By Caroline Smith
Connecting with God through prayer can be a useful addition to everyday life and work, as attendees at a recent twilight retreat in Perth discovered.
The 2 June retreat, entitled ‘Lifestyle of Prayer’, brought together employees from the Archdiocese of Perth for an afternoon of contemplation, presented by Archdiocesan Director of Liturgy, Sister Kerry Willison RSM.
Sr Willison said the most important thing about prayer was its role in fostering and developing a relationship with God.
“As Christians, we believe that prayer is communicating with God,” she said.
“It is about building a relationship with God through the person of Jesus.
“With any relationship in our life, the way we come to know each other is through conversation – we speak and listen to each other.”
The retreat encouraged attendees to explore different ways of praying, including an ancient form of meditation called Lectio Divina in which participants use a scripture reading as inspiration for prayerful contemplation.
Sr Willison said the exercise highlighted the fact that communication with God can come in many different forms.
“There is no single right way to pray and prayer comes from the heart,” she said.
“Over a thousand times in the scriptures, we hear that prayer comes from the heart – just as the heart keeps us alive physically, so prayer from the heart, that deepest part of us, keeps us alive physically.”
She added that the retreat also encouraged people to communicate with God in a way that reflected on current Church focal points.
“The theme for the afternoon of reflection grew from the words of Pope Francis in the document, Misericordae Vultus,” Sr Willison said.
“He said, ‘In order to be capable of mercy, therefore, we must first of all dispose ourselves to listen to the Word of God’.
“There were reflections on the Year of Mercy throughout the afternoon linking the way of mercy as a way of life directly linked to the need to listen to the word of God and act on it.”