3.1- “In spirit and truth” (prayer educates)

Prayer educates, because prayer means staying before the truth of God in the truth of oneself. Nothing like oration is able to bring to the surface what we are in the often dark depths of ourselves, and not only because we have the certainty of being always accepted and understood by a merciful God, but because contact with the divine Truth necessarily calls forth human truth. Each prayer has this evocative, truth-baring power; otherwise it is not prayer, nor is it certainly oration which educates in an OF perspective. The problem, then, of OF is not how much one prays or if he is faithful, as they say, to his pious practices, but the truth-baring quality of one’s standing before God, his praying in “spirit and truth”.

This truth-baring dimension has two classic sides: one which investigates the present/actual ego, especially to pick up its negative and immature component; the other, instead, tries to scrutinize the possibilities of the ideal ego, what the ego is called to be. The first side recalls the penitential aspect of prayer; the second, the more mystical and contemplative. Together they reveal the truth of the praying person, his interweaving of good and evil, and therefore also the paths of his continual growth.