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:
“So that the reverence and the gaiety
May not be forgotten in later experience,
In the bored habituation, the fatigue, the tedium,
The awareness of death, the consciousness of failure,
Or in the piety of the convert
Which may be tainted with a self-conceit....”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Thus one can observe that those who proclaim piety as their goal and purpose usually turn into hypocrites.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“Mothers who have little sense of their own minds and voices are unable to imagine such capacities in their children. Not being fully aware of the power of words for communicating meaning, they expect their children to know what is on their minds without the benefit of words. These parents do not tell their children what they mean by “good” much less why. Nor do they ask the children to explain themselves.”
—Mary Field Belenky (20th century)