Not all words are empty<\/h2>\n
The problem with the \u201cGentile\u201d way of praying is not<\/em> that they use words, or even a lot of them. The problem is that<\/p>\n We know the problem with \u201cempty words\u201d isn\u2019t the words, because Jesus goes on to give his disciples a liturgy of words to guide their prayers (what we commonly call \u201cThe Lord\u2019s Prayer\u201d today). Any liturgy can become “empty words”, of course, but that\u2019s not necessarily the fault of the liturgy. Liturgy itself is not empty or full, alive or dead. That\u2019s a category mistake. Liturgy can be good<\/em> or bad<\/em>, but it\u2019s the person praying that determines whether the words are “empty” or not.<\/p>\n By giving us actual words to pray, Jesus makes prayer into something we can actually do<\/em>, even if we don\u2019t know the ins and outs of how it \u201cworks,\u201d or its metaphysical underpinnings. Because Jesus said, \u201cWhen you pray, say\u2026\u201d, we can just pray<\/em>. And in praying the prayer Jesus taught us, we are trusting that, as we say these particular words, we will be learning to pray.<\/p>\n I find a lot of freedom in this, because I feel like I have more questions about prayer now than I did when I first started praying. It\u2019s helpful for me to know that my questions can remain unresolved even while I say my prayers, and that in saying my prayers I am participating in a mystery that I will never fully comprehend anyway.<\/p>\n One of the things Jesus taught his disciples about prayer is that it\u2019s not about throwing a pile of words toward heaven and hoping some of them stick. Jesus taught his disciples saying, “When you pray, don\u2019t pour out a flood of empty words, as the Gentiles do. They think that by saying many words…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":30383,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
When you pray, say…<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/gravitycommons.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/prayer-empty-chapel.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"