About

Grab a moment of tranquility and to use it look at the world with new eyes.

Pray the News, an Internet-based service that provides an opportunity to see the news with fresh eyes. Seeing the world with different eyes is key to Praying the News.

Each Monday, Pray the News highlights a single news item, topical in the main-stream media. In addition it adds two reflections and a scripture passage, and invites the reader to mull over them.

Pray the news is a spring-board for prayer and a chance to dialogue between the world we live in and our private world.

Praying
Anyone who can breathe can pray – but like other natural talents praying can be developed with practice and technique There are books and books written about how to pray but there is one trick and four movements that are common to all prayer practices. The trick is in finding some way to quiet the mind; the movements are:

• Meditation – thinking – reflecting on something
• Contemplation – beholding – holding something in consciousness without thought
• Conversation – communicating- speaking and listening
• Communion – being- awareness of God’s presence

In any given prayer the movements flow back and forth into each other and the time spent in each of them can vary from seconds to minutes, and in rare cases even hours.

Some techniques for reflecting on the news item are provided. They are for people who live busy lives and who may find it hard to find the time to pray. They are not intended to replace other ways of praying; however they have the advantage that they can be used any time any place anywhere and for a little or as long as time permits

Act
The usefulness of a prayer cannot be judged on how you feel at the time but on what difference it makes to the way you live. Effective prayer leads to changed attitudes and to action. One thing you could do is to join the online community and share the fruit of your reflections in the forum. While a good argument is often helpful and invigorating, this particular forum is not a place for it. The ethos that characterises it is expressed well in the words of one of the early Christian Fathers, Augustine of Hippo.

“Let us together, you and I, lay aside all arrogance. Let neither of us pretend to have found the truth. Let us seek it as something unknown to both of us. Then we may seek it with love and sincerity when neither of us has neither the rashness nor presumption to believe that they already possesses it. And if I am asking too much of you, allow me to listen to you ,at least to talk with you as I do with beings whom, for my part, I do not pretend to understand fully.”

Pray the News is an initiative of the Society of Mary spirituality ministry, based at 78 Hobson St, Thorndon Wellington, New Zealand.