English (2): Introduction profound prayer

Il Libro: “Introduction Profound Prayer”, Mariano Ballester SJ.

Lo studio assimilativo

The human being has two aspects in his life to communicate with God. In Paul Claudel, there are animus and anima. The Animus and anima are two aspects, or dimensions of the human being. The two of them dwell in the same house and they would be enormously happy if they understood and love each other. Anima has had the right to speak as freely as she wished while animus listened to her ecstatically. The authentic integration of human being ought to take into account in equal measure both animus and anima.

 The mode of prayer is not only about one thing but we will call “profound prayer”. There are five aspects and they live together in all stages and most situations oh human life. The first one is prayer. Profound prayer tends above all to elevate us toward God. Prayer needs to become more radical, more absolute and more unity so that the prayer can ascent to God. The second aspect is profundity. In profundity, one seeks to elevate oneself by beginning from the most intimate roots of one’s being. It is from the particular dimension proper to anima.

The following aspect is integration. The profound prayer intends to integrate the person. When one’s openness to God is more complete, one will have found the art of living and sharing with the others about one’s encounter with God. That is way, it’s necessary to make integrate harmoniously all the aspects oh the human personality. The other aspect is experience. Many times this type of experience reaches the limits of human experience. But, we must not just to express that successful but assimilate and live it.

The last aspect is love. Love is very important for our prayer. We must keep our capacities of love increase to purifying and elevating itself. One of the most beautiful characteristics of this love is its universality. Sensing one-self united with the Supreme Being, with the One who is. This is a loving realization of the ideal proposed  by the Christian prayer par excellence: Thy kingdom come.

Lo studio creativo

Prayer is always most important for our life. The method of prayer for human being today is not same with the ancient time. There are so many ways to communicate with God. Every people have the different way to pray. So, what is the true prayer? How to pray well? We read this book because it suggests us how to pray. It’s not just about one thing that is prayer, but it contains many things so that we call that “profound prayer”. After read this book, we will know what prayer is. And we can answer many questions about prayer daily life.

One definition of prayer is ascent to God and this ascent can start from many different levels, because not every way of prayer is equal in depth. In Introduction to Profound Prayer Father Ballester contends that one aspect of profound prayer is that the dynamism of this ascent, this elevation, is infinite in breadth, length, height, and depth. With profound prayer, then, one seeks to elevate oneself toward God by beginning from the most intimate roots of one's being: the richest, deepest, most profound part of the person.

The three characteristics of profound prayer are its tendency to elevate us towards God, its profundity or depth, and its aim of integrating the whole person. Profound prayer is not a common prayer; this book is for those who feel drawn to deepen and unify their personal prayer. Thus, in Introduction to Profound Prayer Father Ballester considers the whole human being-body and spirit, social and individual dimensions, contemplation and action, and manifest and latent faculties.