praying with the beads

I guess one of the problems that some people with an evangelical background have to this way of praying is the repetition of prayer phrases. It smacks of flouting Jesus's injunction against piling up empty phrases ["When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him." ].

I think some care is needed with what Jesus is on about here, though. He has in view, it seems, practices where God -whichever god gentiles were conceiving of- is assailed by a torrent of eloquence, promises, bargaining and so on designed to persuade that god[dess] to grant the will of the petitioner. In the passage in Matthew 6 we see Jesus is first of all denying the implicit view of deity in that practice in favour of one who is caring and attentive to our needs, thus undercutting all the attention-getting practices and cajoling. What Jesus is actually discouraging here is the idea that we say stuff to get Godde's attention or to persuade God to act according to our desires and will.

These aims are not in view when using repeating phrases in rosary and meditative prayer. Usually the point of repeating phrases in meditative contexts is to occupy the linguistically related parts of the mind-brain in order to allow and encourage other parts of the mind to work more fully and be engaged in relating to and with God and the things of God. There is another point which I will deal with in a later posting [perhaps the next].

Anyway, Jesus's words here do not disallow repeating phrases in meditation. Unless of course the meditator is hoping that the mere repetition will force God to grant a meditative highlight or some kind of reward for the effort. That's not how it works!
Next bit...
Matthew 6.7+8]
abbeynous.schtuff.com - prayerbeads