During Lent, prayer takes on even significance as Catholics reflect on Jesus’ 40 days of prayer and fasting in the desert. Lenten prayer tends to be deeper and more reflective.
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 or Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.
Prayer is one of the disciplines that make up the three pillars of Lent, along with fasting and almsgiving.
P.R.A.Y:
Praying through a lens of love:
Prayer presupposes an effort, a fight against ourselves and the wiles of the Tempter. The battle of prayer is inseparable from the necessary “spiritual battle” to act habitually according to the Spirit of Christ: We pray as we live, because we live as we pray.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2752
Focusing on the big picture:
A time for self-examination:
Through recollection and silent prayer, hope is given to us as inspiration and interior light, illuminating the challenges and choices we face in our mission. Hence the need to pray and, in secret, to encounter the Father of tender love. To experience Lent in hope entails growing in the realization that, in Jesus Christ, we are witnesses of new times, in which God is “making all things new”. It means receiving the hope of Christ, who gave his life on the cross and was raised by God on the third day, and always being “prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls [us] to account for the hope that is in [us]”
Pope Francis, Message for Lent, 2021
Raising the mind and heart to God:
Listening to God:
“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
Prayer brings spirituallity to our Lenten practices:
Establish a habit of prayer:
The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Catholic Church
The Armenian Catholic Church in the Holy Land:
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