A Journey in Prayer

by Richard Kelly, OCDS

Virtues

      As Catholics, we all know—or we should know—what our Catholic catechism teaches. We all know we must live a virtuous life and freely practice the teachings of the church. We must seek out all the reasons to move our will to conform to God’s will. We must learn to live an upright Christian life, so that God can teach us to live His divine life. In order to do this, we must request the King of Glory, our Creator, to come into our souls and to be deeply united with our lives.       

       In our initial stages of spiritual growth, the soul is attached to our senses and is unable to advance without support. God respects this weakness and, through the senses, He draws beginners to Himself. As we advance along the way of faith, we increase our virtues of charity, faith, hope, and love by infusion from God. In our search for knowledge on Catholic teachings, our faith is obstructed by darkness from a void of understanding. God does not lead me into spiritual life until I am sufficiently strengthened in moral virtues so as to bear the strain from growth in faith. St. Teresa of Avila says we must work hard to acquire great virtues so God will come into our soul more fully. We receive the foundation of these virtues when baptized by God and the Spirit infuses them into each soul of the faithful. Each mortal is then capable of acting as His child who would merit eternal life.¹

Bonding with God

         We must work hard in developing growth in bonding ourselves with God.  We become bonded to God through worship and truth (Jn 4:23-24), as found in the doctrines of the church. A relationship with God is founded on love and fear of the Lord. True love begins with supernatural prayer.

When the soul desires God, we will grow in the Spirit by a spark of his true, awesome love. It is the Spirit of God who enables the soul to love and worship God. When we possess God, we possess love. We possess God when we are in the state of grace. God can purify our love so as to become twofold: Love of God and love of neighbor.¹

Deepening Relationship with God

         A plan for spiritual formation begins with the intellect, and then the will is strengthened by putting into practice what we believe. By means of the intellect and with the greater knowledge of God, we can deepen our grasp of the truths of our faith. With greater knowledge of God and of ourselves, the will—by means of self-control—will make our behavior conform to life as a child of God.

        A personal relationship with God and our own life of faith and prayer must become integrated with our daily lives. God is to be found and embraced in the ordinary events of our lives.

The reality of everyday experiences for each person, when brought into the reality of God, brings a life that is at peace with oneself and with our spiritual lives of faith.

          Prayer is essential if we are to be constantly aware of the Lord’s presence in our lives. Each of us has many demands on our time, little privacy at our work, distractions from yearnings, joy, desolations, daily activities and contacts with others. A normal and natural way of incorporating prayer should be made as part of our daily lives. Daily attendance at Mass and participation in the Eucharist must take first place in our spiritual lives. They are important as sources of prayer and worship.

          Prayer should also include the reading of scripture, parts of the Divine Office, daily rosary, and meditation as nourishment for our reward in the spiritual life.

          Prayer, in time, develops into activities of apostolic work, which requires us to persevere patiently in the spirit of love, trust, and hope. Discouragement is a constant temptation to interrupt this work. Our spiritual work can be made richer in time with solitude, prayer and contemplation.¹   ²

Groundwork for Contemplative Prayer

            We must drink at the spring so that we may be able to help and to love others. A daily program of time allotted to our prayer and spiritual activities is a constant concern. Any program requires us not to read so much or talk so much about God, but to talk to God. Every day, our prayer life requires the practice of talking to God as if he is present. This is contemplative prayer.

Faithful praying brings peace, joy, strength, thanksgiving, and a great serving of humility. God will prepare us for our tasks of work for God. Everything is in the hands of God. His love will help us to overcome pain and disappointment in the progress of our spiritual lives and in our works, as well as in the dryness of our faith. We must not be surprised when we are discouraged.

      Whatever we do affects not only our lives but also the life of God as directed toward each human. We are created and guided by God, as a partner in our salvation and his promise to us of an eternal life in his kingdom. Events and human action arouse in Him joy or sorrow, pleasure or wrath. We are a concern of God as he helps in our development as an image of himself. We must honor his higher demands over our human needs without fear, but trust in the loving care that he gives his children. Sensing the presence of God in our daily lives can only be learned in moments of prayer and in our invitation to God to intervene in our lives. We must let his will direct our affairs.²

Contemplation

          Prayer must be an outpouring of the soul. We cannot allow prayer to become a habit, an exercise, without being an act of the soul.

Prayer must be alive, not just a routine of “going through the motions.” We must pour out to God our thoughts, hopes, feelings, dreams—all that move our hearts. “God is love,” and to find his love, I must enter into the sanctuary where he is hidden. To enter his sanctuary of holiness and perfection, I must become “holy, as he is holy, perfect as he is perfect.”³

I must realize that God is beyond any human notion of perfection. As he emptied himself on the cross with infinite love for us, we must empty ourselves. We must live by his power and light that seems not to be there. We must be transformed, so that in losing ourselves in him, we possess our identity in him. Only love and faith can accomplish this growth in our soul.

        Contemplative prayer is a gift that can only be received in humility and poverty. The love of God can then conform each soul to his likeness as an image of God.

        Contemplation teaches us to see everything in the light of his truth. Our love becomes a reflection or mirror of God’s.         

        Contemplation brings prayer to those to whom God grants the kind of spiritual vision to which both reason and faith aspire.

        Contemplation is a profound depth of prayer, too deep to be grasped by words or even clear concepts; neither can it be taught nor clearly explained.

        Contemplation is always beyond our knowledge and beyond our very selves. It reaches out to knowledge, as a gift of God in ourselves, for we are touched by God.

         Contemplation is, at the same time, an awareness of the question and awareness of the answer given by the Spirit.

Contemplation is a pure gift and is a sign of the goodness of God. It enables us to believe more firmly in his goodness, to trust in him more, and provides growth in our friendship with him. God completes in us the awareness that he dwells in us and we in him. Contemplation can spring out of emptiness, in poverty, dereliction and spiritual night.

         Contemplative prayer, as defined by St. Teresa of Jesus, is a close sharing between friends. It means taking time frequently to be alone with God who we know loves us. We seek Jesus, and as love grows, we seek him in more prayer, in more service, to honor him and the memories of his awesome love.

          Meditation opens the window to inner prayer, but in contemplative prayer we come as children who welcome his love and who want to respond to it by loving him even more.³

Contradiction in Contemplation

Before true faith can become a source of spiritual comfort, it must involve us in struggle. We must face new evils and identify our evils of the past. We do not know what we want or why we love ourselves and our senses more than our God. Many consider prayer useless, since the prize of self-importance, egotism, and profit are to them more important than he is. We must work hard to overcome the hidden temptations we encounter. We must battle these forces working against our growth in prayer and service, so as to gain humility, trust, courage, perseverance, and an increase in our faith.  

       Contemplation pours into our soul infused light of knowledge that awakens us to a new level of awareness. We receive a pure and peaceful comprehension of love when God touches us in wisdom and truth. It is a gift that depends entirely on the decision of his love. This awesome love, that permeates our life and our future.

        Service to God and our neighbor: Beware of this gift. For in the moment we demand anything for ourselves, we defile and diminish this perfect gift he desires to communicate to us in the silence of our own prayers. In contemplation, we must accept him as he comes in his silence, not interrupting him in concepts, in words, in activities that belong to our lower level of painful existence. We must respond to God’s gift with happy silence and thanksgiving. This is an important consideration to growth in our spiritual life. 

        Thus, his light holds us in praise of him, and his love is a tidal wave that removes all human desire that would make us fall back into our old world of confusion and pain. When we do fall back, we are scarred with a wound where joy exulted in our hearts for a moment from this great love. We long once again to experience that wonderful touch of God.  It remains always in our memories to help us overcome the temptations and pain of this world. There are many whose prayer life brings them to the threshold of contemplation, who then remain at a dead-end in progress. They imagine their interior life more or less ended. If they could only be patient and humbly forget themselves and trust in God, they may gradually come out of this darkness and the frustrating condition. They are unknowingly, peacefully, being made ready to enter the Promised Land. Our spirit travels into contemplation through a desert where we travel blindly in directions that appear always from God. We want to know where we are going. All our efforts seem paralyzed; so, many turn back to familiar prayer—where we have been achieving, doing something and getting somewhere, or so we believe. These individuals can then make great progress in vocal prayer, reading, meditation, and different devotions. They are in a wilderness without light from their prayer life and without deep feelings of devotion and pleasure. They should become patient, trust in God, and listen for his voice to lead them with pure faith. They will then experience the peace and joy of close union with God.  

       God alone is our desire, our life, our joy. If you want to experience contemplative prayer, you should not direct another to change or correct those over whom you have no jurisdiction, Keep your mind at rest and stop the futile concern with the affairs of other people. Sanctity of a soul depends on renunciation, detachment, self-denial. You must perfect your own self on your level with God to maintain a satisfying growth in faith and love of God.³

                                                                                —Richard M. Kelly, OCDS

                                                                                                11/16/2000

REFERENCES:

            ¹ Notes from unknown source (book reviewed by Carmelite group).

² Modern Spiritual Writers: Their Legacies of Prayer by Charles J. Healey, S.J., quoting works of Abraham Joshua Heschel.

³ New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton.