Embodied Prayer
April 1, 2014 by Susan Stabile
The Christian faith is an incarnational faith. We believe God becomes human in Jesus Christ. We express believe in the resurrection of the body. That tells us that there is significance in our physical being, not merely our spiritual being.
A friend forwarded to me a Lenten reflection by Fr. Robert Barron titled Why Your Body Matters for Prayer. In it Fr. Barron provides what strikes me as good advice:
Christian prayer is embodied prayer. In C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letterswe discovered an experienced devil giving lessons to a young temptor. At one point, the veteran orders his young charge to encourage his ‘client,’ a budding Christian, to envision prayer as something very ‘interior’ and ‘mystical,’ having little to do with posture or the position of the body. He wants the poor Christian to think that whether he stands, slouches, sits, or kneels is irrelevant to the quality of his communication with God. This, of course, is the Cartesian voice, the belief that our bodies and souls are independent and have little to do with each other.Read More
