Empowerment of the People

"When we learn to enjoy and trust the presence of God, we will naturally

turn to that presence in prayer. When the church is no longer teaching

the people how to pray, we could almost say it will have lost its reason

for existence. Prayer is the ultimate empowerment of the people of God,

and that may be why we clerics prefer laws and guilt, though they often

disempower us and make us live in insufficiency and doubt. Prayer,

however, gives us a sense of abundance and connectedness.



An overemphasis on social prayer (i.e. attendance at services where the

clergy happen to be in charge) has left many of our people passive,

without a personal prayer life and comfortable with “handed-down

religion” instead of first-hand experience. We don’t do God any

favors by keeping the people passive and unaware."



-Richard Rohr