The St Mary Magdalen School of Prayer

Prayer is the beating heart of all we do here at St Mary Magdalen’s. This is reflected most clearly in our commitment to offering the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer throughout the week, and also the Mass at least once each day, which is the Church’s highest form of prayer.

The form of prayer most familiar to most of us is intercessory prayer, in which we make our petitions before God. This is certainly a legitimate form of prayer, as our actual needs and desires are an important part of our spiritual lives, and it is quite right for us to lay these honestly before God. However, what prayer is—what it is in its nature, its essence—is a participation in the loving relationship between the Father and Son in the Holy Spirit, which is the life of the Holy Trinity.

And yet, this description of prayer can see so distant from our actual experience of prayer, whether in church or at home or elsewhere. People have always struggled to pray. Indeed, in our thinking about and engaging in prayer, we could do much worse than to return to St Paul on this matter: Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes[a] with groanings too deep for words. (Romans 8.26).

The School of Prayer is a place where we can all learn to pray together, and practice together this sharing in the Love who is God.