way" rather than "using these exact words".
Is there anything helping us to understand whether this was intended to be a liturgical or repeated text rather than a model of prayer?
Well you can't get much more "like this" than "this", can you?
--------------------
"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636
|
Posted
I think the strong pattern of parallelism and the probable chiastic structure suggest that what we are presented with in Matthew's gospel goes beyond a general description of the kinds of things we ought to pray for.
Posts: 3374 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Jammy Dodger
Half jam, half biscuit
# 17872
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Possibly, but I was asking about the meaning and context of the Greek words and whether they suggest one more than the other in Matthew.
Jesus probably taught the original in Aramaic rather than Greek or even Hebrew. Kenneth Bailey has a helpful chapter on the Lords Prayer in his book "Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes".
He notes that the Lord's Prayer has similarities to the traditional Hebrew daily prayer starting, "Hear O Israel The Lord your God is one Lord" - but differences like the probable use of Aramaic so "Our Father" could be a translation of the Aramaic Abba.
--------------------
Look at my eye twitching - Donkey from Shrek
Posts: 438 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2013
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
Nigel M
Shipmate
# 11256
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Is there anything helping us to understand whether this was intended to be a liturgical or repeated text rather than a model of prayer?
Interesting question. The connecting word (οὕτως = houtos) can point either forwards or backwards in a text and here it is followed by the conjunction 'therefore' (οὖν = oun). It, too, has a backward point as well as forward. The immediate co-text to this (backwards) in Matthew is the preceding section on prayer in vv. 7-8:
quote:
NET Bible
“When you pray, do not babble repetitiously like the Gentiles, because they think that by their many words they will be heard. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”
Then we get the introduction to the disciples' prayer itself. So I would guess that the intro should be understood to run: “This then (in contrast to the aforementioned practice) you must pray.”
This can mean a literal word for word repetition of the prayer, but really the focus is on getting the essentials of prayer over – the barest minimum needed to cover all the bases – compared to endless babbling. I think that if the disciples' prayer is done word for word it might run the risk of being on a par with the endless babbling. The trick is not to let the words be mere words; as though words alone were the key to unlocking God's will.
Posts: 2826 | From: London, UK | Registered: Apr 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
|
Posted
Obviously how you read this depends a lot on your tradition. In my very very extremely Protestant non-liturgical church, I was taught as a child that "pray like this" meant we ought to include in our prayers the same things Jesus did in the Lord's Prayer: Praise to God, request for our daily needs, confession of sin, and a bit more praise to wrap it up. We only very occasionally said the Lord's Prayer in church, although I do remember memorizing it as a child: when we said it corporately it was never a planned thing but more on the whim of the person giving the morning prayer up front who, at the end of their four or five minute prayer, might suddenly say, "And so, as Jesus taught us, let us pray ..." and everyone would jump in with the Lord's Prayer.
It was quite a surprise to me later to learn that other churches took "pray like this" literally and said those exact words at the same point in every service, every time. I realize this difference in usage is more of an Ecclesiantical rather than a Kergymaniacal question but it does come down to a difference in how you read the text, so it's quite an interesting question whether Jesus meant "pray these words" or "pray this type of prayer."
I guess I'm still uber-Protestant enough to think that right after a rant on the vain repetition of heathen prayers, Jesus would have been unlikely to give the disciples a canned prayer that He wanted them to repeat over and over, because that seems to be much the same thing He'd just accused the heathen of doing.
--------------------
Books and things.
I lied. There are no things. Just books.
Posts: 7428 | From: Closer to Paris than I am to Vancouver | Registered: Mar 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
TomM
Shipmate
# 4618
|
Posted
The Didache (so 1st or early 2nd century, most likely) instructs the saying of the Lord's Prayer three times a day, so it seems the custom of using these particular words caught on early - possibly even earlier than the Gospels.
(Paragraph 8: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0714.htm)
Posts: 405 | Registered: Jun 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
|
Posted
I'm with Trudy on this one-- given the larger context of how Jesus introduced the prayer, I think he was providing a general format rather than a liturgical element. I don' t think it hurts to use the Prayer in liturgy, but we do that for our own purposes-- a sense of continuity, a connection to our church ancestors, convenience of community recitation. All that is worthwhile, but I, too, think Jesus was suggesting a more basic, personally customizable approach to prayer, one that challenged the idea of " magic words."
--------------------
I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
|
Posted
I can see that Trudy and Kelly, but have we ever really met anyone or know anybody who treats the words of the Lord's Prayer like 'magic words'?
I'm sure they must exist but I've never consciously met anyone who does so.
Why do we assume that because some people say them by rote - as it were - in some set part of a liturgy that they are therefore using them as 'magic words' or are somehow insincere?
![[Confused]](confused.gif)
It's long struck me as ironic that some of those who were most critical about 'set' or liturgical prayers on the grounds that they were 'vain repetition' thought nothing of going, 'angabangara bangara gangara ...' or similar by 'speaking with tongues' and uttering the same 'phrases' over and over and over and over and over again ...
I can certainly see that the context of the passage indicates that Jesus was exhorting his followers to pray succinctly and without undue bombast an repetition.
From what I've seen of Jewish prayer, it is quite 'liturgical' though ... and whilst we don't have a great deal of information on how the 1st century disciples would have prayed I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been the 'Lord we really just ...' type of evangelical extemporary prayer we know and love (or loathe) today any more than it would have sounded like choral evensong at an Anglican cathedral ...
Not that I'm dissing either ... in the right context ...
I saw an article recently about archaeological findings in Egypt which seemed to suggest that the Lord's Prayer and various Bible verses may have been used as charms ...
If that is the case, then the 'magic words' thing may have come into play ...
--------------------
Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
|
Posted
I was using the phrase "magic words" in the sense of "Words which we are required to repeat if we are Doing Prayer Right." Feel free to ignore those two words in favor of the rest of what I said, because that was really the point.
For instance, how do you get this:
quote:
Why do we assume that because some people say them by rote - as it were - in some set part of a liturgy that they are therefore using them as 'magic words' or are somehow insincere?
Out of this:
quote:
I don' t think it hurts to use the Prayer in liturgy, but we do that for our own purposes-- a sense of continuity, a connection to our church ancestors, convenience of community recitation. All that is worthwhile, but I, too, think Jesus was suggesting a more basic, personally customizable approach to prayer (snipped off distracting part.)
What in what I wrote indicates an assumption of magical thinking or insincerity? I was just saying liturgy serves us, and not the other way around. Maybe it's a Lutheran thing, but I didn't think even strict liturgists would have a big problem with that.
[ 19. July 2015, 20:27: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
--------------------
I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
W Hyatt
Shipmate
# 14250
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I can see that Trudy and Kelly, but have we ever really met anyone or know anybody who treats the words of the Lord's Prayer like 'magic words'?
They certainly work like magic for me to connect me to God and to open up a mental way for a little bit of heaven to come down into my life.
Not that personalized prayer can't do the same thing - the important part is that we pray using words that are meaningful to us. But an important part of why I personally find them to be so magical is the fact that they are presented to us in the text of the gospel[s] as the words of Christ.
[ETA: cross-post with Kelly, with whom I completely agree]
[ 19. July 2015, 20:27: Message edited by: W Hyatt ]
--------------------
A new church and a new earth, with Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life.
Posts: 1565 | From: U.S.A. | Registered: Nov 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
|
Posted
OOh, I edited, double-check if you agree.
--------------------
I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
Obviously how you read this depends a lot on your tradition.<snip>
I guess I'm still uber-Protestant enough to think that right after a rant on the vain repetition of heathen prayers, Jesus would have been unlikely to give the disciples a canned prayer that He wanted them to repeat over and over, because that seems to be much the same thing He'd just accused the heathen of doing.
I too was brought up in a protestant non-liturgical tradition, and I agree that in general your argument (about how we read this passage) holds good. FWIW, I think that both free and fixed liturgical prayer can fall into the trap of "heaping up empty words', and there is an interpretative tendency for each tradition to read Jesus as criticising the way that we don't pray.
All that said, I think there are literary and text critical grounds for saying that what Jesus gives us here is not just instruction about how to pray, but also something that is in fact a prayer itself. 'Free' and liturgical prayer both do well to attend to its simplicity and brevity, and whether we use the words given, or our own words we need to remember (as R.T. France puts it in the New Bible Commentary) that "True prayer is not a technique nor a performance, but a relationship."
Posts: 3374 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
I use the Lord's Prayer this way--I do the word by word repetition to keep me on track, so I don't slide off into "me me me" so much or some other problem. But then it becomes a framework for all my other stuff I want to pray about.
Same for me. Good way to remove mental noise or cyclic thinking that goes nowhere.
Jesus also said go in your room, shut the door, and ask the Lord for those things for which you have need.
--------------------
Change is the only certainty of existence
Posts: 3206 | From: U.K. | Registered: Dec 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
|
Posted
Since Matthew’s version of the Lord ’s Prayer is not the same as the one in Luke, it’s unlikely that Jesus was providing an alternative liturgical text. That may be what Matthew thought he was doing though.
In Matthew the prayer is preceded by two verse. Verse 7 is criticising babbling – this doesn’t necessarily mean treating texts as magic. Verse 8 explains what is criticized “Do not be like them. For your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (NIV)
What could certainly fall under this is the sort of lengthy extempore prayer telling God at length what he doesn’t already know (“we would remind you”) or what he ought to do about it.
--------------------
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
Posts: 3201 | From: An historic market town nestling in the folds of Surrey's rolling North Downs, | Registered: Sep 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Jammy Dodger
Half jam, half biscuit
# 17872
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by rolyn:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
I use the Lord's Prayer this way--I do the word by word repetition to keep me on track, so I don't slide off into "me me me" so much or some other problem. But then it becomes a framework for all my other stuff I want to pray about.
Same for me. Good way to remove mental noise or cyclic thinking that goes nowhere.
Jesus also said go in your room, shut the door, and ask the Lord for those things for which you have need.
Absolutely agree. Same here - the familiar words help you stay on track but also spark other matters for prayer.
--------------------
Look at my eye twitching - Donkey from Shrek
Posts: 438 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2013
| IP: Logged
|
|
Belle Ringer
Shipmate
# 13379
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I can see that Trudy and Kelly, but have we ever really met anyone or know anybody who treats the words of the Lord's Prayer like 'magic words'?
In the negative sense, was the Lord's prayer used as a test of witchcraft, a witch supposedly unable to say it without stumbling? Or is that historical fiction.
I have often seen it used to start or end a gathering, the familiar to all recited by all prayer setting the tone for moving from chit chat or random thoughts to prayer, or ending the prayer time and moving to chit chat and other activities. Not "magic" effect on God, but functioning as something other than or additional to just being prayer. Other groups signal those activity transitions by lighting/snuffing candles, opening and closing hymns, dimming/brightening lights, welcoming/sending out statements.
Posts: 5830 | From: Texas | Registered: Jan 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
|
Posted
What I wrote, Belle Ringer, was whether we had 'met' - present tense - anyone who treated the words of the Lord's Prayer as a mantra or magic-charm ...
I'm not talking about the 17th century, say, when none of us were around ...
I'm sure the Lord's Prayer has been used that way - and there will be lots of instances, I presume, where it was believed to have been prayed backwards or blasphemously in some way ...
I'm not sure I've come across much by way of a residual echo of that sort of thing.
Have you?
--------------------
Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
|
Posted
As for it's use to mark the start or close of prayer - well, I don't have an issue with that any more than I'd have an issue with people closing with 'the grace' or with 'let us depart in peace.' / 'In the name of Christ. Amen' or whatever else it might be.
Using it in that way doesn't strike me as either 'magic' or a 'mantra'. Heck, there were/are set prayers in the synagogue and also in early Christian worship judging by the Didache.
--------------------
Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
BashfulAnthony
Apprentice
# 15624
|
Posted
It may be simplistic, but I think our prayers cover three basic things: an expression of love to God; thanks for His love and goodness; and ending with pleas for His love and mercy.
Posts: 12 | From: Nottingham | Registered: Apr 2010
| IP: Logged
|
|
venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
|
Posted
In using set forms for communal worship, Christians would not have been interpreting Christ’s words “literally”. They would just have been doing what everyone, including Cranmer and Luther, took to be the natural course. Ecstatic or spontaneous worship are not opposed to set forms, as plenty of medieval mystics witness.
--------------------
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
Posts: 3201 | From: An historic market town nestling in the folds of Surrey's rolling North Downs, | Registered: Sep 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
Since Matthew’s version of the Lord ’s Prayer is not the same as the one in Luke, it’s unlikely that Jesus was providing an alternative liturgical text. That may be what Matthew thought he was doing though.
Although, even if we assume Matthew and Luke are describing the same occasion, there isn't any obvious reason why we should assume that Luke's account is the more accurate, rather than, say, thinking that Matthew's is the original which Luke de-Hebraicizes for his particular audience, or, indeed, that Jesus had a basic message about prayer which he expounded sometimes by description, and at other times by giving an example.
Posts: 3374 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
|
Posted
Gamaliel
Of course the Lord's Prayer has been used magically. It contains a number of things that lends itself to those tendencies.
- Often learnt by rote as a set text
- Invocation of the divine
- Origin with a religious teacher
It would be surprising if it isn't.
Jengie
--------------------
"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
Posts: 20894 | From: city of steel, butterflies and rainbows | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious: ... right after a rant on the vain repetition of heathen prayers, Jesus would have been unlikely to give the disciples a canned prayer that He wanted them to repeat over and over, because that seems to be much the same thing He'd just accused the heathen of doing.
I hope I’ve misunderstood this. It seems to be implying that anything other than spontaneous extempore prayer is somehow inauthentic and liturgical or set prayer is “canned” and its repeated use condemned.
If so, an awful lot of prayer by faithful Christians throughout the ages is condemned.
Jesus pointedly does not condemn Jewish prayer, which was eminently liturgical with set texts.
--------------------
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
Posts: 3201 | From: An historic market town nestling in the folds of Surrey's rolling North Downs, | Registered: Sep 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
|
Posted
A week has gone by and no response.
Such uber protestants as Luther and Wesley had no problems with set texts.
And why are set texts acceptable in hymns and not in prayers?
--------------------
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
Posts: 3201 | From: An historic market town nestling in the folds of Surrey's rolling North Downs, | Registered: Sep 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Latchkey Kid
Shipmate
# 12444
|
Posted
A late-comer to this thread.
I wouldn't describe it's use as magical, rather as a mantra. (Getting a magical feeling from saying it is a different connotation of magic from it being a magical saying IMHO)
And the contexts are important. While the Matthean version has Jesus instructing heirs of the rich Jewish pietistic tradition to K.I.S.S, Luke has Jesus instructing disciples who need their faith bolstering up, need encouragement and are not sure how to pray in the Praying 101 lesson.
A problem with the mantra approach for us affluent disciples is that, with our fridges full of a weeks worth of food, can we really pray for our daily bread (or our bread for tomorrow) with sincerity (and please don't spiritualise the phrase for me).
We can still ask God to forgive us in just the same way as we forgive people who wrong us, but are we thinking about that when we mantra-pray it?
One thing I like about it is that at least no-one tacks on "we ask this in Jesus' name" to that prayer, even though for some it seems de rigeur for extempore prayer.
Do we construct situationally appropriate prayers in that form. I think the meaning is pray LIKE this. Not pray this.
In any case we use the Didache form (as mentioned above) with Didache 9 added to the end. I wonder what those who love to quote about not adding or taking away from scripture think about that.
--------------------
'You must never give way for an answer. An answer is always the stretch of road that's behind you. Only a question can point the way forward.'
Mika; in Hello? Is Anybody There?, Jostein Gaardner
Posts: 2592 | From: The wizardest little town in Oz | Registered: Mar 2007
| IP: Logged
|
|
Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
quote:
Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious: ... right after a rant on the vain repetition of heathen prayers, Jesus would have been unlikely to give the disciples a canned prayer that He wanted them to repeat over and over, because that seems to be much the same thing He'd just accused the heathen of doing.
I hope I’ve misunderstood this. It seems to be implying that anything other than spontaneous extempore prayer is somehow inauthentic and liturgical or set prayer is “canned” and its repeated use condemned.
If so, an awful lot of prayer by faithful Christians throughout the ages is condemned.
Jesus pointedly does not condemn Jewish prayer, which was eminently liturgical with set texts.
Sorry, I missed that you'd asked me a direct question ... I didn't mean to suggest that Jesus was condemning all liturgical prayer, of which, as you point out, there was plenty in the Jewish tradition. Just that the juxtaposition of that particular comment about the repetition of prayers with "and here's a new liturgical prayer I'm teaching you to repeat" seems odd to me. But I'm quite willing to concede that the oddness comes mostly from my own perspective, having spent all my life in a church where extemporaneous prayer IS considered superior to a set or pre-written prayer (I don't agree that it is inferior, just that that's the atmosphere in which my thinking about prayer was formed).
I do think one of the problems in churches that don't use liturgical prayer is that supposedly extemporaneous, "from the heart" prayers fall very quickly into a formulaic repetition of key words and phrases that is just as empty as the worst caricature of liturgical prayer, without the benefit of beautiful language and sound theology that's behind most written liturgies.
When I was a child my parents were fond of making fun of the elder in church who whenever he got up to prayer the morning prayer would invariably include an intercession for those in need which always went, "Some are sick and some are sad, and some have lost the love they had."
I'm sure he thought he was speaking quite spontaneously from the heart every time.
--------------------
Books and things.
I lied. There are no things. Just books.
Posts: 7428 | From: Closer to Paris than I am to Vancouver | Registered: Mar 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
I didn't mean to suggest that Jesus was condemning all liturgical prayer, of which, as you point out, there was plenty in the Jewish tradition. Just that the juxtaposition of that particular comment about the repetition of prayers with "and here's a new liturgical prayer I'm teaching you to repeat" seems odd to me.
But is it really repetition of prayers that Jesus is criticizing? I don't read it that way, at least in Matthew 6 when he is teaching on how to pray. He criticizes Jews who make a public show of their prayer. And then he says "When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words."
I don't think that's a criticism of repetition in the sense of a set form of words to use when appropriate. It's a criticism of, as some translations put it, babbling on and on just because you think God will hear you better if you keep talking. Hence his short and to-the-point prayer.
[ 03. August 2015, 01:46: Message edited by: Nick Tamen ]
--------------------
The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
Posts: 2833 | From: On heaven-crammed earth | Registered: Sep 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
|
Posted
Thank you very much for the reply, Trudy.
I've come to use the rosary a lot (and when I was in hospital it was invaluable). I can well imagine that being condemned as vain repetition (I thought that once). But I've found it is a prayer when words are just not adequate.
--------------------
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
Posts: 3201 | From: An historic market town nestling in the folds of Surrey's rolling North Downs, | Registered: Sep 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
Printer-friendly view
