As a community organized around the Word of God, Christianity emphasizes the power of language to integrate individual humans into a larger whole. The most ancient Christian contemplative practices involve the deliberate repetition of traditional formulas of prayer, particularly the Psalms and the Our Father. The aim is not merely to pronounce the words, but to personally intend the meaning of the text, as Pope Benedict XVI explains (referencing his namesake, the 6th-century monk Benedict of Nursia):
"St Benedict, speaking in his Rule of prayer in the Psalms, pointed out to his monks: mens concordet voci, 'the mind must be in accord with the voice.' The Saint teaches that in the prayers of the Psalms words must precede our thought. It does not usually happen like this because we have to think and then what we have thought is converted into words. Here, instead […] the opposite is true, words come first. God has given us the word […] we must enter into the words, into their meaning and receive them within us, we must attune ourselves to these words; in this way we become children of God, we become like God." (Wednesday audience, September 26, 2012)
Note that this practice demands an act trust or faith, just like ordinary language acquisition, since it requires deliberately speaking words that one does not yet fully understand, initiating a process of cognitive transformation whose results cannot be comprehended in advance. It is ordinarily carried out in a social context that supports this trust and that assists in the path to understanding, and may prove a particularly challenging practice to experiment with individually.
This is a very brief practice, about 5 minutes per session, ideally repeated at least three times per day (in the morning, at mid-day, in the evening). Each session consists in the following three steps:
Preparation: find a quiet place to sit down and spend about two minutes in a simple breath attention exercise (e.g., following this video).
Recitation: stand up gently, fold your hands (or use them to hold a copy of the text), and speak the text of the prayer:
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,thy kingdom come,thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,and lead us not into temptation,but deliver us from evil.
As explained above, the efficacy of the practice requires dedicating full attention to the meaning of each phrase, addressing the words to the Father as if they were your own. This may require a prior review of the text to look up unfamiliar or archaic words, and to remember to open up words like father, heaven, kingdom and bread to their deepest symbolic sense. See the *Catechism of the Catholic Church* (Part IV, Section 2) for an in-depth explanation of each line.
Conclusion: sit down for a minute to write down anything that occurred to you from the recitation, either hesitations/uncertainties about the text itself, or ideas that cast the events of your own day in a new light.
By Fr. Robert Marsland