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The Book of Hours by Ranier Maria Rilke

January 4, 2011

From the introduction of The Book of Hours by Ranier Maria Rilke by Anita Barrow and Joanna Macy. Poems that follow are their translations as well.

Da neigt sich die Stunde und rührt mich an

The hour is striking so close above me, so clear and sharp,
that all my senses ring with it.
I feel it now: there’s a power in me to grasp and give shape to my world.
I know that nothing has ever been real without my beholding it.
All becoming has needed me.
My looking ripens things
and they come toward me, to meet and be met.

Rilke wrote the poems that make up The Book of Hours (Das Stundenbuch) in three brief, intense periods of inspiration between 1899 and 1903. When he began, he was twenty-three years old and had already published three volumes of poetry. By the time The Book of Hours was published in December 1905, Rilke had written several of the works for which he is best known, including The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke and a series of letters to Franz Kappus, which would be collected under the title Letters to a Young Poet.

The impulse to begin the poems, as Rilke wrote to Marlise Gerding in May 1911, came after a period during which he received what he called “inner dictations,” words that came to him mornings and evenings and that struck him with their force and persistence. The process of writing, as Rilke told Gerding, strengthened and stimulated the inspiration, and he realized that a genuine work had been initiated.

But the poems that came forth — like the poems that were to follow in 1901 and 1903 — were not intended for the public. Intimate, sacred to him (Rilke called them Gehete, prayers), unmentioned in his letters and even in his journal, these were placed only in the hands of his beloved Lou Andreas-Salome. “Gelegt in die Hande von Lou,” he wrote in dedication when preparing the final manuscript. He chose the title then, inspired by the French medieval tradition of livres d’heures, devotional breviaries for lay use.

Rilke’s Early Life
The poet was born on December 4, 1875, in Prague, then a provincial capital in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and christened Rene Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke.

His parents’ limited means made them all the more conscious of their social status as members of Prague’s small German-speaking elite. In their pretentious, insular world he had, he said, “an anxious, heavy childhood.”

An only child, Rene endured the sentimental upbringing of a mother who still grieved the loss of her baby daughter, and who brought him up as a girl until he was six years old. Increasingly unhappy in her marriage, she took him into churches to pray with her and, as he would later recall with distaste, kiss Christ’s wounds on the crucifix. At home she spent long private hours playing with him and dressing him “like a big doll.” His father, a stiff, uncommunicative man, was a railroad official who had served as a cadet in the emperor’s army, and he still grieved the loss of His military career. For his son, the elder Rilke mandated a military school.

At ten years old. in prescribed uniform and haircut, Rene found himself abandoned to an emotionally repressive, loudly regulated, hyper masculine world. He cooperated as well as he could, but his five years there were hateful to him. (Even thirty years later, he would characterize that experience as carrying for him “the feeling of one single terrible damnation.”) Teased by the other boys, he was agonizingly lonely, but the cruelest thing was the crowding of the mind in the close quarters, with constantly interrupting commands, bullying, and competition — from which he found relief only in the relative silence and solitude of the infirmary.

Poetry was a refuge for him there, and when ill health finally won him his release from the military academy, poetry shaped the student life into which he threw himself, in Linz and especially in Prague and Munich. Rilke’s energy and versatility brought him friends and recognition in university literary circles. Something of a dandy, with his silver-headed cane and bowler hat, he found himself gifted with a strong capacity for relationship, particularly with women, and eager for the discoveries and disclosures these relationships allowed.

He adopted easily the romantic lyricism of his time, with its affectations and vaunting, facile subjectivity. Afire with creativity and enthusiastic about his own work, he was tireless in promoting it: not only with famous poets and writers of the period, whom he deluged with letters, but also the populace at large, among whom he distributed a self-published journal free of charge.

Despite family pressures and expectations, Rilke knew he could not define his life other than as writer, as poet. Yet he was faced with the need to support himself economically, so this calling was hard to defend. He went through the motions of matriculating for a law degree, then for one in philosophy, but the urge to create, to bring to birth something new and necessary, made it impossible to follow through with anything resembling a conventional career.

Without support from his family, he turned to others for the material help he needed in order to write, and took up what would become a lifelong burden: seeking a sponsor, an advance on future work, a suitable place to write, a grant or job to tide him through, over and over again explaining, justifying, promising, thanking. Already, however, he was able to point to considerable literary output, as poems, prose pieces, and plays appeared in journals and even on the stage.

The mature Rilke would dismiss the literary efforts of these early years. They surely served his poetic gifts by exercising them, but they embarrassed him later with their shallowness and their essentially imitative character. The soon-to-be-composed Book of Hours, although uncharacteristically kept secret for years, was the first work that the poet would acknowledge throughout his life as an authentic expression of his art and his being.

The Years that Brought Forth the Book of Hours

Rilke, 1904

While a student in Munich in 1897, far away from his mother’s devout superstitions, Rene Rilke was drawn to sort through his own religious assumptions and attitudes. He sensed that there must be an authentic ground to the imposing superstructures of his culture’s faith, and in a deeply inward process that contrasted with his busy life in coffeehouses, literary salons, and editorial offices, he wanted to find it.

A long series of poems titled Visions of Christ presented a superfluous Jesus defeated and shamed by his arrogant attempt to interpose himself between humanity and God. These poems were not published until after Rilke’s death, but he did send some to a writer he had not met, who had written an essay that he felt reflected a similar orientation. The essay was “Jesus the Jew,” and the writer was Lou Andreas-Salome.

A two-month sojourn in Tuscany drew Rilke into the world of Italian Renaissance religious art. Avidly he drank it in, exhilarated by the sensuous colors and forms, and the warmly human portrayal of the divine. The unmannered tenderness of Fra Angelico and Botticelli conveyed an authentic, alluring devotion, and showed Rilke that the holy can be rooted in the body and in human relationship. Lou Andreas-Salome was a beautiful thirty-six year old Russian woman of strong intellect and independent character, born in St. Petersburg and living in a friendly, platonic marriage with an older German professor.

When Rilke, at twenty-one, finally met her in a Munich salon in May 1897, she was already noted for Nietzsche’s earlier devotion to her. The young poet immediately pursued her with great determination, and they became lovers, in the most passionately fulfilling relationship either had yet known. Lou was the one woman Rilke would never cease loving, while he remained for her, as she later wrote, “the first true reality” in her life; they were “like brother and sister, but from primeval times before incest became a sacrilege.” Their friendship, even after it stopped being sexual (at her discretion), was fundamental and generative to every aspect of the poet’s development.

To begin with, he quieted down. His energies, scattered centrifugally in the frenzied, somewhat superficial life he had been leading, settled and deepened. Lou’s own love of nature pulled him out of the city, out to walk barefoot through meadows and copses that now were real to him in their own right and not just a backdrop to his moods. Lou was at work on a book about Nietzsche, and the iconoclastic philosopher’s thought provided a broader context for Rilke’s own rebellion against the hypocrisies of conventional Christianity. Two changes in his life were emblematic of Lou’s impact: he dropped, at her urging, the name Rene for the more masculine-sounding Germanic Rainer; and his handwriting was transformed into a more confident, elegant, and relaxed script.

In the spring of 1899, Rilke accompanied Lou and her husband to Russia and discovered the land and the spirituality that would so strongly imbue The Book of Hours — and his life. From there, he wrote his friend Frieda von Billow:

At bottom one seeks in everything new (country or person or thing) only an expression that helps some personal confession to greater power and maturity. All things are there in order that they may become images for us. And they do not suffer from it, for while they are expressing us more and more clearly, our souls close over them in the same measure. And I feel in these days that Russian things will give me the names for those most timid devoutnesses of my nature which, since my childhood, have been longing to enter my art.

It is as though Rilke had been waiting for whatever in the world would correspond to feeling-states that had been constellating inside him, and he found it in Russia — in the living forms of communal worship he witnessed there, and also in landscape and architecture. He felt in its everyday life a closeness to instinct and passion, which had not survived in the wan and sickened cities of Western Europe.

On his return, Rilke tried to keep as much of Russia about him as he could. He launched into a study of Russian literature and went about dressed in Russian peasant garb. When, on September 20, 1899, in Schmargcndorf near Berlin, he sat down to write the phrases that spoke themselves within him, it was in the persona of a Russian monk living in a cloister, summoned by the bell to the task of seeing and meeting what was most real to him in the world.

The sixty-seven poems Rilke wrote over the next twenty-five days would form the first part of The Book of Hours, called The Book of a Monastic Life. These intensely inward conversations with God distilled the seeking of the past years for an unmediated and intimate encounter with the heart of the universe. In November he wrote in his journal — the journal in which he never mentioned The Book of ‘Hours – “ I have begun my life.”

It is possible to read The Book of Hours as a cycle of love poems, and it is certainly possible to read into their creation the sensuous awakening of Rilke’s relationship with Lou. The God of these poems is a God whom Rilke seeks to love and be possessed by with the same passion he has for Lou, and also with the same passion he has for his vocation.

In the summer of 1900, after another and longer Russian sojourn with Lou, Rilke was invited to Worpswede, an artists’ colony in the open heath country near Bremen, which was to play a significant role in his life and imagination. Rilke had been urged by Lou toward greater independence from her, and he felt free to develop new relationships.

There he met Clara Westhoff, a gifted and ardent sculptor three years younger than he. She became pregnant, and they were married on April 28, 1901, at her parents’ home, and set up Housekeeping in a small cottage in Westerwede. There, as the young couple awaited the birth of their child (a daughter, Ruth, born on December 12), thirty-four poems which were to become the second part of The Book of Hours to be named The Book of Pilgrimage — came to Rilke. He wrote them in one week, between September 18 and 25.

As the conversations with God are resumed, The Book of Pilgrimage reflects Rilke’s acute awareness of humanity’s unfolding fate as well as his more personal preoccupations. Images of pregnancy enter the religious discourse: God is described as womb, and more frequently as the new life growing inside the poet.

I wish sometimes that you were back inside me,
in this darkness that grew you. II, 4

Impending fatherhood must have aroused old anger toward the poet’s own father. The patriarchal God is rejected now with a vehemence that never occurs in The Book of a Monastic Life.

His caring is a nightmare to us,
and his voice a stone. II, 6

Rilke was facing the task of supporting his young family with almost no material resources and no regular employment. His letters that autumn express a pervasive economic anxiety. Usually such insecurity narrows the focus of one’s concern; the wonder is that for the poet the opposite happened, and his heart blew open to the suffering of all humanity. Though Rilke reminds God that

I’m still the one who knelt before you
in monk’s robes, II, 2

the persona here is more concerned with the world. The pilgrimage on which he finds himself unites him with that world in the depth of his being.

In August 1902, Rilke went to Paris, commissioned to write a monograph on the sculptor Auguste Rodin. He and Clara had decided to change their life and — leaving Ruth predominantly in the care of her maternal grandparents in their comfortable country home — freed each other to pursue their art. Engaged by Rodin as his secretary, Rilke worked long, demanding hours. He was inspired by the sculptor’s relentless self-discipline and rededicated himself to the task of poetry with an enhanced respect for craft. But between the demands the great sculptor made on him and his own intense distress over the urban poverty and suffering he beheld in the city around him, Rilke was rarely able to find time or courage for his own work.

In late March 1903, Rilke boarded a train, traveled through the Alpine tunnels to Italy, and took a room at a Gardened pensione by the sea in Viareggio, which he had loved on his earlier trip. As he wrote to Franz Kappus, to whom the Letters to a Young Poet were addressed, he was there to recover from a great physical and moral lassitude. And there, between April 13 and 20, he composed the poems — again thirty-four of them — that make up The Book of Poverty and Death, the third in The Book of Hours.

Here both death and poverty, viewed so negatively by modern society as evils to flee, are upheld as sources of value and revelation. Instead of canceling life, death is its fruit — and an expression of our most intimate and unique strivings for meaning. This affirmation is all the more poignant in that Rilke had just been warned — by the person he trusted most — of his alleged suicidal tendencies. Apparently he did not resent Lou for making this gratuitous diagnosis at the time of his marriage to Clara, nor was he undone by it; instead he turned death itself into a long-term ally to accompany his life.

The horrors of urban poverty had confronted Rilke in Paris, as he described to Lou in July 1903:

One goes through smells as through many sad rooms…. And what people I met. . . almost every day: fragments of caryatids on whom the whole pain still lay, the entire structure of pain, under which they were living, slow as tortoises … and under the foot of each day that trod on them, they were enduring like tough beetles. .. twitching like bits of a big chopped up fish that is already rotting but still alive…. Oh what kind of a world is that! Pieces, pieces of people, parts of animals, leftovers of things that have been, and everything still agitated, as though driven about helter-skelter in an eerie wind, carried and carrying, falling and overtaking each other as they fall.

The “poverty poems” of this third book reflect Rilke’s anguish in Paris, and are chillingly close to the life in cities today. Rilke has been criticized for sentimentalizing poverty

Look at them standing about
like wildflowers, which have nowhere else to grow III, 19

yet mainly he was simply trying to take it in, that people can make one another suffer so. He tried to look at the destitute with the same tender attention that he would give to a tree. Rilke was not writing deliberately to effect social change, as was Emile Zola, for instance; he was doing what from the dictates of his own spiritual integrity was necessary for any social transformation.

That is the assertion of our essential interconnectedness with each other and with everything that lives. This is not a political tenet as much as a profound experience in the core of one’s being. In that sense these poems arise from the same mystical oneness (we can still call it the body of Christ, Anima Mundi, Buddha nature) that pervaded the two earlier books.

Rilke’s Later Life And Work And Its Relationship To The Book Of Hours
Even before The Book of Poverty and Death, Rilke had begun writing the poems that would be included in The Book Of Images, in a voice more secular and detached than that of The Book of Hours. The poems that followed, collected as New Poems (Neue Gedichte), cast the focus on the thing observed, away from the observer’s inner experience. The next two decades of Rilke’s development were shaped by an increasing awareness of his role as artist. This self-consciousness replaced the naked, transparent approach to things that characterizes The Book of Hours.

The capacity to shed his ever more burdensome self-image as poet was not available to him again until February 1922. Then, in a period of less than a month, taken by a trancelike inspiration much like that which had produced The Book ofa Monayiic Life, Rilke composed all fifty-nine Sonnets to Orpheus and completed the Duino Elegies, begun ten years earlier.

Rilke’s life throughout those intervening years 1903 to 1922 had been a pilgrimage in the service — not to say on the surface — of poetry. They had been difficult years of struggle for material survival, restless years of repeated moves from one place to another. Rilke was bedeviled by his dependence on the generosity of benefactors, yet he could not give himself to any work save writing. “It is my old inadequacy,” he wrote to Clara. “I have only a single energy which cannot be dispersed.” These were years, too, of repeated liaisons, intense involvements that shattered ever again on the rocks of his necessary solitude. Each time Rilke fell in love, he confronted his fear of being sidetracked and consumed. Although he maintained a voluminous correspondence, he lived by himself, refusing even the companionship of animals.

As the years went on, his search for the sacred was supplanted by a tendency to see in everything he encountered “a challenge, a task, a claim to artistic transformation.” It is not that Rilke lost his hunger for God; rather, it became transmuted into a single-pointed dedication to art that absorbed into itself everything else in his life. Never again, after The Book of Hours, would the dynamic between God and the world be expressed in such immediate and reciprocal terms.

In 1912, ill and depressed and moored in a spell of aridity, Rilke was staying alone at Duino Castle near Trieste, the guest of Princess Maria von Thurn and Taxis. There, one morning, the first lines of the Duino Elegies came to him — by divine inspiration, as he later told the princess. Within weeks he had completed the first two elegies; but after that, although he knew there was more to come, Rilke was unable to write the rest. He wandered, frustrated, agitated, in search of circumstances hospitable to his work.

In a Europe gearing up for the First World War, Rilke’s inner turbulence found no place to be assuaged. More travels, more illness, more troubled relationships; a little work on the Elegies now and again; a good deal of public acclaim. But inwardly a lack of vitality plagued Rilke, and bitterness at the violence and nationalism that interfered with his work. In December 1917, he wrote in response to a letter from an admirer of The Book of Hours: “I’m not living my own life…. I feel refuted, abandoned, and above all threatened by a world ready to dissolve entire in such senseless disorder.”

When he was at last able to pick up the thread of the Elegies, the spirit from which he wrote was deeply reminiscent of the one that had produced The Book of Hours. As he was to write in 1925 to Witold von Hulewicz, his Polish translator, Rilke regarded the Elegies as “a further shaping of those essential [inspirations] which had been given already in The Book of Hours.”

Rilke never repudiated The Book of Hours. He maintained that a substantial continuity existed between it and all subsequent works. What had changed most between the inspiration of 1899 and that of 1922 was the almost exclusive stress he put on the function of poetry itself. In the old dialectic equation between person and God, the role of the human became emphasized to the point of isolation –

If I cried out, who would hear me
among the hierarchies of angels?

and that at a most terrifying juncture of history.

Yet still Rilke knew how to sing, and with a singleness of heart, as if the world depended on it:

… Perhaps we are here in order to say: house, bridge, fountain, gate, pitcher, fruit-tree, window

………………………………………………………..

.. And these Things,
which live by perishing, know you are praising them;
transient,
they look to us for deliverance: us, the most
transient of all.

As he wrote these lines of the beloved ninth Duino Elegy, the younger Rilke must have taken hold — the one who in 1899 had told God:

… I want to portray you
not with lapis or gold, but with colors made of apple
bark….
I want, then, simply
to say the names of things. I, 60

and:

I would describe myself like a landscape I’ve studied at length, in detail;
like a word I’m coming to understand; like a pitcher I pour from at mealtime; like my mother’s face;
like a ship that carried me
when the waters raged. I, 13

Rilke never lost his conviction in the utter reality of the world, or in our human capacity to redeem it through that act of transforming attention, which is naming — or love.

Ich lebe mein I,eben in wachsenden Ringen

I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one but I give myself to it.
I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?

Und Gott Befiehit mir, daβ ich schriebe:

And God said to me, Write:

Leave the cruelty to kings.
Without that angel barring the way to love
there would be no bridge for me
into time.

And God said to me, Paint:

Time is the canvas
stretched by my pain:
the wounding of woman,
the brothers’ betrayal,
the city’s sad bacchanals,
the madness of kings.

And God said to me, Go forth:

For I am king of time.
But to you I am only the shadowy one who knows with you your loneliness and sees through your eyes.

He sees through my eyes
in all the ages.

Dich wundert nicht des Sturmes Wucht

You are not surprised at the force of the storm — you have seen it growing.
The trees flee. Their flight
sets the boulevards streaming. And you know: he whom they flee is the one
you move toward. All your senses
sing him, as you stand at the window

The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees’ blood rose. Now you feel it wants to sink back
into the source of everything. You thought you could trust that power
when you plucked the fruit;
now it becomes a riddle again,
and you again a stranger.

Summer was like your house: you knew where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.
The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered
leaves.

Through the empty branches the sky remains. It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.

Posted in Poetry, Prayer, Ranier Maria Rilke | Tagged Ranier Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours | 1 Comment »

God of Love, Father of All…

December 25, 2010

God of Love, Father of All,

the darkness that covered the earth

has given way to the bright dawn of your Word made flesh.

Make us a people of this light.

Make us faithful to your Word,

that we may bring your life to the waiting world.

Grant this through Christ our Lord.

Merry Christmas.

Posted in Prayer | 2 Comments »

THE DESOLATE MAN SHOULD PLACE HIMSELF IN GOD’S HANDS

December 1, 2010

Desolate Angel, Buenos Aires

A chapter from the classic The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. I’ve lost my job, am getting laid off Friday.

I’m not good at losing jobs. When I worked in Japan, I worked sometimes three or four jobs. If I lost one I would slot in another. It wasn’t until returning to the States that I got into this merry-go-round of losing a job every few years.

When I hit 55, things changed. The jobs don’t come that easy anymore and I found myself underemployed, doing temp stuff or working part time. I’m 63 now. The last job I got took me two years of waiting. Getting over the pride of work has been an immense challenge for me. I know I still haven’t put that pride behind me.

Getting laid off is a bruising experience, even when you know its coming and the reasons are more than reasonable. The company is cutting expenses, finding ways to do the same work cheaper and more efficiently. The new computers can be imaged remotely from headquarters, they no longer need anyone to look after the classrooms here. So it’s off to a new location and new machines. I won’t be part of that new order. They can use my salary to open a new location.

I’ve learned that in times like these I can go to Thomas à Kempis and find a prayer to comfort myself. I am ashamed of my desolation. God has been so good to me, you have no idea the blessings I have garnered and how graceless and grasping I remain, so ungrateful.

Help me find peace again, Lord and deal with the poverty that grinds within me. Help me to live among your riches.

DISCIPLE: Lord God, holy Father, may You be blessed now and forever! As You will it, so it is, and all that You do is good. Let Your servant find his joy in You and not in himself or in anything else. You alone, Lord, are the true joy; You alone are my hope and my crown, my happiness and my honor.

What does Your servant have that he has not received (I Corinthians 4:7) from You, and without meriting any of it? All that You have made and all that You have given me is Yours. Everything is Yours!

I am wretched and have been afflicted since my early youth (Psalms 88:15). Sometimes my soul is sad even to the point of shedding tears and it is often troubled because of trials that threaten.

I look for the joy of Your peace. I fervently pray for the peace that belongs to Your children whom you nourish with the light of Your consolation.

If You grant me this peace and pour Your holy joy into my soul, I will be filled with music and wholeheartedly will I sing out Your praises. But if You take Yourself from me, as You often do, I will find it difficult to walk the pathways of Your commandments (Psalms 119:35). I will fall on my knees and strike my breast bewailing that today is not as fine a day as yesterday or the day before when Your lamp kept shining on my head (Job 29:3), and when I found, in the shadow of Your wings (Psalms 17:8), protection from temptation’s assaults.

Father, all just and worthy of everlasting praise, the hour has come for Your servant to be tested.

Father, worthy of all love, it is only right that at this hour I should suffer something for Your sake.

Father, worthy of endless honor, the hour is now here which You foresaw from all eternity when I, Your servant, should be struck down and for a time be overwhelmed though, through it all, I continually live in Your presence. For a short period I am to be ridiculed, rebuked, and have my reputation ruined; I am to be worn out by weariness and sufferings, only that I may rise again with You at the dawn of the new day and receive heaven’s glory.

Father, all holy, this is the way You have designed it and desired it and since You have commanded it, it has come to pass.

This is the grace You grant Your friends; to suffer and endure distress in this world for love of You — as often as You allow it and only from sources You permit. Nothing happens on earth without Your wisdom and providence, and nothing ever happens without good reason.

It is good Lord that You have humbled me so that I may learn Your justifications (Psalms 119:71)and that I may cast from me all pride and presumption of heart. It is for my own good that shame has covered my face and that I seek my consolation in You rather than in men. From this I have also learned that I am to reverence Your unsearchable judgments which affect both the good and the bad, but always with justice and equity.

I thank You for not having spared me for my sins and for having punished me with bitter stripes. 1 thank You for inflicting pain on me and for sending me trials that assail me within and without.

Under the heavens there is no one who can console me except You, my Lord God, heavenly physician of souls. You wound and You heal;(Deuteronomy 32:39) You take down to the depths but You also raise up.(1 Samuel:2:6). Your discipline corrects me and Your very rod is my teacher.

Beloved Father, I am in Your hands (Psalms 31:15) and I bend my body to Your correcting rod. Strike me across the back and neck so that I can twist my crookedness into something straight and in accord with Your will. Make me a holy and bumble disciple as You have done to others, for I wish to walk in line with Your least desire. To Your correction I give myself and all that is mine. It is better to be punished in this life than in the one to come.

You know each and every single thing,(John 16:30) and there is nothing in man’s conscience that escapes You. You know the future before it happens and need no one to tell You or to inform You about what is happening on earth.

You know what I need for my spiritual progress and You know how effectively trials serve to scrub away the rust of sin. Do with me as Your good pleasure wills and do not disdain my sinful life which is better and more clearly known to You than to anyone

Grant me, Lord, to know what I ought to know, to love what I ought to love, and praise what pleases You the most. Let me hold in esteem what is most precious to You and detest all that is foul in Your sight.

Let me not judge according to what my eyes see nor decide according to what my can hear (Isaiah 11:3)) from ignorant men, but let me, with true judgment, discern between matters material and spiritual, and always and above all seek Your good will and pleasure.

Our senses often lead us into making erroneous judgments, and the worldly minded are likewise deceived because their only love is the world.

Is a man any better because other men think him better? When one man praises another it is like a liar speaking to a liar, or a flatterer congratulating a flatterer, or a blind man leading a blind man, or someone feeble giving a helping hand to someone equally feeble. So pointless is this praise that it only brings shame on the individual who falls for it.

The humble St. Francis said: “A man is only as great as he is in Your eyes and no greater.” (St. Bonaventure, Major Life of St. Francis, Chapter 6)

Posted in Autobiography, Prayer | Tagged the Imitation Of Christ, Thomas à Kempis | 5 Comments »

Concerning the Our Father by Simone Weil

July 19, 2010

Madonna of Humility, circa 1415–20

Something so familiar and yet so totally transformed in this reading by Simone Weil. Note the closing reference to paying attention.

Πάτερ ἡμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς·
“Our Father which art in Heaven.”

He is our Father. There is nothing real in us which does not come from him. We belong to Him. He loves us, since He loves himself and we are His. Nevertheless He is our Father who is in heaven — not elsewhere. If we think to have a Father here below it is not He, it is a false God. We cannot take a single step toward Him. We do not walk vertically. We can only turn our eyes toward Him. We do not have to search for Him, we only have to change the direction in which we are looking. It is for Him to search for us. We must be happy in the knowledge that He is infinitely beyond our reach. Thus we can be certain that the evil in us, even if it overwhelms our whole being, in no way sullies the divine purity, bliss, and perfection.

ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου·
“Hallowed be thy Name.”

God alone has the power to name himself, His name is unpronounceable for human lips. His name is his word. It is the Word of God. The name of any being is an intermediary between the human spirit and that being; it is the only means by which the human spirit can conceive something about a being that is absent. God is absent. He is in heaven. Man’s only possibility of gaining access to him is through His name. It is the Mediator. Man has access to this name, although it also is transcendent. It shines in the beauty and order of the world and it shines in the interior light of the human soul. This name is holiness itself; there is no holiness outside it; it does not therefore have to be hallowed. In asking for its hallowing we are asking for something that exists eternally, with full and complete reality, so that we can neither increase nor diminish it, even by an infinitesimal fraction. To ask for that which exists, that which exists really, infallibly, eternally, quite independently of our prayer, that is the perfect petition. We cannot prevent ourselves from desiring; we are made of desire; but thb desire that nails us down to what is imaginary, temporal, selfish, can, if we make it pass wholly into this petition, become a lever to tear us from the imaginary into the real and from time into eternity, to lift us right out of the prison of self.

ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου·
“Thy Kingdom Come.”

This concerns something to be achieved, something not yet here. The Kingdom of God means the complete filling of the entire soul of intelligent creatures with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit bloweth where he listeth? We can only invite him. We must not even try to invite him in a definite and special way to visit us or anyone else in particular, or even everybody in general; we must just invite him purely and simply, so that our thought of him is an invitation, a longing cry. It is as when one is in extreme thirst, ill with thirst; then one no longer thinks of the act of drinking in relation to oneself, or even of the act of drinking in a general way. One merely thinks of water, actual water itself, but the image of water is like a cry from our whole being.

γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου,·
“Thy will be done.”

We are only absolutely, infallibly certain of the will of God concerning the past. Everything that has happened, whatever it may be, is in accordance with the will of the almighty Father. That is implied by the notion of almighty power. The future also, whatever it may contain, once it has come about, will have come about in conformity with the will of God. We can neither add to nor take from this conformity. In this clause, therefore, after an upsurging of our desire toward the possible, we are once again asking for that which is. Here, however, we are not concerned with an eternal reality such as the holiness of the Word, but with what happens in the time order. Nevertheless we are asking for the infallible and eternal conformity of everything in time with the will of God. After having, in our first petition, torn our desire away from time in order to fix it upon eternity, thereby transforming it, we return to this desire which has itself become in some measure eternal, in order to apply it once more to time. Whereupon our desire pierces through time to find eternity behind it. That is what comes about when we know how to make every accomplished fact, whatever it may be, an object of desire. We have here quite a different thing from resignation. Even the word acceptance is too weak. We have to desire that everything that has happened should have happened, and nothing else. We have to do so, not because what has happened is good in our eyes, but because God has permitted it, and because the obedience of the course of events to God is in itself an absolute good.

ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς·
“On earth as it is in heaven.”

The association of our desire with the almighty will of God should be extended to spiritual things. Our own spiritual ascents and falls, and those of the beings we love, have to do with the other world, but they are also events that take place here below, in time. On that account they are details in the immense sea of events and arc tossed about with, the ocean in a way conforming to the will of God. Since our failures of the past have come about, we have to desire that they should have come about.

We have to extend this desire into the future, for the day when it will have become the past. It is a necessary correction of the petition that the kingdom of God should come, We have to cast aside all other desires for the sake of our desire for eternal life, but we should desire eternal life itself with renunciation. We must not even become attached to detachment. Attachment to salvation is even more dangerous than the others. We have to think of eternal life as one thinks of water when dying of thirst, and yet at the same time we have.to desire that we and our loved ones should be eternally deprived of this water rather than receive it in abundance in spite of God’s will, if such a thing were conceivable,

The three foregoing petitions are related to the three Persons of the Trinity, the Son, the Spirit, and the Father, and also to the three divisions of time, the present, the future, and the past. The three petitions that follow have a more direct bearing on the three divisions of time, and take them in a different order—present, past, and future.

τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον·
“Give us this day our daily bread” — the bread which is supernatural

Christ is our bread. We can only ask to have him now. Actually he is always there at the door of our souls, wanting to enter in, though he does not force our consent. If we agree to his entry, he enters; directly we cease to want him, he is gone. We cannot bind our will today for tomorrow; we cannot make a pact with him that tomorrow he will be within us, even in spite of ourselves.

Our consent to his presence is the same as his presence. Consent is an act; it can only be actual, that is to say in the present. We have not been given a will that can be applied to the future. Everything not effective in our will is imaginary. The effective part of the will has its effect at once; its effectiveness cannot be separated from itself. The effective part of the will is not effort, which is directed toward the future. It is consent; it is the “yes” of marriage. A “yes” pronounced within the present moment and for the present moment, but spoken as an eternal word, for it is consent to the union of Christ with the eternal part of our soul.

Bread is a necessity for us. We are beings who continually draw our energy from outside, for as we receive it we use it up in effort. If our energy is not daily renewed, we become feeble and incapable of movement. Besides actual food, in the literal sense of the word, all incentives are sources of energy for us. Money, ambition, consideration, decorations, celebrity, power, our loved ones, everything that puts into us the capacity for action is like bread.

If anyone of these attachments penetrates deeply enough into us to reach the vital roots of our carnal existence, its loss may break us and even cause our death. That is called dying of love. It is like dying of hunger. All these objects of attachment go together with food, in the ordinary sense of the word, to make up the daily bread of this world. It depends entirely on circumstances whether we have it or not. We should ask nothing with regard to circumstances unless it be that they may conform to the will of God. We should not ask for earthly bread.

There is a transcendent energy whose source is in heaven, and this flows into us as soon as we wish for it. It is a real energy; it performs actions through the agency of our souls and of our bodies.

We should ask for this food. At the moment of asking, and by the very fact that we ask for it, we know that God will give it to us. We ought not to be able to bear to go without it for a single day, for when our actions only depend on earthly energies, subject to the necessity of this world, we are incapable of thinking and doing anything but evil. God saw “that the misdeeds of man were multiplied on the earth and that all the thoughts of his heart were continually bent upon evil.” [Genesis 6:5] The necessity that drives us toward evil governs everything in us except the energy from on high at the moment when it comes into us. We cannot store it.

καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ ὀφειλήματα ἡμῶν,
ὡς καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀφίεμεν τοῖς ὀφειλέταις ἡμῶν·
“And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.”

At the moment of saying these words we must have already remitted everything that is owing to us. This not only includes reparation for any wrongs we think we have suffered, but also gratitude for the good we think we have done, and it applies in a quite general way to all we expect from people and things, to all we consider as our due and without which we should feel ourselves to have been frustrated. All these are the rights that we think the past has given us over the future.

First there is the right to a certain permanence. When we have enjoyed something for a long time, we think that it is ours and that we are entitled to expect fate to let us go on enjoying it. Then there is the right to a compensation for every effort whatever its nature, be it work, suffering, or desire. Every time that we put forth some effort and the equivalent of this effort does not come back to us in the form of some visible fruit, we have a sense of false balance and emptiness which makes us think that we have been cheated. The effort of suffering from some offense causes us. to expect the punishment or apologies of the offender, the effort of doing good makes us expect the gratitude of the person we have helped, but these are only particular cases of a universal law of the soul.

Every time we give anything out we have an absolute need that at least the equivalents should come into us, and because we. need this we think we have a right to it. Our debtors comprise all beings and all things; they are the entire universe. We think we have claims everywhere. In every claim we think we possess there is always the idea of an imaginary claim of the past on the future. That is the claim we have to renounce.

To have forgiven our debtors is to have renounced the whole of the past in a lump. It is to accept that the future should still be virgin and intact, strictly united to the past by bonds of which we are ignorant, but quite free from the bonds our imagination thought to impose upon it. It means that we accept the possibility that. this will happen, and that it may happen to us in particular; it means that we are prepared for the future to render all our past life sterile and vain.

In renouncing at one stroke all the fruits of the past without exception, we can ask of God that our past sins may not bear their miserable fruits of evil and error. So long as we cling to the past, God himself cannot stop this horrible fruiting. We cannot hold on to the past without retaining our crimes, for we are unaware of what is most essentially bad in us.

The principal claim we think we have on the universe is that our personality should continue. This claim implies all the others. The instinct of self-preservation makes us feel this continuation to be a necessity, and we believe that a necessity is a right. We are like the beggar who said to Talleyrand: “Sir, I must live,” and to whom Talleyrand replied, “I do not see the necessity for that.”

Our personality is entirely dependent on external circumstances which have unlimited power to crush it. But we would rather die than admit this. From our point of view the equilibrium of the world is a combination of circumstances so ordered that our personality remains intact and seems to belong to us. All the circumstances of the past that have wounded our personality appear to us to be disturbances of balance which should infallibly be made up for one day or another by phenomena having a contrary effect. We live on the expectation of these compensations. The near approach of death is horrible chiefly because it forces the knowledge upon us that these compensations will never come.

To remit debts is to renounce our own personality. It means renouncing everything that goes to make up our ego, without any exception. It means knowing that• in the ego there is nothing whatever, no psychological element, that external circumstances could not do away with. It means accepting that truth. It means being happy that things should be so.

The words “Thy will be done” imply this acceptance, if we say them with all our soul, That is why we can say a few moments later: “We forgive our debtors.”

The forgiveness of debts is spiritual poverty, spiritual nakedness, death. If we accept death completely, we can ask God to make us live again, purified from the evil in us. For to ask him to forgive us our debts is to ask him to wipe out the evil in us. Pardon is purification. God himself has not the power to forgive the evil in us while it remains there. God will have forgiven our debts when he has brought us to the state of perfection.

Until then God forgives our debts partially in the same measure as we forgive our debtors.

καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν,
ἀλλὰ ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ.
“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

The only temptation for man is to be abandoned to his own resources in the presence of evil. His nothingness is then proved experimentally. Although the soul has received supernatural bread at the moment when it asked for it, its joy is mixed with fear because it could only ask for it for the present. The future is still to be feared. The soul has not, the right to ask for bread for the morrow, but it expresses its fear in the form of a supplication. It finishes with that. The prayer began with the word’ “Father,” it ends with the word “evil.”

We must go from confidence to fear. Confidence alone can give us strength enough not to fall as a result of fear. After having contemplated the name, the kingdom, and the will of God, after having received the supernatural bread and having been purified from evil, the soul is ready for that true humility which crowns all virtues. Humility consists of knowing that in this world the whole soul, not only what we term the ego in its totality, but also the supernatural part of the soul, which is God present in it, is subject to time and to the vicissitudes of change.

There must be absolute acceptance of the possibility that everything natural in us should be destroyed. But we must simultaneously accept and repudiate the possibility that the supernatural part of the soul should disappear. It must be accepted as an event that would come about only in conformity with the will of God. It must be repudiated as being something utterly horrible. We must be afraid of it, but our fear must be as it were the completion of confidence.

The six petitions correspond with each other in pairs. The bread which is transcendent is the same thing as the divine name. It is what brings about the contact of man with God. The kingdom of God is the same thing as his protection stretched over us against temptation; to protect is the function of royalty. Forgiving our debtors their debts is the same thing as the total acceptance of the will of God. The difference is that in the first three petitions the attention is fixed solely on God. In the three last, we turn our attention back to ourselves in order to compel ourselves to make these petitions a real and not an imaginary act.

In the first half of the prayer, we begin with acceptance. Then we allow ourselves a desire. Then we correct it by coming back to acceptance. In the second half, the order is changed; we finish by expressing desire. Only desire has now become negative; it is expressed as a fear; therefore it corresponds. to the highest degree of humility and that is a fitting way to end.

The Our Father contains all possible petitions; we cannot conceive of any prayer not already contained in it. It is to prayer what Christ is to humanity. It is impossible to say it once through, giving the fullest possible attention to each word, without a change, infinitesimal perhaps but real, taking place in the soul.

Posted in Prayer, Simone Weil | Tagged Simone Weil, The Our Father | 3 Comments »

Drawing Closer To The Heart Of The Lord: Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Pied Beauty

July 1, 2010

Landscape plotted and pieced -- fold, fallow, and plough...

This is not the first time I have introduced this poem on Paying Attention To The Sky, but I shall do it again to showcase Anthony Esolen’s prodigious talents of interpretation. I first studied the poem back in a lit class in college and counted syllables and stress, marveling at the intricacies of structure and form of the sonnet. Elsewhere I have related how this poem can easily become a prayer — a cool summer morning following several days in the nineties — you can memorize this and recite it on the way to bus stop. You’ll be surprised how many more counter, original, spare, strange things you’ll notice on the way to work.

“God is Love”
WE ARE USED TO hearing the biblical verse, “God is love” (1 John 4:8), and nodding knowingly to ourselves. “Ah yes,” says the modern agnostic with a taste for religion. “I don’t know whether God exists, but I do know that if he does, then He is love. So I will try to live according to love.”

That’s better than nothing. But we are too familiar with the verse. We no longer hear its thundering challenge to the entire Greek philosophical system.

For if God is love and not necessity (since what is determined or compelled cannot be an act of love), then none of this universe need have been. Nor need it have been the way it is now. The belief that God creates from nothing, freely, is a logical consequence of believing that he creates from love.

But how can God love man? God needs nothing from man, not even man’s love. Christians believe that God already is a communion of three persons bound by love, each distinct, yet each fully God. Man knows a trace of the love that moves God, or that is God’s movement within himself: as he moves not from need, but from superabundance, from generosity one might even say from playfulness.

Man will cherish animals from which he derives nothing of use; he will potter about a flower garden for delight in the flowers; his heart will soar at the strains of music; he cheers at the sight of a big and boisterous; family. Unlike every other creature on earth, man needs what he does not need, and loves where he does not lack — and he feels that he loves more fully from his plenty and strength, from his fascination with life, and from his will-to-beauty, than from his sense of incompleteness and insufficiency. In those high-hearted moments, man is close to God.

In no classical author do we find the great Zeus, father of gods and men stooping to limn a blade of grass or smooth out a dewdrop. Such affairs would be relegated to some deity so low on the scale as to he nameless. But our God, who made even the creeping things that creep upon the earth, who cares for ostrich egg because the hen is too bird-brained to do it herself (Job 39:13), whose kingdom is as a mustard seed, and who decks the lilies of the field in such glory as would put to shame the tailors of Solomon, delights in works. He enjoys them, he calls them good, he loves them. And, to paraphrase Jesus, if God so loves the grass, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more does he love us, us of the hard hearts?

We might think such things beneath our notice, but the incomparably great God notices them. Small as they are, they provide for the attentive a powerful way to draw closer to the heart of the Lord (Paying Attention, don’t you see!!!). Such was the insight of the Victorian priest-poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins. The more unusual creature, the more it is peculiarly itself, the greater the delight. Consider this magnificent miniature sonnet on the beauty of all things great and small:

Pied Beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-color as brinded cow
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches wings
Landscape plotted and pieced — fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift slow sweet sour adazzle, dim,
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change
Praise him.

The bustling corral of things animate and inanimate defies category, exactly as Hopkins intends. No one really looks upon the sky and thinks of the splotches on a calico cow, probably because no one looks appreciatively enough at the sky and its cowishness, or at a cow and its reflection of a weathering sky. That odd second line brings heaven to earth with a delightful bump. The point, after all, is that heaven can be seen where no one sees it, especially upon the peculiarly beautiful things of earth — on the rosy stipples of a freshwater trout, for instance.

Not only there, though; Hopkins would never settle for being a dreamy little nature poet, a devotee of the pretty, and therefore a pretender of love. For how can you love weeds and thrush’s eggs and not love man?

If God delights in the making of chestnuts, the more does he delight in waking beings who can delight also in his making of chestnuts and everything else. Therefore, man, his labor and his ingenuity, must also be praised; for the quirky beauty of man’s own creativity, as evinced in sickles and ice-tongs and flails and adzes, reflects its source, the beauty of God. Fishing lures, wrenches, lathes, ropes and pulleys, pails of tar, seedbags and harrows, all in “trim,” in order, share in Hopkins’s hymn to muscular love.

But in the second stanza the poet leaves these particular things behind and turns his attention to their typical qualities — there is not one specific noun for the rest of the poem. That is because he wants to reverse the kaleidoscope: we shift our sights from the ever-changing and exuberantly various individual things to the never-changing God who made them.

Now the ironic thing about this shift is not just that a never-changing God would create things which, since they are not God, would be subject to change. It is rather that God would delight in having his never-changing beauty pieced out among, refracted through, so many forms and so odd. Yet it is no derogation of his one and eternal beauty that it should be made manifest in the swift and the slow, the dazzling and the dim. For he does not simply make, as an artificer. He “fathers-forth.”

We should meditate upon that phrase. It suggests neither the pantheism latent in earth-mother cults (whose goddess is identified with the mindless fecundity of nature), nor the fatalism latent in rationalistic theologies such as deism. God “fathers-forth”– the begetter and maker of what he did not have to beget or make. He has loved all things into being.

Begetting them, he is to be found by means of them, whether the spiraling galaxy or the conch on the shore. Man’s proper response, then, after he has paid his loving attention to trout and finches and things that show forth that breathless list of adjectives, is a quiet movement of the heart: “Praise him.” Two simple words, for a simple act that does not change: praising the Maker of change, who dwells in eternal light.

Posted in Aesthetics, Anthony Esolen, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poetry, Prayer | Tagged Anthony Esolen, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Glory be to God for dappled things, God creates from nothing, God is Love, Pied Beauty | 1 Comment »

The Importance Of Prayer – Ralph Martin

June 28, 2010

Praying With Others

A chapter from The Fulfillment of Desire by Ralph Martin…

JOHN OF THE CROSS MAKES THE POINT that sensual attractions are so strong and so rooted in our nature that efforts of renunciation by themselves will not be totally successful. A greater attraction, a greater love has to inflame us in order to enable us to let go of lesser, disordered loves.

A love of pleasure, and attachment to it, usually fires the will toward the enjoyment of things that give pleasure. A more intense enkindling of another, better love (love of the soul’s Bridegroom) is necessary for the vanquishing of the appetites and the denial of this pleasure. By finding satisfaction and strength in this love, it will have the courage and constancy to readily deny all other appetites. The love of its Bridegroom is not the only requisite for conquering the strength of the sensitive appetites; an enkindling with urgent longings of love is also necessary. For the sensory appetites are moved and attracted toward sensory objects with such cravings that if the spiritual part of the soul is not fired with other, more urgent longings for spiritual things, the soul will be able neither to overcome the yoke of nature nor to enter the night of sense; nor will it have the courage to live in the darkness of all things by denying its appetites for them…How easy, sweet, and delightful these longings for their Bridegroom make all the trials and dangers of this night seem.
John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book I Chap 14

Bernard of Clairvaux makes the same point. He speaks of a depth of prayer that can properly be called a sleep or death — not a death to life, but a death to what holds us back from true life and union.

How I long often to he the victim of this death that I may escape the snares of death, that I may not feel the deadening blandishments of a sensual life, that I may be steeled against evil desire, against the surge of cupidity, against the goads of anger and impatience, against the anguish of worry and the miseries of care. . . . How good the death that does not take away life but makes it better; good in that the body does not perish but the soul is exalted.
Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs, Vol III, Sermon 52

Bernard calls this deeper prayer of “sleep” or “death” contemplation.

This kind of ecstasy, in my opinion, is alone or principally called contemplation. Not to be gripped during life by material desires is a mark of human virtue; but to gaze without the use of bodily likenesses is the sign of angelic purity. Each, however, is a divine gift, each is a going out of oneself, each a transcending of self, but in one one goes much farther than in the other.

One of the main ways we open ourselves for this greater love to possess us is through prayer. We need to remember though that the spiritual life is not primarily about certain practices of piety and techniques of prayer, but about a relationship. It’s about responding to the One who has created and redeemed us, and who loves us with a love stronger than death, a love that desires to raise us from the dead. Much that is true of human relationships is also true of our relationship with God. Human relationships of friendship or marriage need time, attention, and care for them to continue and to grow. The same is true of our relationship with God. We have been called to union but we need to respond. As we turn to God in conversion or in a deeper awakening, besides turning away from deliberate sin—which deforms the soul, blocks the relationship and offends the Person who has sacrificed His life for us—-we need to positively build the relationship by paying attention to the One who loves us. Prayer is at root simply paying attention to God. All the saints speak of its importance.

Thérèse speaks of the power and simplicity of prayer.

How great is the power of Prayer! . . . I say very simply to God what I wish to say, without composing beautiful sentences, and He always understands me.

For me, prayer is an aspiration of the heart, it is a simple glance directed to heaven, it is a cry of gratitude and love in the midst of trial as well as joy; finally, it is something great, supernatural, which expands my soul and unites me to Jesus.
Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, Chapter XI, p242

Teresa of Avila tells us that the entrance into the mansions (or stages) of the spiritual journey begins with prayer. Francis de Sales tells us that while the struggle against sin is crucial, even more so is prayer.

Since prayer places our intellect in the brilliance of God’s light and exposes our will to the warmth of his heavenly love, nothing else so effectively purifies our intellect of ignorance and our will of depraved affections. . . . I especially counsel you to practice mental prayer, the prayer of the heart, and particularly that which centers on the life and passion of our Lord. By often turning your eyes on him in meditation, your whole soul will be filled with him. You will learn his ways and form your actions after the pattern of his.
Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Part II Chapter 1

Bernard concurs:

But I must insist that we can only dare to undertake either of these things [turning from sin, turning to God] by grace, not by nature, nor even by effort. It is wisdom which overcomes malice, not effort or nature. There is no difficulty in finding grounds for hope: the soul must turn to the Word.
Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs, Vol III, Sermon 82

In Teresa’s and also in Francis’s time there was a great deal of discussion about vocal versus mental prayer, in a way that is not of as great interest today Vocal prayer — prayer said out loud — was usually understood to be a matter of reciting the memorized prayers such as the “Our Father” or the “Hail Mary.” Mental prayer was generally understood to be prayer that was said with the attention of the mind, the words formed interiorly and not spoken out loud. Mental prayer also could be understood as contemplative prayer — prayer that consists in being aware of the presence of the Lord, understanding truths, or inflaming the will with love. Yet because of a concern that people could get into spiritual trouble and possibly be deceived if they practiced mental prayer, the spiritual advice commonly given at the time was that most people should stick with vocal prayer. Teresa, Francis, and many of the saints had to fight against this overly cautious approach in order to free people to respond to the way the Holy Spirit works in our lives by a communication of His presence apart from (or along with) words.

Teresa of Avila makes the point that it isn’t whether the prayers are memorized or not or said out loud or not that determines their value, but whether we pay attention to what we’re saying and to whom we’re speaking.

Bernard addresses his brothers in a similar vein, exhorting them to pay attention to what they are saying when they chant the Psalms.

So, dearest brothers, I exhort you to participate always in the divine praises correctly and vigorously: vigorously, that you may stand before God with as much zest as reverence, not sluggish, not drowsy, not yawning, not sparing your voices, not leaving words half-said or skipping them, not wheezing through the nose with an effeminate stammering, in a weak and broken tone, but pronouncing the word.s of the Holy Spirit with becoming manliness and resonance and affection; and correctly, that while you chant you ponder on nothing but what you chant.
Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs, Vol III, Sermon 47

Methods of Prayer
Many spiritual writers, including some of the saints, offer suggestions concerning methods in prayer. Francis de Sales, very much influenced by his own experience of Saint Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises, offers some suggested structures and formats for the practice of meditation and prayer. He suggests six steps as a guide to moving through a time of prayer.

1. Place yourself in the presence of God. Remember that God is near, not far away. He is in the very depth of your heart, your spirit. “Begin all your prayers, whether mental or vocal, in the presence of God. Keep to this rule without any exception and you will quickly see how helpful it will be.”

2. Ask the Lord to help you pay attention to Him, to open yourself up to His Word and presence.

3. Pick out a passage from Scripture, a scene from the Gospel, a mystery of the Faith, or a passage from some spiritual reading. If the subject matter you have chosen lends itself to it, picture yourself in the same place as the action or event that is happening. Use your imagination to place yourself in the midst of the scene near Jesus, with the disciples.

4. Think about what you’ve chosen to meditate on in such a way as to increase your love for the Lord or for virtue. The purpose is not primarily to study or know more, but to increase your love for God and the life of discipleship. 5 If good affections should rise up — gratitude for God’s mercy, awe at His majesty, sorrow for sin, desire to be more faithful, for example — yield to them.

6. Come to some practical resolutions concerning changes you would like to make as a response to these affections. For example, resolve to be more faithful in prayer, or more ready to forgive, or more eager to share the faith with others, or more determined to resist sin, in as practical and concrete a way as you can determine.

Most of all, after you rise from meditation you must remember the resolutions and decisions you have made and carefully put them into effect on that very day. This is the great fruit of meditation and without it meditation is often not only useless but even harmful. Virtues meditated on but not practiced sometimes inflate our minds and courage and we think that we are really such as we have thought and resolved to be.
Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Part II, Chap. 1

Francis recommends that we end the time of meditation-prayer with expressions of gratitude to God for the light and, affections He has given us in our time of prayer; then, an offering of ourselves to the Lord in union with the offering of Jesus; and thirdly, a time of intercession for our self and others.

At the same time, Francis doesn’t intend that the structure or method he proposes be followed mechanically if the Holy Spirit draws us to something different.

It may sometimes happen that immediately after the preparation you will feel that your affections are drawn wholly towards God. In this case, you must give them free rein and not follow the method I have shown you. Ordinarily, consideration must precede affections and resolutions. However, when the Holy Spirit gives you the affections before the consideration, you must not look for the consideration since it is used only to arouse the affections. In a word, whenever affections present themselves you must accept them and make room for them whether they come before or after the considerations.
Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Part II, Chap. 1

While Francis acknowledges the usefulness of praying the Rosary, various litanies, and fixed, written prayers, he advises us to always give the priority to mental prayer and the leading of the Holy Spirit.

However, if you have the gift of mental prayer, you should always give ir first place. Afterwards if you cannot say your vocal prayers because of your many duties or for some other reason don’t be disturbed on that account. . . . During vocal prayer if you find your heart drawn and invited to interior or mental prayer, don’t refuse to take it up. Let your mind turn very gently in that direction and don’t be concerned at not finishing the vocal prayers you intended to say. The mental prayer you substitute for them is more pleasing to God and more profitable for your soul.
Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Part II, Chap. 1

Francis makes an exception in his general advice regarding flexibility in prayer, as does Catherine of Siena: those in Holy Orders or by virtue of a rule of religious life are obligated to pray the Divine Office must keep their commitment.

The Simplicity of Prayer
Teresa of Avila points out on more than one occasion how some very simple nuns in her own convent had reached the highest state of union by reciting devoutly the “Our Father” with attention and openness to the Spirit’s presence. She tells us that the same can happen to us.

It is very possible that while you are reciting the Our Father or some other vocal prayer, the Lord may raise you to perfect contemplation.
Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection, Chap 25

Francis gives similar advice about how to say the common memorized prayers.

They must be said with strict attention of mind and with affections aroused by the meaning of the words. Do not hurry along and say many things but try to speak from your heart. A single Our Father said with feeling has greater value than many said quickly and hurriedly.
Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Part II, Chap. 1

Teresa of Avila likewise has much helpful advice on prayer. She acknowledges how important meditation and prayer are to growth in the spiritual life, but also acknowledges how difficult it can be to concentrate. In her own case, she couldn’t meditate without the help of a book for more than fourteen years.

For meditation is the basis for acquiring all the virtues, and to undertake it is a matter of life and death for all Christians… I spent 14 years never being able to practice meditation without reading. There will be many persons of this sort, and others who will be unable to meditate even with the reading but able only to pray vocally, and in this vocal prayer they will spend most of their time. There are minds so active they cannot dwell on one thing but are always restless, and to such an extreme that if they want to pause to think of God, a thousand absurdities, scruples, and doubts come to mind. . . There are some souls and minds so scattered they are like wild horses no one can stop… This restlessness is either caused by the soul’s nature or permitted by God.
Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection, Chap 16

Teresa’s comments resonate with the traditional method of prayer called lectio divina (sacred reading), a method of alternating prayer and reading that is common in the monastic life but has been found useful by many lay people as well. It’s simply a matter of taking up the Scriptures or some spiritual book, reading until our mind and heart are lifted to the Lord, and then prayerfully reflecting on what we’ve read, speaking to the Lord about it, or simply being in His presence.

Once our mind starts to wander again, we then return to the reading until we’re once again recollected, and then put the book down and turn to the Lord in any of a number of ways, from meditation to contemplation Bernard warns us not to underestimate the degree to which God is at work in what may appear to us to be simply our own “good thoughts” as a result of our meditation, prayer, or reflection

For our meditations on the Word who is the Bridegroom, on his glory, his elegance, power and majesty, become in a sense his way of speaking to us. And not only that, but when with eager minds we examine his rulings, the decrees from his own mouth (Psalms 118:13); when we meditate on his law day and night (Psalms 1:2), let us be assured that the Bridegroom is present, and that he speaks his message of happiness to us lest our trials should prove more than we can bear… Without grace man’s heart is incapable of thinking good thoughts, that its capacity to do so comes from God (2 Corinthians. 3:5): the good thought is God’s inspiration, not the heart’s offspring.
Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection, Chap 16

At the same time Bernard notes that wicked thoughts either come from us or from the devil. Neither Teresa nor Francis wants to unduly complicate the approach to prayer, and so they offer their suggestions as helps, not as rigid rules. Teresa in particular keeps reminding us that in prayer we’re primarily involved in a relationship, not an exercise of technique or the following of a method. Keeping in mind that it’s a relationship that we’re trying to respond to and nurture can oftentimes be guidance enough.

For mental prayer in my opinion is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us.
Teresa of Avila, Her Life, Chap. 8

Speak with him as a father, or a brother, or a lord, or as with a spouse; sometimes in one way, at other times in another, . . The intellect is recollected much more quickly with this kind of prayer even though it may be vocal; it is a prayer that brings with it many blessings. This prayer is called “recollection,” because the soul collects its faculties together and enters within itself to be with its God. And its divine Master comes more quickly to teach it and give it the prayer of quiet than He would through any other method it might use)
Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection, Chap 28

Teresa places a great emphasis on remembering the personal nature of what we are doing in prayer and the value of simply being aware of whom we’re speaking to, namely, praying with attention. Teresa’s sharp wit and sly humor are frequently manifested in the advice she gives.

The nature of mental prayer isn’t determined by whether or not the mouth is closed. If while speaking I thoroughly understand and know that I am speaking with God and I have greater awareness of this than I do of the words I’m saying, mental and vocal prayer are joined. If, however, others tell you that you are speaking with God while you are reciting the Our Father and at the same time in fact thinking of the world, then I have nothing to say But if you are to be speaking, as is right, with so great a Lord it is good that you consider whom you are speaking with as well as who you are, at least if you want to be polite. .

Refuse to be satisfied with merely pronouncing the words..

It is even an obligation that we strive to pray with attention. Please God that with these remedies we shall recite the Our Father well and not end up in some other irrelevant thing. I have experienced this sometimes, and the best remedy I find is to strive to center the mind upon the One to whom the words are addressed. . .

We should see and be present to the One with whom we speak without turning our backs on Him, for I don’t think speaking with God while thinking of a thousand other vanities would amount to anything else but turning our backs on Him. All the harm comes from not truly understanding that He is near, but in imagining Him as far away . . even in the midst of occupations.
Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection, Chap 28

Much of what Teresa says resonates with the strong exhortation that Pope John Paul II gave to the whole Church as we began the journey of the third millennium: to contemplate the face of Christ.

All harm comes to us from not keeping our eyes fixed on You; if we were to look at nothing else but the way, we would soon arrive.

Remember Jesus, close to your side. . . Get used to this practice! Get used to it! I’m not asking you to do anything more than look at Him.
Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection, Chap 28

Teresa, knowing our — and her own — humanity, encourages us to a truly human prayer to a God who is fully human as well as fully divine!

The soul can place itself in the presence of Christ and grow accustomed to being inflamed with love for His sacred humanity. It can keep Him ever present and speak with Him, asking for its needs and complaining of its labors, being glad with Him in its enjoyments and not forgetting Him because of them, trying to speak to Him, not through written prayers but with words that conform to its desires and needs. This is an excellent way of making progress, and in a very short time. I consider that soul advanced who strives to remain in this precious company and to profit very much by it, and who truly comes to love this Lord to whom we owe so much.
Teresa of Avila, Her Life, Chap. 12

As much as Teresa makes it clear that we must try our best to pay attention to the One to whom we are speaking~ she realizes that there are times and circumstances when that is very hard to do. Her advice on making progress in the spiritual life is completely informed by a good knowledge of human weakness, and is very realistic.

There can be exceptions at times either because of bad humors—especially if the person is melancholic—or because of faint feelings in the head so that all efforts become useless. Or it can happen that God will permit days of severe temptation in his servants for their greater good. And though in their affliction they are striving to be quiet, they cannot even be attentive to what they are saying, no matter how hard they try; nor will the intellect settle down in anything, but by the disordered way it goes about, it will seem to be in a frenzy.
Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection, Chap 24

Teresa has advice for how to handle situations like these:

‘Whoever experiences the affliction these distractions cause will see that they are not his fault; he should not grow anxious, which makes things worse, or tire him-self trying to put order into something that at the time doesn’t have any, that is, his mind. He should just pray as best he can; or even not pray but like a sick person strive to bring some relief to his soul; let him occupy himself in other works of virtue. This advice now is for persons who are careful and who have understood that they must not speak simultaneously to both God and the world.
Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection, Chap 24

Teresa is concerned that her advice not be misconstrued as toleration for laxity She makes clear that she intends this advice for people who have not brought their distracted state upon themselves through carelessness in prayer or in dallying with temptarion. In other places Teresa makes clear that among the “other works of virtue” besides prayer are acts of charity or helpfulness to others. It sounds like what my mom used to say: “Get out of yourself. Stop moping around. Stop thinking about yourself. Stop complaining. Do something good for someone else!”

It’s entirely appropriate, for many reasons, that the Carmelites refer to Teresa of Avila as “holy mother.”

Time and Place
What advice do the saints have regarding how much time we should spend in prayer? The goal, as Scripture indicates, is to pray always!

Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
(1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)

To be in such a state of union with God that even in the midst of activities there is a current of thanks, praise, adoration, and intercession rising from our hearts is indeed our call. But the saints also indicate that to reach such a state of prayerfulness in our life definite times of prayer are necessary.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, incorporating as it does the wisdom of the saints and Doctors in its beautiful sections on prayer, echoes this advice of Teresa.

But we cannot pray “at all times” if we do not pray at specific times, consciously willing it.
(Catechism of the Catholic Church 2697)

Teresa, at various points, indicates that unless one spends sufficient time in prayer, progress will definitely be slowed. A sufficient amount of time needs to be devoted to prayer just to withdraw from the busyness of life. In Teresa’s reformed Carmelite convents, the nuns participated in the Liturgy of the Hours and in Mass, and had an hoar of meditation and prayer in the morning and another hour before the evening meal.

But what about the overwhelming majority of the Church that doesn’t live in cloistered monasteries? Francis de Sales has very specific advice for people involved in the world of work and family — advice that may surprise us.

Set aside an hour every day before the mid-day meal, if possible early in the morning, when your mind is less distracted and fresher after the night’s rest. Don’t extend it for more than an hour unless your spiritual director expressly tells you to do so.
Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Part II, Chap. 1

Francis is writing for business people, laborers, soldiers, government administrators, housewives people with the whole range of worldly responsibilities. ‘What are we to make of his advice?

I think it’s good advice, and, like him, I think it’s possible for virtually all of us. How? If we’re not used to praying an hour a day we should perhaps begin with a shorter period of time. Like Teresa, we ~shou1d probably utilize an approach that alternates prayerful spiritual reading and times of prayer, drawing on the suggestions about how to structure a time of meditation and prayer Just as with physical exercise in the beginning it may be hard and we’re not capable of much — with practice our capacity increases and it becomes easier; so too with prayer.

Francis advises not to pray longer than an hour a day (in addition to Mass) without the advice of a spiritual director, as a safeguard against the possible neglect of the responsibilities of our state in life and the possible danger of spiritual deception, pride, or imbalance in our life There are perhaps many people who at some point in their spiritual Journey will be called to longer or more frequent times of prayer At these points seeking wise spiritual counsel would be a very good idea.

Determining how much rime we should be spending in a time of personal prayer each day is an important decision, but so also is the decision about when and where. Francis recommends taking the time of personal prayer as early in the day as possible, before the busyness of life begins to fill our consciousness and the inevitable distractions, interruptions, and demands begin to accelerate. For some this may mean immediately upon arising. For some it might mean after breakfast. Each of us knows our own situation best!.

Also, as our situation changes, we may need to change the time we dedicate to personal prayer. Some people have found it practicable to pray during the lunch break in a nearby park or church Some people have found it workable to pray right before the evening meal. Bernard recommends the advantages of praying in the silence of the night when others are asleep, when we can pour out our heart freely24

For example, now that we have no small children at home and ‘a school carpools, my wife and I try to attend the 7 00 a m Mass in a local parish church each weekday and spend time in the church afterwards taking a time of prayer. We also look for an opportunity to return to prayer at some point later in the day. This works very well right now, but in earlier years we couldn’t have done it this way.

I must say, from my own experience, that the longer in the day I put off having the initial prayer time, the more likely it is for it not to happen at all or to happen in a very ragged way

Francis recommends praying in a church, as this may be the best place to avoid interruptions and have the atmosphere most conducive to prayer. On the other hand, a church may not be convenient to our home or work; or if it is, it may not be open for prayer during times that we can pray, or there may be activities happening in the church after Mass that make praying difficult. If there is a church in the area that has an adoration chapel, this can be a wonderful place to pray.

Prayerfulness throughout the Day
Francis is very clear about the need to take a personal prayer time each day, but he also communicates a vision of prayerfulness throughout the day and offers some suggestions about how this can happen. He actually proposes a pattern for our day which will help us to “remember” the Lord at various points. Here are his suggestions.

As soon as we wake up turn to the Lord, thank Him for another day, dedicate it to Him and ask His help for living it in a way pleasing to Him.
Take a substantial time for personal prayer (including spiritual reading) as early in the morning as feasible.
Attend daily Mass as often as possible.
As far as circumstances permit, pray the Liturgy of the Hours.25
Withdraw into the cell of our souls periodically during the day to remember the Lord, to be aware of His presence and speak to Him. We can do this even in the midst of activities.
Always remember to retire at various times into the solitude of your own heart even while outwardly engaged in discussions or transactions with others.

Bernard also has tremendous insight into how solitude is possible in the midst of the world.

Therefore you must withdraw, mentally rather than physically, in your intention, in your devotion, in your spirit. For Christ the Lord is a spirit before your face (Lamentations 4:20), and he demands solitude of the spirit more than of the body, although physical withdrawal can be of benefit when the opportunity offers, especially in time of prayer… Apart from that the only solitude prescribed for you is that of the mind and spirit You enjoy this solitude if you refuse to share in the common gossip if you shun involvement in the problems of the hour and set store by the fancies that attract the masses; if you reject what everybody covets, avoid disputes, make light of losses, and pay no heed to injuries.

Otherwise you are not alone even when alone. Do you not see that you can be alone when in company and in company when alone? However great the crowds that surround you, you can enjoy the benefits of solitude if you refrain from curiosity about other people’s conduct and shun rash judgment. Even if you should see your neighbor doing what is wrong, refuse to pass judgment on him, excuse him instead. Excuse his intention even if you cannot excuse his act which may be the fruit of ignorance or surprise or chance.
Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs, Vol II, Sermon 40

Shortly before the evening meal, draw aside for a few minutes of prayer and an examination of conscience. Thank God for the blessings of the day, for any faults or sins ask His forgiveness, and renew your dedication to live for Him

Looking at the list of all the spiritual practices that Francis recommends can be overwhelming. Francis anticipates this objection. In reply he points out that very busy men, like King David and Saint Louis, king of France, by putting the Lord and devotion to Him before all else, were able to accomplish a great deal. Francis I assures that the same will be true for us.

Perform these exercises confidently, as I have marked them out for you, and God will give you sufficient leisure and strength to perform all your other duties.
Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Part II, Chap. 1

Little by little, we can make our daily life more and more prayerful, as we are able, over time, to incorporate those suggestions that work with our schedule and that we are ready for spiritually. There is a particular spiritual practice that Francis highly recommends that is possible for all of us: even on those impossible days when we are perhaps unable to undertake our normal spiritual practices, we can stay rooted in prayer by constantly addressing brief prayers to the Lord. These can be acts of love, of adoration, of faith, of hope, of petition, or simply of saying the name of Jesus — throughout the course of the day. Francis places a very high value on these simple utterances, traditionally called ejaculatory prayers or aspirations. Since the great work of devotion consists in such use of spiritual recollection and ejaculatory prayers, it can supply the lack of all other prayers, but its loss can hardly be repaired by other means. Without this exercise we cannot properly lead the contemplative life, and we can but poorly lead the active life. Without it rest is mere idleness, and labor is drudgery. Hence I exhort you to take up this practice with all your heart and never give it up.
Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Part V, Chap. 17

The short prayer that Bernard most strongly recommends is simply saying the name of Jesus. He writes in a very moving away about the power of the name of Jesus in our prayer.

The name of Jesus is more than light; it is also food. Do you not feel increase of strength as often as you remember it? What other name can so enrich the man who meditates? What can equal its power to refresh the harassed senses, to buttress the virtues, to add vigor to good and upright habits, to foster chaste affections? . . . Write what you will, I shall not relish it unless it tells of Jesus. Talk or argue about what you will, I shall not relish it if you exclude the name of Jesus. Jesus to me is honey in the mouth, music in the ear, a song in the heart.
Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs, Vol I, Sermon 15

Prayer is essential for the spiritual journey.

Posted in Prayer | Tagged Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Francis de Sales, St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Thérèse of Lisieux | 2 Comments »

Book Recommendation: The Rosary Of Our Lady – Romano Guardini

December 3, 2009

Madonna dell Granduca, Raphael

The Rosary of Our Lady is a small thin volume — it could be read in one sitting, yet it is also a volume that the reader will return to countless times. Below are some of the “keepers” I noted on my first read-through.

The Role Of Repetition In The Rosary
…Such repetition has a real meaning. Is it not an element of life? What else is the beating of the heart but a repetition? Always the same astriction and expansion; but it makes the blood circulate through the body. What else is breathing but a repetition? Always the same in and out; but by breathing we live. And is not our whole being ordered and sustained by change and repetition? Ever anew the sun rises and sets, night follows day; the round of life begins in the spring, rises, reaches its summit and sinks. What objections can one raise against these and many other repetitions? They are the order in which growth progresses, the inner kernel develops, and the form is revealed. All life realizes itself in the rhythm of external conditions and internal accomplishment. If this is so everywhere, why should it not be so in religious devotion?

The Rosary A Sojourn To A Place of Holy Tranquility
Man needs a place of holy tranquility that is pervaded by the breath of God and where he meets the great figures of the faith. This place is really the inaccessibility of God himself, which is opened to man only through Christ. All prayer begins by man becoming silent – recollecting his scattered thoughts, feeling remorse at his trespasses, and directing his thoughts toward God. If man does all this, the place is thrown open, not only as a domain of spiritual tranquility and mental concentration, but as something that comes from God.

We are always in need of this place, especially when the convulsions of the times make clear something that has always existed but which sometimes hidden by outward well-being and a prevailing “peace of mind”: namely the homelessness of our lives. In such times a great courage is demanded from us: not only a readiness to dispense with more and to accomplish more than usual, but to persevere in a vacuum we do not otherwise notice. So, we require more than ever this place of which we speak, not to creep into so to hide, but as a place to find the core of things, to become calm and confident once more. For this reason the rosary is so important in times like ours…The Rosary has the character of a sojourn. Its essence is the sheltering security of a quite, holy world that envelops the person who is praying.

The Profusion Of Human Petition In The Hail Mary: “Now And At The Hour Of Our Death”
There is something stupendous in the profusion of human petition that find expression in the Hail Mary: that she may intercede for us “now and at the hour of our death.” There is no naming of details. Every human need is included, and we all employ the same words to portray our misery. Only at two instants can we grasp this human need, instants that are decisive in our lives. The one is “now,” the hour in which we have to fulfill the will of God, to choose between good and evil, and to decide the course of our eternal destiny. The other one is “the hour of our death,” which terminates our life, giving to all deeds and past happenings the character that will count for them in eternity.

The Mystery of Christian Existence
The Apostle Paul speaks in his letters again and again of an ultimate mystery of Christian existence: namely that Christ dwells “in us.” It is now no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me,” he says in his message to the Galatians [Galatians 2:20]. He exhorts us to be faithful and vigilant, “until Christ is formed in you “[Galatians 4:19]. He sees the significance of Christian growth in “the deep knowledge of the Son of God to perfect manhood, to the mature measure of the fullness of Christ” [Ephesians 4:13], and in becoming conformed to the image of his Son, that he should be the firstborn among many brethren”[Romans 8:29].

This, in the first place, is an expression of the unison of faith and the communion of grace, just as one may say of a person that a venerated model lives in him. But there is more significance to this, more from a human standpoint: namely a communion that surpasses the joint indwelling of grace and mercy, of conviction and loyal allegiance; a participation in the reality of Christ that cannot be felt deeply enough. More also in the eyes of God; and we only rightly value the meaning of these words [of the Rosary] if we seek to understand what they mean to God….To be of real importance to him is a gift God gave to man. It is the beginning of his love…This is the mystery to which the spiritual masters refer when they speak of God’s birth in man. God not only strives to be man’s helper and guardian, as he is with all that have a being, but to have a share in his existence, to enter it, transfer himself into it, to become the Son of Man…The life of Christ is the essential and substantial fulfillment of God’s love expressed to man. God took upon himself the human form, thus he who sees Jesus sees God [John 14:9]. This means that he has not only the grace to recognize God in Jesus, but also God’s joy at dwelling as a human being in Christ. What has happened in Christ, once and for all, shall be consummated again and again, says St. Paul. Not that it will happen again physically – the Incarnation is a divinely personal event of indisputable uniqueness – but spiritually, so that it can be re-enacted in every individual man….To become a true believer means to receive the risen Christ within us. To live the life of faith is to make room for him, so that he may express himself and grow within us. Faith is finally fulfilled when Christ penetrates man’s being and becomes his one and all. The life of Christ is the theme that is given and carried out in every man anew. More and more Christ enters into his life, and God in Christ; evermore his human side is led across to Christ, and through Christ to God.

A Prayer Of Lingering
The Rosary is a prayer of lingering. One must take one’s time for it, putting the necessary time at its disposal, not only externally but internally. One who wants to pray it rightly, must put away those things that press upon him, and become purposeless and quiet…The first part of the prayer consists in beholding and penetrating, in understanding and praising whatever mystery it is that follows the name “Jesus.” After that, one’s thoughts are suspended in contemplation. In the second part of the prayer one turns to Mary as the center of the mystery, asking her intercession “now and at the hour of our death.” All petitions for body and soul, ones own and those of others, personal and general, are laid before her. Above all, the petition to participate in the mystery of Christ.

The Action Of The Rosary
It [The action of the Rosary] is not directed at anything definite; it is all embracing. It is not sharp cut, but unconstrained. The words are not anchored to a special meaning but left free, so that such pictures…. [events of the past…the future...it does not have the shape of a line but resembles a space. It acts symphonically; sees the background in the foreground, the essence in the gesture, and the past and the future in the present] may also emerge that are not directly related to it The person praying not only looks at these pictures but dwells in their company, feels them, speaks to them, and lets his own life pour into them. In this way a quietly moving world comes into being , a world in which the prayer moves with a freedom that is bound only by the number of repetitions and the theme of the mystery. This has to be learned, of course, and it requires patience. A loving patience, one is tempted to say; the kind a man needs when he strives for something beautiful and alive, and does not give in until it reveals itself…. The deeper we penetrate into these mysteries, the plainer we see that they contain the basic laws, as it were, of Christian growth.

Mary’s Faith
Mary had faith. She bowed before God as the Lord of Creation, certain that he could make his word come true beyond all natural possibilities. She entered on the unknown road along which he called her. This road led even further into the mystery, and only her faith enabled her to follow the road to the end. The sentence: “And they did not understand the word that he spoke to them.” [Luke 2:50], stands for Mary’s whole life. She “understood” only in the abundance and grace of Pentecost; earlier she was forced to trust and to obey.

Faith Needs To Increase
Faith is the foundation of our Christian life. It is awakened by God’s revelation. In fact, it has grown out of that very root, for the same power in which God makes himself known to us, also enables us to hear his word and remain faithful to him. With this the new life starts; not with one’s own reason and strength, but with God’s word and grace. As soon as faith diminishes, we are like Peter on the sea – we sink. We always need faith, and the more the longer we live. The more life broadens, the more faith we need, because the more we learn of how impenetrable human existence is. So we ask the Lord that he may “increase our faith.”

Hope
Hope is confidence in God’s power to accomplish all things. He has promised that we shall become new men, and that his creation shall be a “new heaven and a new earth” [Apoc. 21:1]. This is gainsaid by the impression made on us by worldly things; by the course our life is taking; by the opinions of people around us; by our own daily insufficiency and sin – by everything. Hope is the “nevertheless” of faith. In spite of all contradiction, the new life is within us, and God will complete it. We trust in him despite all opposition. But that is difficult, sometimes even impossible. So we must ask again that the Lord “may strengthen our hope.”

The Love Of God And The Meaning Of Mary’s Life
God is driven by his love to give himself to us, not out of some dark impulse, but in the unblemished freedom of his sovereignty: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son, that those who believe in him may not perish, but may have life everlasting” [John 3:16]

The Angel’s message to Mary was the request that she receive this love in her heart, and henceforth live out of it. It is here that Christian love began on earth. The answer Mary gave the message was a surpassing of herself, a readiness to obey. Out of this grew not only her felicity – remember the jubilant praises that mounted from her heart when she greeted Elizabeth:

And Mary said:
“My soul glorifies the Lord
    and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful
      of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
    for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
      holy is his name.
His mercy extends to those who fear him,
      from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
      he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
      but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
      but has sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
      remembering to be merciful
to Abraham and his descendants forever,
      even as he said to our fathers.”
Luke 1:46-55

–but also her lasting sacrifice. Again and again she had to re-enact what seemed to be God’s self-abandonment in him who as her one and all. Again and again her Son was taken from her into alien parts, to obey the will of the Father, until at the last hour, when she would no longer be his mother only, he said, “Woman behold thy son.” [John 19:26]. To accept this, to stand the test over and over, and to grow ever more in charity, was the meaning of her life.

The Completion And Sanctification Of Human Love
When we hear of the love of God, we understand it instinctively out of our own human love, as its completion and sanctification. In truth, it is the consummation of the love that is of God. It means that beyond ourselves we merge into his love, and that it begins with obedience, “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.” [John 5:3]. And obedience it remains; only now the obedience that was burdensome in the beginning has become joyful and free. Out of this comes the essential meaning of our life: that in it the will of God matters more than our own. We may surmise the meaning of this when we read the words form the letter to the Romans: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Recognizing The Truth
Above all, it is when man is touched for the first time by the person and the word of Christ – be it through another man, or a book, or an inner experience – that he recognizes the truth and craves to embrace it. The Lord, in his body and living might, enters into him at this moment. Now begins, as we mentioned before, the penetration and growth of Christ in man; the “infiguration” of man in Him. From here on the summons is always repeated. Every hearing of his truth, every radiation of his image, every reminder of his commandments, demand that we take him deep into our hearts and put ourselves willingly at his disposal.

The Sacred Domain In Christian Life
In every Christian life there is a sacred domain of nascent growth in which dwells Christ – a domain in which we are more firmly rooted than we are in our own. There he works and grows; takes possession of our being; draws strength towards him; penetrates our thought and volition; sways our emotions and sentiments, so that the word of the Apostle may come true: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”[St. Paul in Galatians 2:20]…This takes place in every Christian as often as that inner life which is divined by faith steps into the clarity of knowledge, into the distinctiveness of action, and into the decisiveness of testimony. In every one of us Christ is born as often as he penetrates, as essence and standard, into any deed or happening. One day this happens with particular significance; namely when it dawns on us, clear and strong, who Christ is, so that he becomes he governing reality of our inner lives…What God has given us, if we believe and obey, does not belong to us by nature. The new life is not ours like a talent or a characteristic; it is a gift, and it remains a gift. It is governed by God’s will and guidance, and we must always be ready for a call away from ourselves, a transfer to duty, renunciation, and destiny that have their meaning only in the will of God.

Remoteness From Christ
Christ is the center; our faith in him is firm and loving. But then he disappears, often suddenly and apparently without the slightest reason. A remoteness has been created. A void is formed. Man feels forsaken. Faith seems folly. Hope he must maintain “against all hope.” Everything becomes heavy, wearisome and senseless. He must walk alone and seek. But one day he finds Christ again – and it is such circumstances that the power of the Father’s will becomes evident to him.

The Graveness Of Sin
The graveness (with which God views our salvation: so gravely that he not only bestowed this salvation but himself assumed human nature and became the child of Mary) breaks through in the mysteries of the sorrowful rosary. They also reveal God’s love but by showing us the frightfulness of sin. The question of what sin really is, we cannot answer ourselves – and this is its result – or we are blinded by it. Its meaning dawns upon is when we realize what God has done to triumph over it. It is that frightful thing which God in his omniscience and justice decreed must be expiated through the suffering and death of the Incarnate Word…The worst part of sin is its hiddenness. It hides everywhere under the pretense of being something natural, something unavoidable; the pretence that the power, gravity, or tragedy of life is expressed by it. If we are witnesses of Christ’s fate, our eyes are opened wide. It is an important moment in the life of a Christian when he is touched the first time by horror at the reality of sin. On all sides we meet this horror—but the creature does not know what it is that frightens him most deeply. All existence labors beneath the spell of sin. In Christ’s anguish it breads through to a last and most terrible transparency. Because of it , the Son of God feels the terror of this hour. But each of us must himself realize, in the deepest part of his being, that it it the fearfulness of my own sins that are here revealed.

Christianity And The Body
Christianity does not say that the body is evil and its passion sin — not that sin cannot enter passion or evil find root in the body. To become a Christian does not mean to despise or destroy the body but to do away with blindness and to recognize the evil that is at work in nature. It means to fight for purity of body and soul, and even to accept bodily pain as a means of purification. If the believer does this, it is Christ’s purity that penetrates into him.

The Crowning With Thorns
The dignity of man is revealed by his head. The crown is the emblem of the royal majesty which belongs to God. The mockery of Christ is directed at the head o the Lord, who wears invisibly the crown of the “King of Kings” The soldiers make a mock king out of him. But behind their hollow cruelty lies another wish, one that seeks to make of him – we venture the word – a “mock-god.” All the mockery on earth is combined here to abolish God’s dignity, and with it the dignity of man which is rooted in God. Man’s lie is interwoven with pride, rebellion and vanity, sometimes open, mostly hidden. Their roots are invisible to human eyes and they stretch beyond the human will. The Lord unveils their power by giving them the possibility to be turned against himself. The pride with which we strut about and the vanities we relish are turned for the Son of God into a pattern of humiliation. His suffering is as great as the measure of human evil.

The Unbearable-ness Of The Cross
“As they led him away, they seized Simon from Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country, and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus.”[ Luke 23:26], because he could not go on. Everything that means a burden in life is shown here in its last fearfulness: toil, destitution, pain, the people around one, one’s own existence, the inner void, the unbearableness of all things. In the last analysis, everything is a “burden”…because sin has stamped it with the curse of hardship. Man seeks to escape it. He will not take it upon his shoulders and persevere beneath it. Indolence, cowardice, resistance against the hardships of life, all mean here for Christ the obligation to carry a weight that is beyond his strength.

It Is Consummated
Before the end, the Lord spoke the words “It is consummated. [John 19:30]. The whole mystery of this; all is “consummated.” What happened here had its prelude in the creation of the world, the time when everything was generated. Then sin tore everything asunder, and all was lost. Now the Lord draws everything back again unto his bosom, and suffers it in a way that is known only to himself. In this he reaches in to the abyss of grace and lets it gush forth. And from this issues forth the new creation. The new start that is given us; the forces from which the “new man in us” can grow and rise into eternity; the new heaven and the new earth that will one day surround us – all of these issue from this hour.

And this we must know. We become Christians in the measure that we are awakened and penetrated by the is knowledge of the agony and death suffered by Christ. From this point our own suffering is transformed.

While our suffering was formerly only the consequence of our guilt, it is now part of the mystery of the Cross. It shares in the force that changes the old existence into the new. In the eyes o the world, suffering is inconsolable to the last. Nothing can really help it. Mostly we do not notice it, because it does not last very long, or because our attention is diverted. But when it becomes great and we have to face it, then we see there is only one help for our suffering and that help comes from suffering itself. Since the time of Christ’s passion it has always been so. It was then there was raised up a fearful and blessed ground onto which we might safely step; and the strength has been given us to change the old life into the new if we suffer together with Christ. If man understands this mystery and commits himself to it, he has reached the center of all things, and all goes well.

Mary Stood “Beneath The Cross”
Scripture does not speak of Mary in its last days of Jesus …(until) only at the end, when we are told that “now there was standing by the Cross of Jesus his mother” [John 19:25]. This sentence covers all of the preceding events. She always stood “beneath the cross,” and never withdrew from the holy and terrible domain of Christ’s passion. It was natural for her to be present in whatever place it happened. And just as natural that she would come to know all that had occurred. Every breath the Lord drew passed thorough her breast; every throb of his heart was her own; and nothing happened to him that had not also “penetrated her soul,” as Simeon had foretold. So we must draw her into it all.

She connects us with all these happenings. It is she who causes us not only to look and meditate, but also makes us aware that all these happenings concern us, every one of us, concern me. She is the reason I do not run away when my faint heartedness becomes unbearable, but that I remain. She herself remained, “until all was consummated.” And so must I.

The Resurrection of the New Man Within Us
Paul says in the letter to the Romans that “our old self” should be “crucified” and die and be “buried in Christ.” If this happens, then “as Christ has arisen from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we may also walk in newness of life” [Romans 6:4]. This dying and entombing of the old self is a constant process within us: through every struggle against evil; through every conquest of self; through every suffering bravely borne; through every sacrifice of love and charity. But through it is also accomplished the resurrection of the new man. At times, very deep within us, and covered by earthly insufficiency and calamities, we feel the secret spark of this ever-holy and living flame, “the glory of the sons of God” (Romans 8:21). For the rest, we have to believe.

A Christian (Mary’s) View Of The Ascension
It applied to Mary, above all, when Paul said: “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” [Colossians. 3 1-2] Her son was “above” and her heart was with him, and her whole being strove upward to him.

Posted in Prayer | Tagged A Prayer Of Lingering, Faith Needs To Increase, Fr. Romano Guardini, Hope, Mary’s Faith, Now And At The Hour Of Our Death, Recognizing The Truth, Repetition In The Rosary, The Action Of The Rosary, The Completion And Sanctification Of Human Love, The Crowning With Thorns, The Gravity Of Sin, The Rosary Of Our Lady, The Unbearable-ness Of The Cross | Leave a Comment »

Book Recommendation: Reading Selections From The Examen Prayer – Fr. Timothy M. Gallagher

November 13, 2009

A review by Peter Fennessy on Amazon says: “In Jesuit spirituality enormous emphasis is placed on the form of prayer called the Examen. Ignatius Loyola would dispense his followers from virtually any religious observance but never from the Examen. When this exercise was understood as looking at the commandments and at personal violations of the commandments — an examination of conscience really, a preparation for confession — the prayer was negative in feel and its importance on a daily basis was difficult to fathom. But once the essence of the exercise was rediscovered as on-going discernment of God’s presence, activity, self-revelation and calling– an examination of consciousness — the emphasis was understandable. The foreword to the book incidentally is written by Fr. George Aschenbrenner, SJ, whose 1972 article was pivotal in the rediscovery of the examen. Not many books have been written since on the topic, and this is the best I have come across so far. Fr. Gallagher… explains not only the prayer itself, but the motives, settings, results, etc. He draws on a day in the life of Ignatius to illustrate the prayer and on dozens of examples (He has taught the prayer to a number of people in retreat settings) to illustrate the way people in all walks of life have prayed and adapted it.

The problem I have with prayer is falling in and out of it. It’s become almost like dieting. I spent long hours, years at a time, really, seeking to make prayer a regimen, a habit, I would not break, but it wasn’t like that in the end.

I enjoy doing it when I do it, yet too often find days, weeks, months going by when all I can do when coming back home is having my head hit the pillow. It is certainly not what prayer should be – so I seem to do it now when I feel moved to. Exercise and diet are regimens; prayer should be different – it should come from a loving relationship with God – and I surprise myself when I realize I don’t have that. I had it before, why not now?

An Outline of the Examen
This outline is based on Ignatius’s presentation of the examen in the Spiritual Exercises (no. 43). I place it here as an introduction to all that follows; it may also serve, once the content of this book has been assimilated, as a practical tool in praying the examen.
Transition: I become aware of the love with which God looks upon me as I begin this examen.
Step One: Gratitude. I note the gifts that God’s love has given me this day, and I give thanks to God for them.
Step Two: Petition. I ask God for an insight and a strength that will make this examen a work of grace, fruitful beyond my human capacity alone.
Step Three: Review. With my God, I review the day. I look for the stirrings in my heart and the thoughts that God has given me this day. I look also for those that have not been of God. I review my choices in response to both, and throughout the day in general.
Step Four: Forgiveness. I ask for the healing touch of the forgiving God who, with love and respect for me, removes my heart’s burdens.
Step Five: Renewal. I look to the following day and, with God, plan concretely how to live it in accord with God’s loving desire for my life.
Transition: Aware of God’s presence with me, I prayerfully conclude the examen.

The Incomparable Value Of Gratitude
In one of his letters Ignatius explains more at length his thought regarding gratitude. In speaking of what is for him the almost unendurable thought of ingratitude, Jgnatius energetically describes — both by negation and by affirmation — the unique power of gratitude in our relationship with God and with each other. He writes:

“May the highest grace and the everlasting love of Christ our Lord be our never-failing protection and help. It seems to me, in the light of the divine Goodness, though others may think differently, that ingratitude is one of the things most worthy of detestation before our Creator and Lord, and before all creatures capable of his divine and everlasting glory, out of all the evils and sins which can be imagined. For it is a failure to recognizethe good things, the graces, and the gifts received. As such, it is the cause, beginning, and origin of all evils and sins. On the contrary, recognitionand gratitude for the good things and gifts received is greatly loved and esteemed both in heaven and on earth.”

It would be difficult to express more strongly a sense of the incomparable value of gratitude. If you and I were asked to name the most unbearable of all evils and sins in this world, what might we choose? If you and I were asked to identify “the cause, beginning, and origin of all evils and sins” in our world, how might we reply? For Ignatius, who has become so conscious of God as constantly pouring out gifts of love upon our world and upon each one of us, the answer to both questions is utterly clear: it is the simple failure to recognize (des-conocimiento) “the good things, the graces, and the gifts received” from God, simply not to know that there is a God who loves us and who is unceasingly, even this very day, bestowing gifts of love upon us.

What will happen in our lives and in our world when the recognition (conocimiento) of these gifts begins to grow within us? When day after day we consciously choose to recognize these gifts and the Giver’s love for us that is revealed through them? Then, Ignatius says, something “greatly loved and esteemed both in heaven and on earth” will come into our hearts, bringing great blessings into our lives. The first step in the practice of Ignatian examen is exactly this: “to give thanks to God our Lord for the benefits received” (Spiritual Exercises, 43) in the course of the hours we are reviewing — to recognize these gifts and, through them, God’s personal love for us.

In its first step, then, the examen begins with what is most fundamental in our spiritual lives. When the Scriptures record the history of God’s saving work in the world, the primary reality is always what God does. The people’s response is vital to their relationship with God as salvation history unfolds, but it is never the first reality; that is always the work of God, who takes the initiative in leading the people toward salvation. And what God continually does, Ignatius says, is to pour out gifts upon this people, past and present. The first step in the examen consists of recognizing the primary reality that shapes our daily lives. Some examples will concretize what this might mean in practice.

It Is All About Something That God Does
On one occasion when I took part in a conversation regarding the examen, one person said: “When I make the examen in the evening, I ask the Lord: What do you want to show me about this day? What do you want me to see about this day?” “Because,” she said, “it is all about something that God does. It is all about grace.” In a few words she had touched the core of what makes the examen effective in our lives. It is all about something that God does; it is all about grace.

These are not just words. Human effort is indispensable in the practice of examen, but those who undertake it quickly realize that they cannot hope for a faithful and fruitful practice of the examen simply through their own efforts. Their experience teaches them clearly that the insight and transforming power that the examen offers are essentially the work of God’s grace within us (1 Corinthians. 15:10). In the examen, then, after recalling the gifts of God’s love (step one) and before reviewing the movements of our hearts and our response to them throughout the day (step three), Ignatius invites us to turn to God in humble prayer, asking for the grace that alone can make our examen fruitful (Spiritual Exercises, 43). This faith-inspired and hope-filled asking is the second step of the examen; in this step, desire, now warmed by gratitude, takes shape as a petition of the heart, asking that vivifying grace effect in us what God has inspired us to “wish and desire” (Spiritual Exercises, 48) as we make the examen each day.

The grace we humbly seek is twofold: the gift of understanding, which opens the way to new freedom.’ In this second step we pray for deeper insight into God’s concrete workings in our day and into any interior movements opposed to those workings, so that we may act more surely in overcoming all that hinders our freedom for growth in our relationship with God.

Spiritual Consolation And Desolation
Spiritual consolation and spiritual desolation — times of energizing joy in the Lord and times of interior heaviness in our life of faith — are the common experience of us all. How aware of these are we when our hearts experience them? And how do we respond to them? Thoughts arise in all of us, both God-inspired thoughts that offer clarity for spiritually fruitful action and confusing thoughts inspired by the enemy (from the tempter, from within the self, from our surroundings), which, if unreflectively followed, will lead to spiritual harm. Again, how aware of such thoughts are we? Can we discern which are of God and should be followed, and which are not and should be rejected?

Like Ignatius, we may have expectations of the way God will act in our lives, which may occasion interior struggles when events prove, in fact, different from our expectations. When such struggles occur, how conscious are we of their cause? How quickly are we aware of that cause? Are we able, like Ignatius, to strive to harmonize the desires of our hearts with the desires of God’s heart for us, and so progress toward the peace that flows from communion of heart with God?

Each of our days is filled with a richness of interior experience: love, hopes, anxieties, joys, fears, attractions, resistances, desires, disinclinations, all accompanied by an endless flux of varied thoughts. This interior experience occurs in the context of continual and constantly changing activity: interactions with others, conversations, meals, prayer, work, travel, projects, planning, and decision-making. In the prayer of examen we ask:

Where was God in all of this today? Toward what was the Lord calling me in the day? How did I respond to this call? Were there inclinations and thoughts this day that were not of God? If there were, was I able to discern and resist them? Was the use of my freedom in accord with God’s loving desire for me today?

Ignatius’s experience is his own, and it is furthermore the experience of one long accustomed to a discerning awareness of personal spiritual experience. Further examples will serve to expand our vision of how step three might appear in the concrete reality of daily spiritual living today. These examples will situate the examen in some of the widely diverse spiritual contexts of individual lives. God and empowers us to be agents of healing forgiveness in our communities, in our families, and in society as a whole.

At this point the wisdom of the order in the steps of the examen emerges. Within the examen much has preceded and prepared us for the fourth step; this context is key to praying the fourth step as Ignatius intends it. For Ignatius, God’s love is always the first consideration, and all else is viewed after and only in the light of this love. The first step in the examen, and the basis for all that follows, is simply to notice the endless outpouring of God’s gifts of love to us in the day. When the human heart knows that another heart loves it deeply, faithfully, and unconditionally, it loses all fear. It may ask with trust for any forgiveness it seeks because it already knows that it is unshakably loved. The prayer of step one (gratitude) is uniquely powerful in preparing space in our hearts for the prayer of step four (forgiveness).

If indeed the prayer of examen is a matter not only of moral growth but also of discerning the spiritual stirrings of our hearts: then the value of such spiritual accompaniment is evident. In his Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius always presumes the assistance of a competent spiritual guide in the process of discernment, a need that remains even as we grow in a personal ability to discern:

He or she can, by listening well, help us to notice and say for ourselves what we might never clearly uncover for ourselves unless we were trying to tell some trusted and interested listener — a listener who has adequate learning and experience to be of help.

What form might this spiritual accompaniment take?

•       Spiritual direction, that is, regular meetings with a capable spiritual guide, is a solidly attested element of our spiritual tradition and can be of great assistance in praying the examen.
•    For some people, occasional meetings with an experienced spiritual companion may be the most realistic form of such spiritual accompaniment.
•    Participation in groups of spiritual formation with qualified leadership may be another avenue to obtain such spiritual support.
•    Conversation with spiritual friends who share the same journey can also be highly encouraging in the practice of examen.

Such forms of spiritual accompaniment are all the more important for persons living in a culture that itself provides less spiritual “accompaniment” than in the day of Ignatius.

Competent spiritual accompaniment provides the answer to many of the difficulties that dedicated persons may encounter in praying the examen (Spiritual Exercises, 326). At times — as is true of the spiritual life in general — notwithstanding our sincere willingness and diligent efforts, we may feel discouraged as we pray the examen. The examen may not seem fruitful in the way we had hoped, and we may even find it disheartening in some measure. We may consequently experience a certain diminishment of our energy to continue in its practice. As all that we have discussed earlier indicates, there may be many reasons for such difficulties. The surest way to navigate safely through them is conversation with a capable spiritual companion. Without such conversation, we may tend simply to relinquish the prayer of examen in these times of difficulty. Aided by such conversation, these very struggles become stepping-stones to new growth in the examen and through it to broader growth in our spiritual lives.

A Prayer That Itself Presupposes Another Level Of Prayer
A glance at Ignatius’s practice of examen on March 12, 1544, reveals that his prayerful review occurs within a day marked by various times of prayer. Ignatius prays upon rising, prays as he prepares for Mass, prays throughout the Mass itself, prays again after the Mass… a prayer in which Ignatius meets the God “who loves me more than I love myself.” From the richness of that communion with God in habitual times of prayer, the desire for ongoing communion with God throughout the day is born. It is this desire, as we have seen, that fuels the practice of examen. Our relationship with God in faithful daily prayer is the fertile soil in which a fruitful practice of the examen takes root and grows.

As Aschenbrenner so clearly notes, the examen is prayer but a prayer that itself presupposes another level of prayer in our lives.Every step, then, that we take to grow in relationship with God through faithful prayer prepares the ground for our practice of examen. Is it superfluous to suggest once more that this might be profitably discussed with a spiritual guide? Or with others who share the same longing?

As with the examen and spiritual direction, here too a principle of mutual benefit holds. Loving communion with God in formal times of prayer (meditation on Scripture, Mass, the Liturgy of the Hours, lectio divina, and other forms of prayer) awakens the desire to find that God of love throughout the day as well, and so leads to the examen. The examen in turn expands that relationship of love beyond the formal times of prayer and into the concrete activity of the day. In this way the formal times of prayer are not only occasional welcome moments of communion with God, but also flow more easily from and into the day of which they are a part, much as we see in Ignatius’s March 12, 1544.

These are not just words. When our hearts rejoice to encounter God in habitual and faithfully observed times of prayer and, consequently, yearn to experience that communion more frequently and more deeply throughout the day as well, then we are ready for the practice of examen.

A Transition Into Prayer
Ignatius himself began his prayer with this living awareness of God’s loving presence to him. An eyewitness tells of how Ignatius used to pray on the open terrace of the community’s house in Rome:

He would stand there and take off his hat; without stirring he would fix his eyes on the heavens for a short while. Then, sinking to his knees, he would make a lowly gesture of reverence to God. After that he would sit on a bench, for his body’s weakness did not permit him to do otherwise. There he was, head uncovered, tears trickling drop by drop, in such sweetness and silence, that no sob, no sigh, no noise, no movement of the body was noticed.

Ignatius begins his prayer with a brief moment in which he simply absorbs the joyful reality of God’s presence to him. His awareness of God’s loving gaze upon him fills him with “sweetness and silence,” and moves him deeply and surely into the prayer to follow.

When in his Spiritual Exercises Ignatius counsels such a transition into prayer, he is evidently speaking from his own rich experience of prayer. Ignatius invites us, on the threshold of our formal time of prayer, to pause “for the time I would take to pray an Our Father” and “with my understanding raised on high” to consider “how God our Lord looks upon me” (SpirEx, 75). This transitional space need not, Ignatius tells us, be overly lengthy:

“the time I would take to pray an Our Father.” As Ignatius’s words further indicate, what we consider during this brief time is how God looks upon us. As so often in Ignatian prayer, the focus is not primarily on our own activity but above all on what God is doing: here on what God is doing now as I begin my time of prayer. This transition is profoundly relational; before all else we become aware simply of being with the God who is looking upon us.

The What Not The How Of Experience
As so often in his pedagogy of prayer, Ignatius simply indicates what experience, his own and others, has shown to be helpful without further specification of precisely how this indication is to be used in practice.

One woman prays a short formal prayer, an Our Father, the Soul of Christ, or a prayer of Thomas Merton, and finds that in this way she enters the living presence of the Spirit.
A man simply becomes aware of Father, Son, and Spirit, slowly pronouncing each divine name and so entering into communion with the living God.
Another person recalls the scriptural words that “Jesus, looking at him, loved him” (Matt. 10:21) and feels that gaze of love personally as he lifts his heart in prayer.

Counting The Footsteps Of Fidelity
Among “The Sayings of the Desert Fathers,” in which history and legend mingle in teaching profound spiritual truths, we read of a man who went out into the desert to dedicate his life to God. He lived there for years, devoting himself faithfully to God’s service through prayer and a life of great material simplicity. His dwelling was several miles from the nearest water, and daily he walked those miles to and from the source, carrying back the water he needed to live. Year followed upon year and he grew elderly in God’s service.

But as those years passed, his heart gradually wearied of his service: the physical privations, the labor, the endless routine of one day utterly like the next. The long daily trek for water became the symbol of his weariness, and it was in walking those miles each day that he first began to consider surrendering the service of God he had pursued for so many years. Finally one day as he plodded across the desert under the burning sun, his heart weakened. The account tells us:

Once when he was going to draw water, he flagged and said to himself, “What need is there for me to endure this toil? I shall come and live near the water.” And saying this, he turned about and saw one following him and counting his footprints: and he questioned him, saying, “Who are you?” And he said: “I am an angel of the Lord, and I am sent to count your footprints and give you your reward.” And when he heard him, the old man’s heart was stout, and himself more ready, and he set his cell still farther from the water.

Trial That Destroys Superficial Security
Jean Vanier, speaking of trials in relationships, writes: “The times of trial which destroy a superficial security often free new energies which had until then been hidden.”In the prayer of the examen as in all prayer — which is simply a relationship of love — there will very likely be times when we will be called to love with faithful courage, a courage that will “free new energies which had until then been hidden.”

Our awareness that the examen is God’s gift rather than our accomplishment gives’ us the confidence expressed by Paul: “I have the strength for everything through him who empowers me” (Philemon 4:13). And experience teaches, as Thérèse of Lisieux says, that “God never refuses that first grace that gives one the courage to act; afterwards, the heart is strengthened and one advances from victory to victory.”

In this part of our reflections, then, we will consider the times when the prayer of examen may call us to a love that is patient and faithful. Having reviewed them, we will be the better equipped to progress through such times unfalteringly and indeed with spiritual benefit. Our discussion here will presume all that we have said thus far about the examen: solid understanding of the five steps, of their flexible use, and of the various conditions that assist in praying the examen fruitfully.

Spiritual Consolation
The practice of the examen itself can be the instrument of liberation from spiritual desolation. A woman writes:

I feel now as if I was wandering through a jungle before I began the examen, and was wide open to every negative thought which could pretty freely take hold of me, since I wasn’t paying attention. It was only when those thoughts got dark enough and consuming enough that I noticed that something was very wrong. But even then, I felt helpless to stop what was happening since I wasn’t at all clear what it was….

My “after” experience, that is, of making the examen daily, has let me see the problem much more clearly for what it is. The simple question of asking if certain thoughts or patterns of acting are leading me toward God or away from him is like shining a light into a dark room — one sees all sorts of things for what they are. The other thing it has let me see is “early warning signals” — the blindness that got me into trouble in the first place. . . . I am very, very grateful that the Lord has been so patient, that he has given me such clear helps along the way, and that he has shown me so clearly what I need to do.

For this woman as for many of us, the prayer of examen — with the accompaniment at least occasionally of a spiritual guide — becomes an experience of spiritual freedom: “The simple question of asking if certain thoughts or patterns of acting are leading me toward God or away from him is like shining a light into a dark room – one sees all sorts of things for what they are.” As her spiritual understanding grows, her darkness dissipates and gratitude wells up in her heart.

Listening For The “Still Small Voice”
On March 12, 1544, Ignatius realizes at a certain point that his own desire contrasts with God’s desires for him. And he writes:

Once I recognized that I felt this inclination and that this was different from what God desired, I began to note this and to strive to move my heart toward what was pleasing to God. (382)

The love for the Lord that fills Ignatius’s heart leads him, he says, “to strive to move my heart toward what was pleasing to God.” When Ignatius perceives God’s desire, he begins — not without effort — “to strive to move” his own heart toward communion with the heart of God. And, as he tells us, “With this the darkness gradually began to lift and tears began to come.” His earlier spiritual desolation lifts and consolation returns, providing clarity for his process of decision.

To pray the examen daily is to listen constantly for the “still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12) of God speaking in our hearts. The examen expresses our daily readiness to hear God’s desires for our lives. Said in the words of Paul, to pray the examen is to confess that “Jesus is Lord” (Rom. 10:9) every day of our lives, eager to know his desires and to follow where he would lead us in the hours of our day. It is, like Ignatius, “to strive to move” our hearts toward the heart of the God whose love embraces us daily. To pray the examen is to surrender our lives increasingly to the Lord and to let ourselves be led because, like Ignatius, “we have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us” (1 John 4:16).

John Henry Newman
The prayer of the examen progressively leads to that transformation so tellingly depicted by John Henry Newman at a moment when he was himself facing a new surrender to God’s mysterious leading in his life:

I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
Shouldst lead me on.
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead Thou me on!

“I loved to choose and see my path”: this is the human tendency toward self-sufficiency, toward seeking personal control in the unfolding of our lives. A powerful transition, however, is occurring in the Newman who writes these lines: “but now / Lead Thou me on!” The prayer of examen arises in hearts that desire to say with Newman, “but now / Lead Thou me on,” and that desire this divine leading not only in the great decisions of their lives but also in the concrete, daily, and “small” activities that fill their days.

Joseph Cardinal Bernardin
In a meditation completed thirteen days before his death from pancreatic cancer, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin movingly describes what he calls “letting go.”He writes:

One theme that arises on the surface more than any other takes on new meaning for me now — the theme of letting go. By letting go, I mean the ability to release from our grasp those things that inhibit us from developing an intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus. Letting go is never easy. Indeed, it is a lifelong process. But letting go is possible if we understand the importance of opening our hearts and, above all else, developing a healthy prayer life.

This is the “lifelong process” of the prayer of examen. As we pray it daily, we may perceive more clearly the things “that inhibit us” from what our hearts most deeply desire: “developing an intima~e relationship with the Lord Jesus.” Increasingly we will seek “to release from our grasp” all that limits our spiritual freedom and so to grow in love of the Lord. Examen becomes indispensable in our lives when “we understand the importance of opening our hearts” to the God whose “still small voice” ceaselessly calls us to inexhaustible newness of life.

Bernardin’s words reflect what is probably our own experience as well:

Still, letting go is never easy. I have prayed and struggled constantly to be able to let go of things more willingly, to be free of everything that keeps the Lord from finding greater hospitality in my soul or interferes with my surrender to what God asks of me. . . . My daily prayer is that I can open wide the doors of my heart to Jesus and his expectations of me. This is the heart itself of the examen: to seek unceasingly “to be free of everything that keeps the Lord from finding greater hospitality in my soul,” from everything that “interferes with my surrender to what God asks of me.” It is a “daily prayer” that “I can open wide the doors of my heart to Jesus.”

Finally, Bernardin speaks of the self-emptying (Philemon. 2:7) that frees our hearts to surrender to God:

God speaks very gently to us when he invites us to make more room for him in our lives. The tension that arises comes not from him but from me as I struggle to find out how to of. fer him fuller hospitality and then to do it wholeheartedly. The Lord is clear about what he wants, but it is really difficult to let go of myself and my work and trust him completely. The first step of letting go, of course, is linked with my emptying myself of everything — the plans I consider the largest as well as the distractions I judge the smallest—so that the Lord can really take over.

God does indeed speak “very gently” to us when “he invites us to make more room for him in our lives.” Our hearts need to be finely attuned and daily attentive to hear the voice of that loving invitation. That is why, as we have said from the beginning, the prayer of examen is at the heart of the spiritual life. So much depends on hearing the promptings of a God who speaks “very gently” in calling us forward on our spiritual journey.

As Bernardin notes, “the Lord is clear about what he wants.” Our struggle, like Bernardin’s, is “to find out how” to respond and then “to do it wholeheartedly.” To find out daily, and then to do: this is a powerful description of the prayer of examen.

Bernard of Clairvaux
In the end, it all comes down to footprints in the sand: day after day, year after year, in the times when our hearts are warm with God’s love and all that is spiritual delights us, and in the times when we must plod forward faithfully under the burning sun and across the miles that seem to stretch endlessly before us, knowing that God sees and loves each footprint of our fidelity.

And the energy that impels us forward on that journey is always the same: “We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us” (1 John 4:16). What we seek, then, year after year in our examen is “to know the Lord interiorly. . so that I may love him more and follow him more closely” (Spiritual Exercises).

Bernard of Clairvaux, whose faithful love for the Lord transformed hearts and blessed nations, proclaims:

Love suffices unto itself, gives delight of itself and because of itself. Love is its own merit, its own reward. Love needs no cause outside itself, no fruit other than itself. Its fruit is its practice. I love because I love; I love that I may love. Love is a great thing, so long as it reverts to its source, returns to its origins and flows back to its fount, constantly drawing there the water that gives it new life.

There is finally no other reason why we pray the examen:

“Love needs no cause outside itself. . . I love because I love; I love that I may love.” That love remains young, fresh, and alive when, as Bernard says, it continually “flows back to its fount, constantly drawing there the water that gives it new life.” When that living water flows constantly in our hearts (John 7:38), then the Spirit guides our lives. In our faithful prayer of examen, we hear that Voice daily and with our lives we answer: “Lead Thou me on.”

Communion Of Will And Life With God
To love the One who loves us is to say like Jesus, “Behold, I come to do your will, 0 God” (Heb. 10:7). These words, which Jesus proclaims as he comes into the world (Hebrews 10:5), are the response of his heart and his life to the Father who says to him:

“You are my beloved Son” (Luke 3:22). When our hearts know that they are infinitely loved, that like Jesus and in Jesus they are beloved, then the thirst for communion of will and life with God is born. Then our hearts desire to “seek and find the divine will” every day of our lives. As we have observed, there is profound wisdom and spiritual truth in Ignatius’s choice to place awareness of God’s loving gifts at the beginning of his prayer of examen; the desire to say “yes” to love arises within us when we experience that love concretely.

Gradually Prayer Changes Us
She has always been reflective but has striven in a special way for the past thirty years to understand herself and God’s workings in her life. She lets nothing deter her from this search. Even the painful times, once the first emotions have subsided sufficiently, become valued times of a learning process that never ends. Daily, constantly, in all that happens around her and in her, she searches for God’s word to her, for God’s leading in her life. Each evening she reviews her life with God.

Gradually prayer has changed for her. She maintains her daily times of prayer as her health permits. But, she says, in recent years prayer has become a way of life. She lives with God, aware of God, sharing with God. The deep peace that characterizes her now even in the not infrequent struggles of life reveals that this is so.

She tells of a time not many years ago when she was sitting by the sea. Suddenly she found herself reviewing her entire life, remembering the painful and the happy times over the years and to the present. A great sense of gratitude welled up in her heart as she remembered; in that experience of grace, she could see the love of God in all of this. Joy and deep peace filled her heart in that moment. She grasped in a new way the meaning of her whole life. A daily effort of over thirty years to perceive God’s workings in her life bore fruit in a rich understanding of the pattern of her entire life. She says:

I feel as though I’ve turned a corner spiritually in recent months. All the stages of my life have come together. I can see the Lord’s love and invitation in each, constantly calling me forward. I’ve always wanted to be a transparent instrument for the Lord to work through me. It’s like he took a Brillo pad and scrubbed me — as I asked. This is truly “awesome.” It’s basically a sense of trust in God from looking back over it all. I think heaven is this — a constant journey, always discovering God more.

All that we have seen in this book is summarized here: “It’s basically a sense of trust in God from looking back over it all.” This basic “sense of trust in God” that results from faithful review of our spiritual experience over many years is the fruit to which examen finally leads. This kind of trust becomes unshakeable.

Posted in Prayer | Tagged An Outline of the Examen, Bernard of Clairvaux, Fr. Timothy M. Gallagher, Gratitude, John Henry Newman, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, Prayer, Spiritual Consolation, Spiritual Desolation, The Examen Prayer, What God Does | 1 Comment »

Paying Attention To The Sky

Archive for the ‘Prayer’ Category

The Book of Hours by Ranier Maria Rilke

God of Love, Father of All…

THE DESOLATE MAN SHOULD PLACE HIMSELF IN GOD’S HANDS

Concerning the Our Father by Simone Weil

Drawing Closer To The Heart Of The Lord: Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Pied Beauty

The Importance Of Prayer – Ralph Martin

Book Recommendation: The Rosary Of Our Lady – Romano Guardini

Book Recommendation: Reading Selections From The Examen Prayer – Fr. Timothy M. Gallagher

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