Friday, August 16, 2013

QUOTATION: Formal Prayers

Blessed John Henry NewmanForms of prayer are necessary to guard us against the irreverence of wandering thoughts. If we pray without set words (read or remembered), our minds will stray from the subject; other thoughts will cross us, and we shall pursue them; we shall lose sight of His presence whom we are addressing. This wandering of mind is in good measure prevented, under God's blessing, by Forms of prayer. Thus a chief use of them is that of fixing the attention.

--Blessed John Henry Newman, “Forms of Private Prayer”, Parochial and Plain Sermons, Volume 1.