Prayer and Passion… are firmly centered in the heart
Well, let’s take a look at this quote from Mooney “prayer
seems firmly centered in the heart”. The heart both physically and spiritually
are the core of the soul and beings. It gives life and takes life. So how does
prayer and passion fit into this context: “prayer belongs to the life of the
heart, to the life of the passions and the sufferings and joys of mood and
emotion”. So prayer and passions are firmly centered in the heart.
In Phenomenology of Prayer, Edward Mooney is helping us
understand how we become what we pray. From my understanding of what he has
written the inwardness of prayer, helps to refine our passions thusly what we
become or as Mooney puts it “… all that we become, is a matter of the incoming
and outgoing of phases of passion”.
Mooney connects passion and prayer in the sense that the two
cannot exist without the other. Prayer comes from our passions, I believe. When
we pray for things from the heart it is because in some way a passion has
surged to the surface. I certainly don’t pray for things that I am not
passionate about and that passion can be both positive and negative (passionate
anger, passionate love). And passion comes from our prayers. Oftentimes I find
myself praying for a passion to pray or a passion to do go or a passion for
God. So needless to say passion and prayer go hand-in-hand.
So is prayer dead without passion? No. Is passion irrelevant
without prayer? No. I think both are critical in any journey, prayer, place of
life. There must be passion and prayer coexisting in life to connect with the
wholly other and become who we are. Think about where you are right now? Did
you get here because of lack of passion or an intense passion? If you are
spiritual did you get here without prayer and passion? Think about it. The two
must correlate in some way.
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