Vatican Discloses Four Forms of Prayer to Express the Church’s Synodal Life
Sr. Jecinter Antoinette Okoth, FSSA
As Vatican stresses the significance of prayer throughout the process of synod which commenced with consultation of the people of God, an official has highlighted four various forms of prayer that can be used for the synod process which is “an event of prayer and listening that involves not only the members of the Synodal Assembly, but every baptized person and every particular Church.”
In his message to the bishops in various conferences across the globe, the General Secretary of the XIV Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, Mario Cardinal Grech said that the first form of prayer is listening. He referenced Pope Francis’ message concerning listening as prayer saying, “The Synod then offers us the opportunity to become a listening Church, to break out of our routine and pause from our pastoral concerns in order to stop and listen.”
“The first step in prayer is listening to the Word of God, listening to the Spirit. Therefore, the first contribution of every baptized person to the unfolding of the Synod Assembly will be listening to the Word of God and the Spirit in the conviction that the voice of the Spirit is the sine qua non for ecclesial discernment,” the Cardinal stated in his message to the Prelates.
The second form of prayer the Cardinal disclosed, is adoration. “Listening, then, must be followed by adoring silence in awe for what God is saying to his Church and for what the Spirit arouses in the Church today,” reads part of the Vatican message adding that, “The synodal path traversed so far leads us to wonder and awe, to the conversion of our gaze from the sadness of resignation to the joyful mission of those who have discovered the presence of the Risen One in their midst.”
Concerning adoration, the Vatican official echoed the Pope’s message which he said some time back that, “Today we miss the prayer of adoration; so many people have lost not only the habit but also the very notion of what it means to worship God.”
The third form of prayer to express the Church’s synodal life is the intercessions which Cardinal Grech encourages the faithful to pray saying that, “We must believe in the efficacy of intercessory prayer, which is not about bending God’s will to ours but rather, asking the Lord to enlighten our hearts with the power of his life-giving Spirit so that we might discern and do his will.”
In this case, to intercede for the Synod Assembly, the delegates and the Holy Father, is to engage the highest form of participation.
Thanksgiving is yet another form of prayer that the people of God are encouraged to use as the prayer recognizes the primacy of God’s action and grace in all works and in the life of the Christian community. According to Cardinal Grech, reinforcing Pope Francis words, “The prayer of thanksgiving always begins from the recognition that grace precedes us.”
At the same time, he added, “The prayer of thanksgiving is a true “therapy” that moves us from our withdrawal into ourselves to the openness that is able to discover all that God continues to work in his Church.”
The General Secretary of the XIV Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops acknowledged that with the prayer of listening, adoration, intercession and thanksgiving, the whole ecclesial community will be present, in the power of the Spirit, at the Synodal Assembly as an event that concerns all the baptized.
