Pauca Verba is Latin for A Few Words.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Saint Dominic's Seventh Way of Prayer



Here St. Dominic teaches us to pray, standing straight, with our whole body reaching with folded or joined hands raised to heaven - with eyes heavenward as well.

Psalm 28 "Hear O God, the voice of my prayer - when I lift up my hands in your holy temple."

These postures are not liturgical, as if to be practiced in Church, but in our own room, with the door shut, as Jesus prescribed. Reaching, reaching! Remember when we were small: "Rise and shine, reach for the sun." Reaching to know God. Reaching to experience God. Reaching to love God. 

When I was a boy in the early 60's I was told that as Catholics there was nothing to learn from anyone else. "Cross the street if you are coming up on a Protestant Church." Only we had all truth and everyone else lived in heretical error or at best some kind of insufficiency. Most Catholics have put that away by now. The Dali Lama is the spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism. He teaches:
"The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, and lovers of all kinds."
Maybe in St. Dominic's 7th prayer-posture we can stretch and reach after this!