1 “God is love. He created us for love; He bought us back with love and destines us to a very intimate union with Him. God- Love is present within our soul, a supernatural, personal and objective presence. He is in constant loving activity within the soul, home constantly spreading His warmth, sun never ceasing to diffuse His light, an ever-gushing fountain. To meet this love who is God, we have sanctifying grace, of the same nature as God, love as He is. This grace, which makes us His children, is an aptitude towards union, with the exchange or intimate commerce with God, to the mutual penetration. God Love, always in action, solicits us and waits for us. But He is immovable: our love must go towards Him. This orientation of this love towards God, His loving search, the meeting of our love with God-Love, this is what Interior prayer is’. Father Marie-Eugene

2 Jesus prayed in several ways but we will only attach ourselves here to the heart. Here is a beautiful description of the prayer of Christ, always taken from the CEC: 2600 The Gospel according to St. Luke underlines the action of the Holy Spirit and the sense of the prayer in the ministry of Christ. Jesus prayed before the decisive moments of His mission: before God spoke to Him during His Baptism (see. Luke 3:21) and His Transfiguration (see Luke 9:28), and before accomplishing by His Passion the plan of love of the Father. He also prays before decisive moments which will engage the mission of the Apostles: before choosing the Twelve (see Luke 6:12), before Peter names Him the ‘Christ of God’ (see Luke 9, 18-20) and that the faith of the chief of the Apostles doesn’t waiver when tempted (see Luke 22, 32). The prayer of Jesus before the salvation events that the Father asked Him to accomplish is a turning over, humble and trusting, of His human will for the loving will of the Father.

Jesus often withdrew into solitude, on the mountain, preferably at night, to pray (see Mark 1:35; 6:46; Luke 5: 16). He prays for mankind in His prayer, as well as He assumed His humanity in the Incarnation, and He offers them to the Father in offering Himself. The Word made ‘flesh’, participate in His human prayer all those living, ‘His brothers’ (Heb. 2:12); He empathizes with their weaknesses in order to deliver them from them (see Heb. 2:15; 4:15). It is for this reason that His Father sent Him. His words and His works are a visible manifestation then of His prayer prayed ‘in secret’.

3 Of Christ, during His ministry, the Gospel writers retained two prayers explicitly. Both prayers begin with a thanksgiving. In the first (see Mat. 11: 25-27 and Luke 10:21-23), Jesus concedes to the Father, recognizes Him and blesses Him because He hid the mysteries of the Kingdom from those who consider themselves wise and revealed them to the ‘little ones’ (the poor in the Beatitudes). His excitement “Yes, Father!” expresses the bottom of His heart, His adherence to the ‘good pleasure’ of the Father echoing the ‘Fiat’ of His mother during her conception and a prelude to His ‘yes’ to the Father in His agony. The prayers of Jesus are in the loving adhesion of His human heart to the ‘mystery of the will’ of the Father (Ephes.1:9).

4 The second prayer is reported by Saint John (see John 11: 41-2) before the resurrection of Lazarus. Thanksgiving precedes the event: “Father, I thank you for answering my prayer,” which implies that the Father always listens to His requests; and Jesus adds right away: “I know that you always answer me,” which implies that Jesus asks constantly. Thus, carried by thanksgiving, gratitude, Jesus’ prayer shows us how to ask: Before the gift is given, Jesus agrees with the One who gives and gives Himself in His gifts. The giver is more precious than the gift given, He is the ‘Treasure’, and it is in Him, the heart of His Son; the gift is given ‘besides’ (see Mat. 6:21-33).

5 All the distress of humanity of all times, slaves of sin and of death, all the requests and the intercession of the history of salvation are brought together in the Cry of the Word incarnate. The Father welcomes them and, beyond all hope, answers them by resurrecting His Son. And so is accomplished and consumed the drama of the prayer in the Economy of creation and salvation. The Psalter gives us the key in the Christ. It is in the Today of the Resurrection that the Father says: ‘You are my Son, today I created you, Ask, and I will give you the nations as a heritage, the ends of the earth your possession!”(Ps 2:7-8; see Acts 13:33).

Session 1 Part 1: Man

 Father Gilles Garcia
School of Prayer Week 1

Translation in English by Mrs Dawn Keeler

Version française ici (PDF)

INTRODUCTION

(see note 1)

Interior Prayer is the meeting of two loves: the love of God for man and the love of man for God.
“ If you know the gift of God! ” (John 4:10). The wonder of prayer reveals itself there, at the edge of the wells where we come to get our water: there, Christ comes to meet all of mankind; He is the first to look for us and to ask something to drink. Jesus is thirsty; his request comes from the depths of God who desires us. Prayer, whether we know it or not, is the meeting of God’s and our thirst; God is thirsty that we would have thirst of Him. (see St. Augustine, quoest. 64, 4: Pl 40, 56). (Catechism of the Catholic Church, CEC, num. 2560)
Looking through the Gospels, we see that Jesus prayed a lot; mainly (see note 2) the prayer of union with His Father under the breath of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus reveals to us what prayer is in the fullness of time: filial prayer, which the Father expects from His children, is at last going to be lived by His only Son, Himself, in His humanity, with and for mankind.
United to Christ, we have to make our own this filial prayer of union to the Father who loves us. So, prayer, interior prayer is not reserved for holidays or for the religious, or for those that have the time. Prayer is the essential exercise of our vocation as men and as women and as Christians, because it unites us to God and places us in our vocation as children of God.
Interior prayer is therefore a friendship, a love story, the meeting of two people, of two thirsts. Pray is to meet God.
Now, as with all love stories, interior prayer is an adventure! And, as with all adventures, it promises a long journey and a good dose of the exotic.

A Long Journey

It is not about a journey that would cause us to explore the world but rather to go on an interior journey. Jesus Himself told us:
“If someone loves me, he will follow my word and my Father will love him and We will come to him and make Our home in him.” (John 14, 21).
The great adventure of interior prayer is to find God who lives at our center. Teresa of Avila, a great lover from the XVI century, carmelite (note 3) , found a beautiful image: we are like a castle with multiple residences and at the center of this castle, resides, as a precious pearl, the one she calls the ‘great King’, God.
It could also be said that we are a shrine which hides a precious pearl.
Interior prayer causes us to go inside of ourselves to meet God who is there like a sun shining forth love: “When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is in the secret; and your Father, who sees in the secret, will reward you” (Mat. 6:6).

A Good Dose of the Exotic

Only a small difficulty is apparent. Man of today appears to have mastered the world that surrounds him. Everything draws him outside of himself through countless solicitations, he has a hard time ‘going within’ and we have to admit that we don’t know who we are anymore.
Now, if interior prayer consists in a gradual going within, knowing who we are is of capital importance. For Teresa of Avila, it isn’t even worth beginning to practice interior prayer if we don’t have a basic knowledge of who we are.
Just as an adventurer takes an inventory of his material and of his own capacities, we must know ourselves to love.
If you are willing (tonight) it is about knowing ourselves better in order to love God!
In the first part we will we will become acquainted with who we are.
In the second part (next time?), we will see how when we pray, it is our whole being who prays.

Man

1] Distinguish to better reunite

The following passage helps us to understand who we are:
“May the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely and may your whole being, spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ!” (1 Thes. 5: 23).
Body, Soul, Spirit:
While the person appears to be a whole, Saint Paul seems to cut us up into fine slices. He is right. If we are truly one and unique, we can distinguish in us several ‘parts’ or rather in following Father Marie-Eugene (Our Lady of Life; Carmelite, I want to see God), several lives.

Life presents very interesting characteristics. It is a certain movement, a growth. Everything that lives gets bigger, grows, etc. It is a true organism that is going to develop ‘organs’ or faculties.
Thanks to these organs, life can seek its food. Indeed, all life needs to eat to grow. At a certain point, all life looks to reproduce. Let’s look in greater detail, reminding ourselves that all of this is a whole in us.

2] The Body or the Life of the Senses

By body we understand all of our life of the senses. It is fundamental because it allows me to:
a/ Maintain my basic and vital needs: I need to eat to grow, (adolescents know this well) and once at a certain developmental stage, I can give life to another person.
b/Enter into relationship with the world and others. My five senses suggest that I enter into relationship in different ways with the universe which surrounds me and with which I can communicate. I can store a lot images and be gifted with a great imagination; this imagination sometimes burdensome during prayer.

3/ The soul or psychological life

On the second ‘floor’ we find the soul; it is the domain of psychological life. It is a life specific to man not found in animals.

 a/ A Memory

We remember events of our life. Through our ancestors we know the history of our family and its accomplishments. From reading the Bible, we recall the covenant of God with His people, a covenant we ourselves made with Jesus…this ability we have allows us to have a future because I know where I come from, that I have my place and that God will act with me as He acted with Israel. In a deeper way, through generations that came before me, I discover that life is a gift and good to live.

b/ An Intelligence

We have in us a thirst for truth. We study because we want to know. Think about our intellectual life and its development in us. If we don’t feed it with truth it will perish…Thanks to this intellect  we are able to formulate wonderful ideas about God…One God in Three Persons, a hypostatic (divine and human nature) union with Jesus Christ…however beautiful thoughts are not necessarily an act of faith and do not give us God…

c/A Will

Lastly, we have a will, in other words a life in us that thirsts for happiness, a thirst for good. The more I do good, the freer I am or better yet, the more I love the more I grow…J want to love…I want to see God.
It is worth noting that the life of the soul allows me to share with others and even to live a true intimacy with other men and women.  Human friendship is the exchange of life where we offer the best of ourselves or simply ourselves.

There remains a third, more mysterious life and which is a gift from God…If the life of the soul is specific to man, we can say that the life of the spirit is specific to a baptized person.

4/ The Spirit or the Life of Grace

Before describing this third life, it is necessary to take a look at God. What do we discover?
God is Transcendent ! This means that He is above everything, He goes beyond the notion of Space and Time. There is no growth in God, no development. God doesn’t change (Ps. 108:28). God is perfect. He is the Infinite Being.
God is Living ! God revealed Himself to Moses in a burning bush (Ex. 3:14) that burnrf without being consumed.  God is not only transcendent, He is a living flame, He is light and life.

God is Love! Christ is the full revelation of God. Only one who comes from God can say He is God. What do we discover? God is the Father, Himself, God is the communion of eternal Love between the Father and the Son; the Love between the two is the Holy Spirit. The communion of Love between the three persons is God, the joy of God. God is happy because He is the perpetual ‘movement’ of love.

So how can we say that interior prayer is a friendship with God? Indeed, to be friends, there has to be a certain equality between persons. Just as we wouldn’t have as a friend the earthworm living in a pot of geraniums; the infinite difference between you and the worm is obvious. It is somewhat the same (mutatis mutandis) between God and us.
To enter into a friendship with Him, God is going to do something crazy; He is going to give us a new life, a divine life. The sophisticated term is baptismal grace! At the time of baptism we receive grace, in other words a supernatural life which is love like God.
God makes me equal with Him. He brings me up to His level so that we can have a real love relationship, a real participation in God’s life. Let’s look at this life of grace within us. We find characteristics specific to all life:
a/ filial growth: in baptism I become a child of God as grace truly makes me a child of God. So if I become a son or daughter of God, all men and all women therefore become a brother or sister for me.
b/ specific dynamic: a resemblance of Christ, the only Son of God, is developed in us.
c/ specific food: Jesus, Himself!
d/ development of faculties:
Faith: renders us capable of knowing God as He knows Himself and to contact Him. Faith
attaches to the intellect.

     Hope: It is the virtue of forward movement. It makes me move forward leaning only on God from whom I came and to whom I am going. My past and my future are God. Hope attaches to the memory.

  Charity: makes us able to love God as He loves Himself and unites us to Him.

    Interior Prayer takes us to our center, God. God gives of Himself; God helps us; God will intervene (See Diagram Below)

1/ God is the center of our being
2/ Our Grace: Faith Hope Charity
3/ Our Soul: Will and Intelligence
4/ Our Senses

Definition of Baptismal Grace:
“What is this grace given us at Baptism?” It is participation in the nature of God, in the life of God. It makes us children of God, it makes us like God. It allows us to engage in exchanges of intelligence and of love like God. It allows us to enter into relationship with Him. It allows us to enter into relationship with Him and to act like Him. Our supernatural life, our grace, has the power of action. How is grace going to reach its goal of Trinitarian life? Well by the action of its faculties (capacities).
Father Marie-Eugene de l’Enfant Jesus

CONCLUSION

The three lives in us are of course not independent, but rather they act according to their own rhythm and each in its own area. It is an opportunity and also a challenge for us. Example: I have a toothache (life of the senses), but this won’t prevent me from preparing my courses for my students or from being attentive during a meeting (life of the Spirit).
So I am going to enter into contact with God by faith, by my grace, by this spiritual life, without my senses or my psychological life feeling or understanding anything.
I insist here because it is Fundamental for a life of interior prayer:
It is almost necessary that there be a big difference between the relationship, the contact that I make with God, with Jesus by faith and the awareness that I have of this relationship. To be clear, I can be bored during interior prayer, but this doesn’t mean that I am not in prolonged contact with God!
To say it differently, the life of grace is mysterious, because God is a mystery! This is a spiritual life which can’t be measured with a psychological thermometer. The work of grace can be very deep without there being a trace of it at a psychological level. I am thinking of Mary full of grace who doesn’t know it!
We can therefore take another step. Only the life of grace and faith gives us God, only faith allows us to enter into contact with God!  Interior Prayer would therefore be to be to make an act of faith, to transform into an action  this mysterious life of grace which only God gives us in order to unite us to Him!

We are now going to see what happens when we to an act of faith.