Prayer
Prayer, in religion, both a person's act of communion
with God, or any other object of worship, and the
words used. It is the natural result of a person's
belief in God. Prayer may be individual or group,
formal or spontaneous, silent or spoken. In one
or more forms, it is at the center of worship. The
inseparable accompaniment of sacrifice
in most primitive religions, prayer occupied a central
position in Jewish religion from earliest days.
The Temple was "a house of prayer" (see Isaiah 56:7)
and the Psalms, or Psalter, became the prayer of
liturgy of the Temple and the synagogue and formed
the substance of prayers in early Christianity.
Christian
prayer normally includes invocation,
praise, thanksgiving, petition (for oneself and
others), confession, and appeal for forgiveness.
It follows the pattern of the prayer known as the
Lord's Prayer (Latin Paternoster) given by Jesus
Christ to his disciples (see Matthew 6:9-13; Luke
11:2-4).
Prayer
forms of corporate worship vary from the highly
liturgical formalized prayers of the Divine Office
in the Roman Catholic church and the Book of Common
Prayer of the Church of England and other Anglican
churches, through the extemporaneous spoken prayers
of nonliturgical services, to the silent prayer
of a Friends' Meeting.
In
its narrowest sense, prayer is understood as spiritual
communion for the sake of requesting something of
a deity. In its broadest sense, prayer is any ritual
form designed to bring one into closer relation
to whatever one believes to be the ultimate. In
this sense, both the dance ceremonials of the Native
American and the meditation of the Buddhist seeking
self-perfection are forms of prayer. At the highest
level, sacrifice is absorbed into prayer in the
sacrificial offering of self to God through total
commitment.
Aids
to prayer, evolved through the centuries, include prayer beads,
which enable a worshiper to count the prayers he or she is
praying; the prayer wheel, a cylindrical box containing written
prayers believed to become effective as the box is revolved
on its axis, used primarily by Tibetan Buddhists; and the
prayer rug, used by Muslims.
"Prayer," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia
2001 http://encarta.msn.com
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