How to Pray Like Mary

by Sonja Corbitt

Listen and Respond Like Mary at the Annunciation. Mary has been called the mother of listening. She didn't just hear the Word; she pondered it in light of her own relationships and circumstances and then let it transform her. Sonja Corbitt is a best-selling catholic author and one of the most dynamic and compelling new voices in the Church today. After years of Bible study, she recognized that the mother of listening was providing a model of prayer that has the power to revolutionize your life of prayer. Starting with Mary's response to the Annunciation, Sonja Corbitt will show you how to pray with Scripture under the guidance of the Blessed Mother. You will learn a powerful practice for daily prayer as Mary models L-isten, O-bserve, V-erbalize, E-ntrust. Sonja Corbitt draws from vivid biblical texts to show you the key to loving Scripture and deepening your relationship with God. In How to Pray Like Mary by Sonja Corbitt, you will... Develop a daily habit of life-changing prayer. Learn how to tell the difference between God's voice and your own thoughts in prayer. Understand Mary as the mother of the Church and a model for individual Christians ... and why this is so important. Rediscover the power in the early Church's method of Scripture-based prayer. Discover how to hear the voice of God in Scripture, and so that reading Scripture becomes a joyful encounter with the one who loves you. Find peace and direction every day as you turn to God's Word and discover him working in your heart and your life. Most You will know how to respond to God when you do hear him, just like the Blessed Mother!

Genres: Catholic, Religion, Spirituality

139 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 31, 2019

About the author

Sonja Corbitt is the Bible Study Evangelista. She's a Catholic Scripture teacher with a story teller's gift - a Southern Belle with a warrior's heart and a poet's pen.

We're all sweating and dirty with the effort to love and lift all He's given to us - those people, duties, callings, and longings that break our hearts and make them sing, sometimes at the same time. But most times, we need to be loved and lifted ourselves.

So her Bible study media are created with you in mind, bites of spinach that taste like cake, to help you make space in your busy heart and schedule for God to love and lift you all the way up into His great lap, where all you've been given is loved and lifted too.

Reviews

[Susan Peek · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm so impressed with the author's L.O.V.E. the Word method, which makes the ancient monastic practice of Lectio Divina (praying with Holy Scripture) accessible to everyone. Many Catholics mistakenly believe that reading the Bible on a daily basis is something only Protestants do. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Saints throughout history have loved Holy Scripture and made it THE main source of their spiritual reading and prayer. To this day, Benedictines (and other religious Orders) continue to practice Lectio Divina every single day. So, yes, it is a very Catholic and very powerful way to unite ourselves to God!

Sadly, Catholics often don't know where to start with the Bible or how to pray with Scripture. Sonja explains it in a way anyone can understand, breaking down the parts of Lectio Divina into chunks that follow the acronym L.O.V.E. It stands for Listen, Observe, Verbalize, and Entrust, which is basically an English way of saying the Latin components of Lectio, Meditatio, Oratio, and Contemplatio. But please don't let these words put you off, because, I promise, the author brings it to a level that everyone can implement immediately with both ease and delight!

One of the most wonderful parts of the book is how she relates all this to the Blessed Virgin Mary's prayer life, inspiring us to use the very methods that Our Lady surely used upon earth. The author gently invites us to try it for 40 days (a number used many times in the Bible) and promises us that if we do it faithfully, we will see results. Those results can be life-changing.

I'm so, so happy I bought this book. It had been on my "maybe" shelf for a long time, and now I wish I had purchased it ages ago. But better late than never. Already it has had a profound impact on my spiritual life. This is the first book I've read by Sonja Corbitt, but it definitely won't be the last. I highly recommend this beautiful book to all Catholics everywhere!

[Crystal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book difficult to follow and just could not connect with it.

She mentions a book by Chester Michael and quotes Thomas Merton. These are red flags for me as both of these authors have errors in their teaching on true Catholic prayer.

The chapter on Verbalizing is all about David not Mary.

I find it a bit presumptions of Mrs. Corbitt to declare that lectio divina, which has been around for hundreds of years, is too hard for people today and that her personal method from her private meditations is so much easier and better then what has been producing saints for centuries. This is a bold claim indeed.

[Deborah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Corbitt's book puts her unique spin on a traditional way of praying with Scripture (Lectio Divina) which she outlines using the acronym LOVE: Listen, Observe, Verbalize, Entrust. There is some solid advice here on the importance of silence and solitude and the discipline of daily prayer.

"...when I stay with the discipline God shows up" (12).

"According to the saints, experiencing God is not earned or even guaranteed, but is offered on his terms and by his invitation, through our complete detachment, heroic clarity, and a regular offering of ourselves to him in the silence of our hearts.... God is where the soul rests" (85).

[Hilda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book and the author's wisdom. I especially loved where she spoke about Mary's Fiat ,and Fr. Chester Michael's book on Prayer & Temperament. Showing the connections to the prayer types Franciscan, Ignatian, Augustinian, and Thomistic which are all part of the Fiat acronym.
I loved this simple acronym of LOVE too, Mary's way of praying. So beautiful and simple. ♡

[Maygon Brack · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! This is pretty much like Lectio Divina, but easier to understand, remember and follow. Simple put. I will be be praying like Mary using LOVE the Word method. 🙏🏼

[Sasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good beginner’s book on prayer. I recommend the Diary of St Faustina.

[Janelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’d say 4.5 stars. At first I found her style very jarring and even a tad off putting but as I read more I began to really like the steps and think it is a fruitful way to pray with scripture.

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A new way to look at "lectio divina" -- pondering the Word through Mary's listening heart. It has enriched my prayer life.

[Catalina Caceres · Rating 4 out of 5]

6 weeks of getting respectfully called out

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was an enjoyable & easy read and also very helpful. The ladies at church read it for the month of August and met to discuss it and our group had lively conversation and our meeting went way over the usual time. Many of us agreed it is a book we would refer to and re-read and so minds were changed about donations to the church library . 2 women ordered it on amazon and somehow received 4 copies each - seems like the work of the Holy Spirit knowing those of us with physical copies would not want to part with the book right away ! Many good suggestions about prayer life . “FIAT” & “LOVE the WORD” were helpful concepts. My kindle copy has so many highlights & i have already started re-reading it since I finished a week before our meeting. The author is a good teacher & is very familiar with Scripture and, in my opinion -the added “bonus” is that she is a Catholic convert. To me that can breath life into a person’s perspective of God’s Word . This book was a pleasure to read 🥰🙏✨

[Mary Biegler · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a good book and could be really helpful for someone wanting to revamp or start up their prayer life. For some reason I personally did not get a lot out of it. I was hoping to be really motivated by it since I’m named after the Blessed Virgin Mary, but I honestly found myself uninterested the whole way through. It didn’t grab my attention or convict me like I was hoping.

[awesome.nerd.reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Women’s Bible study book - my former parish. Nice read!