Pope Francis defended the practice of vocal prayer as the surest means of dialogue with God, a means that is always available to us, and “as necessary as manual labour.”
Continuing his catechesis on prayer at the weekly General Audience on Wednesday, the Pope said that prayer-in-words – vocal recitation – is always the first form of human prayer, saying, “The lips always move first.”
He contrasted spoken prayer with the feelings and interior motions that sometimes accompany prayer. Feelings, Pope Francis said, “however noble, are always uncertain: they come and go, they leave us and then return again.” Interior consolation, “the graces of prayer,” are similarly unpredictable: “at times consolations abound, but on the darkest days they seem to evaporate completely. The prayer of the heart is mysterious, and at times lacking.”
