Prayerfully Yours: Qualityprayer for Qualitylife

Benjamin Vima

yan, 2012 · Trafford Publishing

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The truth on the Power of Prayer is Biblical, historical and experiential. Every religion recognizes it; every human that needs support to rise up and walk, to think positively and live fruitfully will testify to the usefulness of prayer. The Biblical testimony on the efficacy of prayer is: As Gods Word will not return to Him void but shall achieve the end for which He sent it (Is. 55: 11), so the prayer of the lowly does not rest till it reaches its goal. (Sir. 35: 17-18) The author of this book, having been a prey of such powerful tool in the Vineyard of the Lord, shares his personal and experiential thoughts and convictions about prayer. According to him only through prayer humans can build up and manage a qualitylife as the disciples of Jesus. Through this book he shares with readers some of his findings of the method of qualityprayer which is simple but productive, containing little nuance but with admiration of existing Traditions, and exclusive with its unique approach to prayer but inclusive of all possible saints efforts over the centuries in praying fruitfully. The author compares qualityprayer-process to the walking through inside portions of a Catholic Church building. He tries to walk with us through the four phases of qualityprayer and make us perceive clearly our actions and Gods own as well, at each phase. The book asserts that though prayer is not a resource and support in the natural process of human development, it is by all means an indispensable source and basis for developing a matured Christian personality. However, mere formal or traditional prayer would do no good in this regard. It would help keeping up our status quo. It will not contribute much to our growth of Christian personality. Even the prayer of the intellect, namely prayerful meditation or reflection would not do that much help, as it should. This kind of prayer would meet its immature death as I had gone through sometime back. Once the intellect gets more truths and facts about life, God, religion and universe it would surely put a full stop to any kind of prayer. But if the same prayer is experiential and personal, the author writes, if it is intensively connecting the soul to its God, the Ground of being, the Beyond of everything, if it accelerates the process of intimacy between the human and the Divine, then surely prayer becomes the primary source of change, growth and development in human personality and through him/her influences the entire universe. This is what happened in Jesus and so in His disciples and godly people of today. I dare to name this kind of prayer as QualityPrayer.

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Benjamin A. Vima is a diocesan priest for 40 years, having been born, bred, trained and ordained in India, now working as international priest in USA. He is incardinated to the Diocese of Tulsa, Oklahoma. He had his philosophical and theological studies in India; he holds two Masters in both Religious and Theater Communication from the Loyola University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago. He too underwent D. Min program at Oral Roberts University, Tulsa. Besides serving as pastor in different parishes both in India and USA, he was the founder and the first executive director of Sathangai, an Archdiocesan Center for Catholic Communications in Madurai, South India. He is a Liturgical and Social Music composer and publisher. He has produced and published many volumes of Tamil Liturgical hymns under the title: “Isaithen.” ‘A PEOPLE’S THEATRE: For Community development in Tamilnadu, India’ was his first book to be used as a guide for all development theatre workers in India. Besides many booklets of his homilies, he has published recently three books, “My Dear Ecclesia”-a compilation of his Letters for Parish Weekly bulletins; “SONDAY SONRISE”-homilies for Sundays and Solemnities for Years ABC; and “DAILY DOSE for Christian Survival”-Daily Scriptural Meditation and Spiritual Medication. He has composed and released also a music album of Catholic Masses for English-speaking congregations. At present he serves as pastor at Sacred Heart Church parish, Skiatook, Oklahoma, USA.