During Lent, prayer takes on even significance as Catholics reflect on Jesus’ 40 days of prayer and fasting in the desert.
Prayer is one of the disciplines that make up the three pillars of Lent, along with fasting and almsgiving.
Prayer is a conversation with God that leads to a relationship with Him and a transformation in ourselves.
Like all prayer, Lenten prayer can be vocal, meditative, or contemplative.
Lenten prayer practices include many rote prayers as well as attending Mass and devotions like Stations of the Cross.
Praying through a lens of love:
Prayer brings spirituallity to our Lenten practices:
“When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you. In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”
Matthew 6: 5-8
Focusing on the big picture:
40 days of prayer:
Prayer is the life of the new heart. It ought to animate us at every moment. But we tend to forget Him who is our life and our all. This is why the Fathers of the spiritual life in the Deuteronomic and prophetic traditions insist that prayer is a remembrance of God often awakened by the memory of the heart “We must remember God more often than we draw breath.” But we cannot pray “at all times” if we do not pray at specific times, consciously willing it These are the special times of Christian prayer, both in intensity and duration.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2697
Getting to know God:
P.R.A.Y:
Listening to God:
Two moments of Jesus’ earthly existence come to mind. One is at the beginning and the other almost at the end of his public ministry: the 40 days in the desert, on which the Season of Lent is based, and the agony in Gethsemane – are both essentially moments of prayer. Prayer alone with the Father face to face in the desert; prayer filled with “mortal anguish” in the Garden of Olives. Yet in both these circumstances it is by praying that Christ unmasks the wiles of the tempter and defeats him. Thus, prayer proves to be the first and principal “weapon” with which to win the victory “in our struggle against the spirit of evil”.
Pope Benedict XVI, Ash Wednesday Homily, February 6, 2008
Practical ideas for Lent:
In imitation of Jesus:
The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Catholic Church
We are the Catholic Church:
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