Staff reporter
WILMINGTON – Students at St. Elizabeth High School have spent some time during Holy Week combining their 21st-century technology with an ancient method of prayer.
Theology teacher and parish youth minister Melissa Pollio introduced the prayer labyrinth to the Wilmington school. It is a path that leads to the center of an intricate design and back out again. Along the way, the labyrinth at St. Elizabeth had 11 stations where the students would stop and listen to an accompanying audio track that had been uploaded to their iPads.
The audio included meditative music and instructions for prayer and an activity at each of the stations. The first six tracks focus on inner reflection and one’s individual relationship with God, Pollio said, while the other five concentrate on one’s relationship with the world and how we interact with God via the world.
“A prayer labyrinth is used to facilitate prayer, meditation, spiritual transformation and unity,” Pollio said. “Labyrinths became very popular for meditative prayer practices during the Middle Ages, but historical data suggests that Christians in the early third century used them as a means of both private and individual prayer.”
