Piety of Children
An important consequence of divine filiation is the prayer of Christians as children of God. Prayer is at the center of the life of Christ, the Son of God. Benedict XVI says that the person of Jesus is prayer. The "fundamental insight" of the Sermon of the Mount is, he says, "that man can be understood only in the light of God, and that his life is made righteous only when he lives it in relation to God." Thus, Jesus, after praying and after being asked by the disciples how to pray, teaches the Our Father, a prayer which aims to "configure to the image of the Son," and trains him in the "inner attitude of Jesus."
"Contemplative prayer is the prayer of the child of God, of the forgiven sinner who agrees to welcome the love by which he is loved and who wants to respond to it by loving even more." (CCC 2712 )
Read more about this topic: Divine Filiation
Famous quotes containing the words piety of, piety and/or children:
“The piety of the Hebrew prophets purges their grossness. The circumcision is an example of the power of poetry to raise the low and offensive.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Is it any pleasure to the Almighty if you are righteous, or is it gain to him if you make your ways blameless? Is it for your piety that he reproves you, and enters into judgment with you?”
—Bible: Hebrew, Job 22:3-4.
“Parents do not give up their children to strangers lightly. They wait in uncertain anticipation for an expression of awareness and interest in their children that is as genuine as their own. They are subject to ambivalent feelings of trust and competitiveness toward a teacher their child loves and to feelings of resentment and anger when their child suffers at her hands. They place high hopes in their children and struggle with themselves to cope with their children’s failures.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)