Monday in the 5th Week of Lent: Letter 27
The Scripture Lesson for Today are HERE! We start this week with a Letter once again on prayer – a subject Screwtape finds rather painful when the prayers are sincere and offered in faith. On the other hand, and you will remember from Letter # that prayers offered in a rote and perfunctory manner that we memorized in childhood and now pray in order to say that we have prayed are a most useful temptation tool for an alert demon. The problem is that the Patient is actually praying to God about his struggles with prayer – the distractions that are challenging his desire to follow Christ. Such prayers offered means that Wormwood has “largely failed.” There are any number of prayers that I can offer from memory, but the real question is – do I know what it is that I am praying for. Screwtape extols the value of purely petitionary prayer. I can repeat the Lord’s Prayer without a second thought, but if I really look at what I am saying, this pr...