"We prayed the Office, the clerics like other clerics, and the laics saying their Our Fathers. And we most willingly lived in abandoned churches. And we were without learning and subject to all." --The Testament of St. Francis"Saying Our Fathers" was to recite the Lord's prayer. This prayer was given to us by Jesus as a model of how we are to pray, but it, like anything we memorize, can be recited by rote without any thought to its meaning. This is why I like to write out special passages that speak to me. Because I have to pay attention to what I'm reading in order to write it, I see it more clearly. The act of memorizing can do the same for me. I did not understand Shakespeare until I had to memorize a passage for an acting class I was taking. The problem comes when we become so familiar with the words we can recite them without thinking about them! What I need to do is write out the Lord's prayer each morning, pausing after each phrase to let it soak in so that it becomes a real prayer and not just a recitation.
