Prayer

At the close of the Great Jubilee of the year 2000 on January 6th 2001 (the Solemnity of Epiphany), John Paul II issued his Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte: At the Beginning of the Third Millenium. This is a beautiful document in which the Holy Father seeks to turn the Church's attention toward the new millennium, after having celebrated the Great Jubilee of Jesus' birth.

Last spring the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano published a series of reflections on different aspects of the Letter, and one of them is entitled The Art of Trinitarian Prayer, and it bases itself on what JPII says about prayer in the Letter and derives other thoughts therefrom. Here is one passage from this article:

All Christians, in order not to be mediocre, "Christians at risk", because they are not rooted in a strong and personal communion with God, are called in these times to be persons of prayer, friends of Christ, Christians who are adults in faith and in love. Christian prayer is not only a salutary antidote to the excesses and deviations of the return to the sacred, to the surrogates of alternative religious proposals, but is food for the soul and a source of life.

I would warmly recommend that anyone interested in growing in their prayer life and their understanding of prayer read this reflection.