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Transcript
00:01 – Speaker 1
Hello, this is a free preview of a minicast available exclusively on my Locals community at catholicexperiencelocalscom. I hope you enjoy it. Welcome members of the Catholic Experience here on Locals. I’m the Catholic Adventurer providing this to both free and paid members of my Locals community. Thank you very much for joining me.
00:22
I wanted to say a few things about praying in Latin. Should you pray in Latin? I’m going to talk about that just a little bit. This is going to be pretty short. First thing I want to point out is this is my very, very well-informed opinion. This is my opinion. This is just my opinion. Okay, Now, should you pray in Latin?
00:40
It’s becoming a little more common for people to pray in Latin these days, I think for various reasons which I’ll get into in a second. I also increasingly hear it said that praying in Latin makes a prayer more powerful or that it has a particularly stronger effect against demons. Mostly, I hear that from lay people who have heard it from Father Rippager. Father Rippager, if you don’t know, is a pretty popular exorcist. You can find him on YouTube and stuff like that. I’ve also heard from various other exorcists that this sometimes is the case. It’s sometimes the case that the rite, when prayed in Latin has a little bit more effect on the demonic sometimes, but not as a rule. And some even say that the language used in the rite of exorcism makes no difference to the efficacy whatsoever in their experience. So in my opinion, the jury is kind of out if we’re trying to see what is the rule. Is Latin absolutely more effective against the demonic? Is it absolutely not? Jury’s still out, if you ask me.
01:39
So why do people generally pray in Latin People? Usually, in my experience, they pray in Latin for various reasons. Either they perceive it to lend greater power to their prayer, or because they have an affinity for classic Catholic culture, or they just have a love for the Latin language. And some, let’s be frank, pray in Latin out of vanity, maybe believing that praying in Latin makes them more Catholic or more holy. For some people that’s just the case. Now, what do I do? I occasionally pray in Latin, and I’ve been doing so for decades, but I almost always say my usual prayers in English. I’ll get into why I pray that way, what my formula generally is and what I think my personal opinion, what I think other Catholics should do.
02:27
First, what is prayer? This is an important thing to consider when we ask the question should I be praying in Latin? Well, what is prayer in the first place? At the end of the day, prayer is the uplifting of our minds and hearts to God. That comes from the catechism. But let me drill down a little deeper on that Uplifting our minds and hearts to God.
02:44
Specifically, what we’re doing is we’re using our minds and our hearts, or emotions, to direct our wills to heaven. So, in the direction of our wills to heaven, our mind is there, our feelings or our hearts are there, but at the end of the day, we’re using our mind and our heart to direct our will to heaven. That’s really the ultimate object is directing our wills to the divine. Now, I often say that there’s a value to the human will that we don’t grasp. It has a value. It means something. It’s like currency in the divine economy. Why that is so, I don’t know. It’s just something I’ve always perceived in my experience and study of related subjects. I have always gotten this strong sense that human will has substantial value in the divine economy. So it’s uplifting our minds and hearts to God, it’s directing our wills to heaven or to the divine.
03:43
Prayer has efficacy, not because of our own power. It has efficacy first and foremost because of the cross. It has efficacy in the name of Jesus Christ and by the power of his blood right. But prayer then? So, in other words, prayer doesn’t come from a power that we have. Prayer has its power by its participation with the divine grace. Prayer is a response to grace.
04:07
At the end of the day, Prayer also may draw some efficacy because of the words we use. Why? Because words reflect the heart—what we have in our hearts. We’re saying with our words, and sometimes some words may have not more power in and of themselves, but they may more closely reflect what we intend to say to God. Because intent is very important. They may say more. Sometimes, when I pray, I feel something so strongly that I can’t put words to it and I ask Jesus to read my heart and hear the prayer that’s in my heart that I cannot speak. This mini cast is available to free as well as paid members, so if you’d like to hear the rest of it, please become a member of my locals community, catholicexperiencelocalscom. Thank you for listening.
