Dominican Prayer Essay

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Dominican Prayer by Fabian Parmisano, O.P. Holy Name Province, Oakland, CA Practiced and preached in our western world today are many different methods of prayer and meditation from a variety of religious and non-religious traditions. One has only to think of such oriental imports as Zen, Yoga, Aikido, Hindu and Buddhist chant; or turn to the secularized adaptations of these like transcendental meditation, mind control, Arica, body reading, physical and mental message; or recall the more familiar (and so less known) forms of Christian prayer: liturgical worship, the rosary, Ignatian spiritual exercises, Benedictine, Carmelite, Carthusian, Trappist, Franciscan modes of contemplation - all still alive and well enough among us; or consider the free, easy, spontaneous approach to prayer promoted and popularized in and through the Christian charismatic renewal. For those who have eyes that see and ears that hear, there is invitation and method aplenty to move beyond our prevailing stifling materialism into the lighter, fresher world of the spirit. St. Dominic and His Eucharistic Orientation Dominicans, too, have their way of prayer which they have inherited from their founder. St. Dominic was born into an ancient tradition of prayer, that of the Eucharist. Early in life he became a Canon Regular, whose chief duty and joy it was to offer the Eucharistic sacrifice and pray the liturgy that led up to and flowed from it. True, this was the Church's public worship, but it became Dominic's private prayer as well in that he became personally absorbed in it and allowed it to shape his solitary contemplative prayer. For him the Eucharist was Christ's last and perfect prayer to his Father for the healing of mankind. Dominic's concern was to say "yes" to it, become one with it, and pattern all his individual prayer upon it. Dominic looked to Christ in his sacrificial act of
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