Br Richard “The Church needs to look at the way it catechises. That we catechise not just by giving information, but by leading people into the experience of prayer and then also by making sure that people know the richness and the depth of our own prayer tradition.” Br Richard Hendrick OFM Cap said speaking to The Irish Catholic in the wake of the launch of his new book Calming the Storms: Meditation as a Path to Inner Peace and Happiness.
He also pointed that prayer could take away a lot of the stress of modern life. “I think when we fill our life with too many distractions, and we don’t have reflective space… or quiet time, our bodies and our minds just find it difficult to recover. So that’s one of the things that prayer gives: reflective space and quiet and calm in which we can reset and begin again.”
Br Richard said that while some practices in our daily lives have the potential to be spiritual, they might be missing one of the greatest resources of the Catholic tradition, “I would also say they’re missing something, which is the depth of a connection that is possible when we come to prayer because prayer of all kinds, whether it’s praise or petition or the meditative forms of prayer, involves primarily trusting in God. And when we come to trust in God, we realise that no matter what is going on, we are held in in God’s loving hands, and that allows us to begin to live our life from a position of fundamental trust.”
“I think a huge number of people are very aware of this, but I think people find it difficult to talk about it because we have lost the language of faith, and we lose our ability to speak about these kinds of practises,” concluded Br Richard.