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Synod discussion questions

Discussion Questions for Week 1

Discussion

Discussion Questions for Week 1:
Prayer is a Personal Relationship with God

  1. The video teaching discusses what is prayer, and why pray.  Describe your prayer life at this moment in time.  How are you desiring to grow?
  2. St. Ignatius’ teaching on prayer and the spiritual life is particularly helpful because it is designed for the active life.  What are some of the obstacles in your active life that make it difficult to pray?  How might you overcome these obstacles?
  3. “Thanks solely to this encounter – or renewed encounter – with God’s love, which blossoms into an enriching friendship, we are liberated from our narrowness and self-absorption.  We become fully human when we become more than human, when we let God bring us beyond ourselves in order to attain the fullest truth of our being” (Pope Francis, Joy of the Gospel 8).  How have you encountered God’s love?  What does it mean to you to have a liberating encounter with God?
  4. Have you experienced God thirsting for you as Mother Teresa described in her letter?  If so, describe that experience.  If not, how might you open yourself to experience his thirst for you?
  5. Archbishop Hebda discussed how God speaks first, how God pursues you, and what he has to say is most important.  In this study we will be discussing in more detail how to learn to listen to God in prayer.  As you begin, how can you carve out time in the busyness of life to have the silence and the time to listen?
  6. St. Ignatius encourages us to pray with our imagination.  Fr. Timothy Gallagher, in his book Meditation and Contemplation, says, “In this manner of praying, St. Ignatius tells us, we imaginatively see the persons in the Bible passage, we hear the words they speak, and we observe the actions they accomplish in the event.”  Have you prayed this way before?  If you have, describe a time when you imagined yourself in a scene from the Bible.  What thoughts, feelings, and desires arose in that experience?  (Note: if you haven’t actively prayed this way before, the Prayer Companion with the guided reflection will help you with this type of active prayer.)