PRAYER The addressing and petitioning of God. Prayer to a god or gods is a feature of many, if not all, religions, but here attention will be restricted to the biblical teaching and some of its implications. A classic definition of Christian prayer is “an offering up of our desires unto God, for things agreeable to his will, in the name of Christ, with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgment of his mercies” (Westminster Shorter Catechism). Christian prayer is the end product of a long process of change and development in God’s relation to people, as a survey of the biblical data shows.

meditation (μελετή, meditatio) has been used in a variety of different senses in the Christian tradition: (1) the recitation or memorizing of Scriptural texts (this is the predominant sense in early monastic literature, but later fell into disuse); (2) keeping various religious truths or inspirational thoughts in mind during the day (sometimes with different thoughts being recommended for different periods of the day); (3) thinking about things, whether the emphasis is on intellectual rigour, acuteness of perception, or devotional fervour (the object of such meditation might be Scripture, doctrine, life, the world, or almost anything); (4) the application of the mind and often the imagination to the truths of the faith and esp. to episodes in the life of Christ, with a view to stirring an intense affective response (this tends to become a more or less formal exercise). Meditation in all these senses is easily associated with *prayer, because some of the favourite biblical texts are themselves prayers, and thinking about Christian truth sharpens a desire for God’s gifts, and thinking about life reveals man’s need of God; in sense (4) meditation came in due course to be regarded as part of prayer and so it could be integrated into various methods of prayer. Following St *Teresa of Ávila and St *John of the Cross, many writers have posited a sharp distinction between meditation (in sense (4)) and *contemplation. In modern times various forms of meditation have been adopted or adapted from Eastern non-Christian religions, often involving the abandonment of deliberate thought rather than its focusing on a specific religious object.