Contemplative Prayer

In Father Mangini’s homily from June 27, 2021, Touch the Light of Christ: A Healing Meditation, he provides a beautiful example of contemplative prayer.

In his talk on contemplative prayer at the January 2020 Women’s Christian Fellowship Retreat of St. Bonaventure Church, Fr. Mangini referred to the following prayer as the simplest way to pray contemplatively, repeated, meditated on for 20 minutes.

He also provided some background articles and examples on contemplative prayer:

• “Contemplation Highest Form of Prayer, Jesuit Says” by Religious News Service.  Friday, July 11, 1975.  Page 8
• “Prayer: A Personal Response to God’s Presence” by Father Armand Nigro. 1975
• “Christ has no body on earth but yours” (Soul Seeing) by Mark Etling.  National Catholic Reporter.  January 24-February 6, 2020

Editor’s Note: Fr. Mangini introduced me to contemplative prayer when I came to him for guidance on living my life amidst complicated family of origin dynamics. He suggested that I try the following prayer to meditate on daily for 20-30 minutes. I learned later that this was a variation of the Jesus Prayer (see above). I find this meditation to be helpful in untangling myself from codependent tendencies and it is also a manifestation of how I would like my day to go.