Sydney, Australia, Jul 30, 2010 / 02:02 am
Prayer is more than talking to God, but more specifically the opening of our heart and mind to God, Cardinal George Pell wrote in a reflection on prayer for his weekly newspaper column.
In an essay in The Sunday Telegraph of Sydney, the cardinal emphasized that prayer “is not someone talking to himself.” While most people think of prayer as “talking to God,” Cardinal Pell noted that words can be “a cover or a distraction, while our mind races along elsewhere.”
“More accurately prayer is opening our heart and mind to God, that Mystery of Love, Creator of the universe, who exists outside space and time,” wrote the Archbishop of Sydney.
He went on to show how people can encounter God in “the strangest ways,” recounting how a woman without any religious allegiance told him she sometimes goes to Sydney’s St. Mary’s Cathedral simply to sit quietly.