It was quite a funny scene: a dozen or so university students laid flat out on the floor one moment, then repeating genuflecting the next. An unsuspecting observer might have guessed this was an aerobics class. In fact, we were doing a workshop on Catholic prayer.
I was taking the students through the Nine Ways of Prayer, a 13th-century text describing the bodily postures St Dominic adopted to express a whole range of mental prayers: humility, supplication, adoration, praise. I wanted the students to learn – through experience – that Catholic prayer has to be incarnational.
