PRAYER

Moments Of Prayer



Moments Of Prayer

Introduction

The formative role of religion in both public and private life in many locations around the globe is no longer in doubt. Despite around the world people follow various religions but they all believe in god and share the same feeling. To give a background understanding of moments of prayer, let me briefly define that how I understand pastoral counselling, pastoral care, pastoral ministry and pastoral theology. Pastoral counselling is a focused, highly structured act or series of acts of spiritually motivated caring that require a high skill level and a significant strategy; pastoral care, although informed by the insights from pastoral counselling, is an act or number of acts of spiritually motivated caring that can take place at anytime and anywhere; pastoral ministry is the work of general professional church ministry informed by the insights of pastoral care and counselling and manifested in spiritually motivated acts of caring. Pastoral theology makes theological statements about pastoral counselling, pastoral care and pastoral ministry (Bell, J. et.al, p.13).

Discussion

I made a pastoral visit where the bishop visited each and every one of its parishes, celebrated Mass in each of them and found Pastoral councils of each reality of parish sacramental books reviewed and the financial accounts of each parish. In addition to this, activity was present in the vicariate youth and children visited the sick, made silent prayer, this is what pastoral visit is (Wright, p.20).

Moments of prayer

I guess I'd always thought of wind as having a sound of its own, a sort of vague whooshing sound. Then, about some time ago, I made a pastoral visit, where I just sat and felt a crisp breeze brush across my face. As I drank in the panoramic view, the stillness, the grandeur, suddenly I was struck by the fact that what registered as "wind" was actually the sound of hundreds of aspen leaves brushing against one another, hundreds, maybe thousands, of individual, insignificant points of contact. Put them together and what you hear is wind.

Most days I move through countless interchanges with other people. One contact taken alone doesn't seem very significant. But what if there is a wind of sorts, blowing through our lives, bringing us, moment by moment, into graceful contact with one another? Jesus once compared wind to the Spirit of God: "You hear it rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or where it's headed next" (John 3:7, 8, Eugene Peterson, "The Message"). This Spirit, like a gentle breeze, moves thought, clearing away dust and clutter such as fear, resentment, and apathy, and stirring us to action. It brings us into contact -- often gently, sometimes momentously -- with the world around us.

As I listened to the wind blowing through those leaves, it occurred to me that each leaf is connected to the tree by a single, slender stem. Each moves independently, yet together they create a delicate or mighty rhythm that registers the presence of ...