Praying with our Imagination

Our imagination is God's gift for our enjoyment and to enhance our creativity and appreciation of the greatness of God’s creation. It is possible for us to pray using our imagination. This type of prayer is also known as contemplation, contemplative prayer, “imaginative prayer,” or Ignatian prayer. While Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) is not the first to use it, he recognized that it is a powerful form of experiential prayer if used appropriately. He had made it the central form of prayer in his Spiritual Exercises. One of the ways to pray this prayer is to imagine ourselves being part of a scene from the Bible. Here, we must be passive rather than active participants. We are not here to be a Hollywood director or an avatar in a virtual world. Our desire is to imagine ourselves to be present at the scene to see and note what is going on. We are with our imagination use our fives senses in order to better appreciate what is going on in the scenario. We are not to create characters or change the happenings.