L'oraison, prière intérieure

J.S. Bach : Violin Partita n°2 - Chaconne - par Andres Segovia
 

   Tonight we are going to talk about the easiest subject in the School of Prayer. “It is hard to prayer, what can I do?” Don’t need an explanation to understand the title, we understand right away what it is about.

I don’t know if you have the same trouble as I do? We’ll see…

  Last night I decided I would have a prayer time at 8 o’clock. If today at 8 o’clock I decide to begin to do something else and don’t pray until later, there is a 90% chance that I won’t get to it. The appointment at the dentist, the errands, meal preparation, the wash to hang out, the urgent emails that need an answer, the meeting at the parish, in short…there is a good chance  that I will find myself after dinner choosing between a moment to relax or prayer.
And when I at last sit down in a quiet spot, in front of a statue, a candle, in the presence of God, after having read a Gospel passage..there I am quickly overwhelmed by distractions: family concerns, an important meeting at work, tomorrow’s schedule, the menu for a birthday dinner, so many things to put at the feet of Jesus, intention to entrust to Him, while giving myself over to His will which will give me what I need when I need it.

  “Lord, my prayer is really pitiful, however, I want to this time to be only for you.” To recollect myself, I take a Gospel passage, I say ‘Jesus, I believe that you are there, that you are waiting for me, that you love me…”….And I end up falling deeply asleep…

I am hardly exaggerating!

Helas, it is difficult to pray. First of all to find the time and then to stick to it; then to persevere in spite of the distractions,  drought,  worries and sleep.

Jesus Himself told us in the Gospel: “Until now the Kingdom of Heaven has suffered violence and violence is overtaking it,” (Matt. 11: 12), and yet, through perseverance, you will save souls.” (or in another translation- it is through your perseverance that you will obtain life) (Luke 21:19).

The PRAYER COMBAT

The catechism of the Catholic Church has a whole section, the 4th, dedicated to prayer (it is a real jewel, worth reading). In the third chapter, ‘The life of prayer’, the second article is called, The Prayer Combat; this is what we will find:
• Prayer is the gift of grace and a decided response on our part. Prayer always supposes an effort. The great persons of prayer in the Old Covenant before the Christ, like the Mother of God and the Saints teach us that prayer is a combat.
In the Bible in the Book of Genesis, the story of man is presented to us as a struggle (See Genesis 32: 23-31).
• “Jacob struggled all night with a mysterious person who refused to reveal his name but who blessed him before leaving him at dawn. The spiritual tradition of the church retained from this passage the symbol of prayer being a combat of faith and victory of perseverance.” The Jerusalem Bible puts in a note: ‘Jacob held onto God, and forced Him to give him a blessing. The scene became the picture of the spiritual combat and the effectiveness of a prayer moment.”

A COMBAT OF LOVE

But don’t be afraid. If the Christian life and prayer are a combat, let’s remind ourselves that this is a combat of love and that we are not alone.
• Live in prayer and supplications: pray always in the Spirit bring to it an unwavering vigilance and intercede for all the Saints’, St. Paul tells us (Eph. 6:18). This undying fervor can only come from love. In opposition to our resistance and laziness, the combat of prayer is one of humble, trusting and persevering love.

Before considering the difficulties one by one, such as finding time, the distractions, drought…..let’s take a moment to remind ourselves that interior prayer is a rendez-vous of love and that once again we are not alone in this combat or in the difficulties.

Before becoming a combat of love, interior prayer is a rendez-vous of love, a meeting of two loves who are looking for one another and the love of God is always first.

• God, called man first. That man would forget his Creator or hide far from His face,  that he would run after his idols or accuse the Divine to have abandoned him, God living and true calls tirelessly each person to the mysterious meeting of prayer. This step of love from a loyal God is always first in prayer, the step of man is always in response. As reveals Himself and reveals man to himself, prayer seems like a reciprocal call.

Father Caffarel pursues the same path, ‘ I would like, dear friend, that in going to prayer that you have the strong conviction that someone was waiting for you: you were being waited for by the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, by the Trinitarian Family (…) The Lord always waits for us. Better still, when we hardly have taken a few steps He comes running to meet us. (The Presence of God, 100 letters on Prayer).

Saint John of the Cross reminds us also: ‘It is important to know that if the soul seeks God, His Beloved, God seeks him with infinite more love.” (LF 3, VI).

No, in interior prayer, we are not alone, we can count on the love of the God of the Trinity who waits for us, we can also count on the help of the Holy Spirit.

Pray with the Holy Spirit

The Catechism expresses in a bit of a negative way, if I dare say…

• Those who look for God through prayer are quickly discouraged because they don’t know that prayer comes from the Holy Spirit and not from them.
Happily the Catechism makes up for this remark …
•  Each time that we begin to pray to Jesus, it is the Holy Spirit who by His loving grace, draws us to the path of prayer. Since He teaches us to pray by reminding us of Christ, how can we  not to pray to Him ourselves? This is why the Church asks us to prayer to the Holy Spirit daily, especially before and after an important action.
Saint Paul expresses it positively as well! “ The Spirit also helps us with our weaknesses as we don’t know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with inexpressible cries” (Romans 8: 26-7).
This is why it is good to begin interior prayer by invoking the Holy Spirit. I ask the Holy Spirit to help me in interior prayer. Come Holy Spirit, Come Father of the Poor, Come Spirit of Love, come and pray in me, come and ignite my heart, come and turn my heart to Jesus and turn it towards Him.

Pray with Jesus

When we pray, that we go towards God, the first thing to do, is to find Jesus Christ so that He can teach us to pray, that He puts us under the Spirit of the Holy Spirit as He is, so that we say the words He would have us say, that we have the intentions that He wants us to have. (J’ai prie pour toi, priere de Jesus, priere du disciple, Pere Marie Eugend, Editions du Carmel, 2006).

• “a day, somewhere, Jesus was praying. When He was finished one of His disciples asked Him, Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:11). So wasn’t it first seeing his master pray that the disciple of Christ wanted to pray?  He could then learn it from the Master of prayer.  It is by contemplating and listening to the Son that the Children learn to pray to the Father.
Listen to St. Teresa of Avila: ‘Believe  me don’t neglect anything to be without this loyal friend.  If you get used to imagining Him next to you, if He sees that you do this with love and that you are trying to please Him, you won’t be able to get rid of Him.
To keep Him company, you don’t have to think great thoughts, nor come up with a good plan, you just have to talk to Him very simply:
Are you happy? Think about Him resurrected…Are you overcome by sadness or pain? Think about Him then in the Garden of Gethsemane…Talk to Him but not by using ready-made prayers, but by sharing with Him the prayer that bubbles up in your heart.
The Same Lord, who said that He is the way, also said that He is the light and that no one can go to the Father if not through Him. He also said: ‘Who sees me also sees my Father”. (Je veux voir Dieu, le bon Jesus)

I can’t resist sharing with you a passage from Father Caffarel.
“You want to learn to pray? Seek to know the Christ. I am not talking about a purely intellectual knowledge, but  a knowledge of both faith and love. And to begin, believe firmly that Christ is not someone lost in the fog of history, but a living, the Living One, who stands at our door and knocks as He says it Himself.
It is from this Christ, this Christ turned towards you, and who wants to develop a personal relationship with you, that  you are looking to find.
In order not to lose yourself in speculation or illusions, the only way is,  grab hold of your Gospel and don’t let go and look , seek tirelessly! “   Father Henri Caffarel. (l’oraison, Jalons sur la route)
Ask for the necessary insight to give prayer the place it needs to have in your life, that it be done with this grace, in union with Christ and under the influence of the Holy Spirit. (J’ai prie pour toi, Pere Marie Eugene)

DIFFICULTIES

1/ Finding the Time:

It seems that the first difficulty that we run into is finding the time to develop the habit.

• The choice of the time and the length of interior prayer come from a determined willingness, which reveal the secrets of the heart. We don’t practice prayer when we have the time, we take the time to be there for the Lord, with the firm determination not to take this time back in the process, no matter what the trial or the drought met. We can’t always meditate, but we can always enter into interior prayer, regardless of one’s health, work or emotions. The Heart is the place of seeking and meeting in poverty and faith.

First off I would like to read you the parable of the stones” from the book, “Interior Prayer, a school of love”.
“One day, an old professor from the national school of public administration was in the process of giving a training on the ‘The efficient Schedule” to a group of 15 Directors of big north American companies. Standing in front of this group of elite men, he looks at them one by one, slowly, then he says to them, “we are going to do an experiment”.  From under that table that separated him from his students, he took a big glass container that he set down delicately in front of him. Then, he took a dozen or so stones as big a tennis balls and he placed them delicately in the container. When the container was filled to the brim and it was impossible to add another stone, he raised his eyes to the students and asked if the container was full. Everyone agreed that it was. He waited a few moments and then added, “Really”? He then leaned over and took another recipient filled with gravel. He carefully he poured the gravel over the stones and shook up the container a bit. The pieces of gravel worked their way down through the stones to the bottom of the container.
The old professor once again asked the students if the container was full. The men began to understand his point and answered that maybe it wasn’t. This time the professor took a bin of sand from beneath the table, poured it in the container and then asked once again if the container was full.
This time his brilliant students answered in unison that no it certainly wasn’t; the professor took his pitcher of water from beneath the table and poured it into the container and asked the brilliant men what lesson was to be learned from this exercise.
The most audacious student suggested that no matter how full the agenda looked there was always the option of adding one more thing. To this the old professor responded, “No!” that isn’t it. The truth is that if we don’t enter the big stones first we will never be able to enter them. In silence the students considered this truth.
So what are the big stones in your life?  Your health?  Your Family?  Your Career? Make your dreams happen?  Or something else?
What we need to remember is that we have to put the big stones first in life or we will probably not succeed in these areas……..one’s life. If we give priority to insignificant things, our lives will be filled with insignificant things and we won’t have time to consecrate to the important elements of life. So don’t forget to ask yourself what the big stones are in your life and make them a priority….put them in the pot first!

The hierarchy of values…this  is a very big difficulty and this could be the source of a combat/or struggle.  So, evangelically speaking, what should we do?  As soon as we have a bit of good will and availability, we get a lot of calls, and it isn’t possible to answer all of them.  I have to ask myself the question: what is the essential thing here to make me a man, a woman who is a servant of God? This would mean to do as Jesus did, in other words, to stop for a time of prayer.  This would entail choosing a time in a realistic manner based on the obligations of my actual life, to include it in my day or my week.
To practice virtue, you can’t wait to feel like it. This is also true of prayer. Let’s take our responsibilities, choosing to include a prayer time, to come to freely love God.  When we want to see someone we always find the time. In this case, it is about meeting the One who is our Lord and our Friend.

• The most common temptation, the most hidden one too, is our lack of faith. It is expressed less by a declared unbelief than by a preference of action. When we begin to prayer, a thousand things to do or worries, seemingly urgent, appear suddenly as priorities. Once again, it is a moment of truth for the heart and of its love of preference. Sometimes we turn to the Lord as a last resort, but do we really believe? Sometimes we see the Lord as an ally, but the heart is pretentious or prideful. In any case, our lack of faith reveals that we don’t yet have a humble heart: “Outside of me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

And Father Marie-Eugene de L’enfant Jesus (Au souffle de l’Esprit):
« At the bottom of the desire to be organized, there has to especially be there has to be the conviction that interior prayer is a useful exercise.  Most of the time, we get out of it because we see prayer as secondary.  We especially don’t see this: when we put interior prayer in our lives it brings with it an element of balance. It is often said that contemplatives act much more quickly because interior prayer allows a time of ‘rest’, ‘relaxation’  and fine tunes the faculties, perfects them from the human point of view, in short, assures a balance. The time that seems lost in prayer is found in the intensity of work produced.”
A priest (Father Antoine d’Augustin), while suggesting to burn 2% of our time pleasing the Lord, (the equivalent of a half an hour), that it is important to find the length of time that will allow us to regularly persist, as interior prayer needs to become a daily encounter with the Lord. (l’oraison, une ecole d’amour)  It is better to do a little every day then to establish an unrealistic goal that can’t be maintained.
Because we have to set a time during the day, a length of time and stick with it; because it is important not to neglect what Father Marie-Eugene calls ‘the state of must’. It is not about getting up at 0430 every day after only four hours of sleep, to not be productive at work, even dangerous, to neglect your family, the time spent with the children, not counting the friends, to be in a bad mood because of exhaustion.
But how much time is spent on the small insignificant things “peccadilloes”

2/ 2nd Difficulty: the Distractions

The second big difficulty is the distractions:
• The normal difficulty with prayer are the distractions. They can impact the words and their meaning in vocal prayer, they can act more deeply, on the One to whom we are praying, in vocal prayer (liturgical or personal), in meditation and in interior prayer. To go after them, to chase them away would be to fall into their trap, when what is important is to come back to our heart. A distraction reveals what we are attached to and this humble awareness before God needs to wake up our preferential love for Him, resolutely offering Him our Heart to purify. Therein lies the combat, the choice of what Master to serve. (Matt. 6: 21-24)

Listen to the Saints talk to us about their distractions.

1/ St. Theresa of the Child Jesus

“Jesus, until now I have understood your love for the little bird, as they don’t get very far from You, but we both know that often the imperfect little creature while staying in its place (in other words in the sun) let’s himself be a little distracted from his principle occupation, it eats a little grain here and there, goes after a little worm, then running into a little puddle of water, it gets its newly- formed feathers wet, it sees a flower that it likes and its little spirit focuses on this flower…at last not being able to soar like an eagle, the poor little bird takes care of trivial earthly concerns. However after all these mistakes, instead of running off to hide how miserable it is, dying to repent, the little bird turns towards its dear friend the Sun, it presents to its benevolent rays its little wet wings, thinking in its bold abandon to acquire more power, attract even more fully the love of the One who didn’t come to call the righteous ones, but the sinners.” (Manuscript B)

2/ St. Teresa of Avila:

“Very often for several years…I was much more preoccupied with the desire to see the end of the hour of prayer and to hear the clock chime, then other more useful thoughts, one of these hours where the Lord gave a taste of Himself to my soul, over-abundantly rewarded me, it seems to me for all the anxieties that I endured for so long persevering in interior prayer.” (Life, ch. 4, 8, 11)

St. Teresa explains herself: the faculties of the soul are distinct and independent. So the will can be completely taken over by God and rooted in Him,  while the mind/intellect absorbed and recollected in Him, while the imagination would be transformed into the crazy person of the house. So many have had this experience, their desire for God, their faithfulness to interior prayer don’t allow any doubt, their will visibly belongs to God, the mind is absorbed in an act of faith. And, the imagination is going at a pace from hell, irresistible to the perception, giving the impression of a disastrous prayer time.
So the distractions don’t always mean that we are far from God or guilty if we are.
Anyway, God’s nature isn’t a stranger to all of our distractions.  Our senses deprived of an object which is adequate to them, wander looking for food, almost inevitable result of drought.

“Good news: I can look at a country landscape while praying, I can have a toothache, I can be bored during prayer, I can have an overactive imagination, all of this will not stop me from making an act of faith that will allow me to dive into God and a prolonged dive.
Interior prayer is to stay in the presence of God while maintaining contact by repeated acts of faith. We will always move beyond the distractions, the impressions of drought by little acts of faith, little glances of love towards God.” (Man’s Part, Father G Garcia, 1/8/10)

So what can I do?

Father Caffarel answers:
When in spite of all of your efforts and schemes, the distractions persist, simply offer them to God, after all it is a source of suffering, a handicap like all others, so something to offer.
During difficult prayer sessions, don’t forget to remind yourself that it is the firmness of the intention, in the beginning, and not the stability of the psychological attention, which gives prayer its value. Or let’s say it differently, the adhesion of your will to God’s is more important to attention to the mind. How important are the agitations of your mind, if the deep will remains firmly attached to God’s will.
The proof of it is if someone comes and taps you on the shoulder and asks what you are doing, you would say that you were praying and you would be right. Your will has remained unchanged.” (Caffarel)

On the website, oraison.net on the page dedicated to distractions, we can read:
“As soon as I begin to pray, I am overwhelmed by distractions. How can I get rid of them?
Distractions are normal, don’t worry about them. All you have to do is come back to God as many times as necessary. Remember that to enter into interior prayer assumes an orientation of our heart towards God: “I want what you want.” As long as this orientation lasts (and for this renew it from time to time during prayer), we are really praying…But it is certain that distractions will come and disturb our loving attention on the Divine Guest.  Should they be attacked head on? This often only worsens them or brings on others.
So what to do?
‘Distractions become prayer when we think of them with God. To fight against them, often only distracts us more. So go back to the text of the Word of God which acts as a support for our prayer, read it slowly to God: ‘You are speaking and I want to listen to you.” Or say, savoring it, a known prayer. The most important thing is to bring our attention back to the present.”

The Catechism says the same thing in other words:
• Pray in the events of each day and of each instant is one of the secrets of the Kingdom revealed to the smallest ones, to the servants of Christ, to the poor of the Beatitudes. It is as important to knead the dough with prayer in humble daily situations. All forms of prayer can be the yeast to which the Lord compares the Kingdom (See Luke 13: 20-21).

As long as our will isn’t attached to the distraction, prayer continues. But the idea that comes to mind is generally interesting, if not completely attractive. So I have the choice. Either I voluntarily come back up to the surface of my being or I dive back down into the depths, continuing to make a loving act of faith, the act of attention, participation which keeps me united to the Lord. Sometimes the idea is very obsessive and comes back incessantly or worse yet, invades me with force. It will perhaps be necessary to pick the book back up to once again nourish the thoughts of Christ or of God and to dive back down to the center of myself, in presence of God.
The disproportion between my lack of ability and the infinite capacity of God is not the unique cause of our distractions.
Another cause can simply be daily life: All that we had in our mind before the hour of prayer is inevitably still with us in our memory while we pray. If we want to be in prayer, we have to begin before sitting down to pray. (Cassien, Conference). It is ill-advised to engage in prayer after having seen an action movie.
• “We pray as we live, because we live as we pray, says the catechism. If we don’t want to act regularly like the mind of Christ, then we can’t regularly pray in His name.”
Prayer can be weakened because we don’t know the One to whom we are speaking: ‘Reading feeds our prayer, love is curious to know the one he loves. Without food, prayer normally becomes less and less appealing, dries up and seriously risks wandering off and sinking into sentimental egocentricity,” due to lack of strength and light. It is important to know the living Christ, see Him as He lived, know how and in what interior and exterior conditions he acted and spoke, and it is important also that all our powers, from the senses to the depths of our intelligence, be filled with this living and concrete knowledge.” (I want to see God)
But if the distractions aren’t voluntary:
‘Don’t be troubled or afflicted. Let this chatterbox go, and take care of grinding your own flour, while keeping our will and our intellect occupied.” (St. Theresa of Avila, IC 4 Mansion, chp. 1).

3/ The Third Difficulty: Drought

Darkness and distractions are a trial, that of our faithfulness. To practice interior prayer is to enter into a combat of loyalty to want to find God for Himself. If in the beginning taste of God attracts us to Him in an easy and radiating faith, very quickly, the taste of God will seem to disappear and give way to an aridity of faith. To penetrate God happens in the depths and as such remains unknown. (l’oraison, une ecole de l’amour Fr. D’Augustin)

Let’s look at how the catechism defines Spiritual Dryness:
• Another difficulty, especially for those who sincerely want to pray, is drought. It is a part of interior prayer where the heart is cut off, without any interest for thoughts, memories and feelings, even spiritual. It is the moment of pure faith which keeps us with Jesus.

The internet site of the Schools of Prayer (France) explains:
“The One we are addressing is out of our reach for our ordinary faculties. He often seems absent or silent. It is time to make acts of faith in His presence. Normally the Lord allows us to taste His presence from time to time especially in the beginning, to support us. But inevitably, in our life of interior prayer, periods of dryness will appear. Sometimes it is the Lord Himself who sends the dryness to purify us, so that we don’t get attached to His gifts but to Him. We, ourselves, could be responsible by our lack of generosity to respond to the demands of the Lord. God wants us to come to Him to meet Him, His free gifts are a plus. It is to Him that we need to get attached, not to them. The dryness and aridity of prayer, whatever the cause, have the utility to bring us back to the essential if we hang in there.

Saint Therese of the Child Jesus had a radical experience in her night of faith:
“The little bird wants to fly to the brilliant Sun who charms his eyes, I wants to imitate (Saints) his brothers that he sees raised up to the Divine Throne Room of the Holy Trinity..Helas….all he can do, is to raise his little wings, but to take off is not in his power! What is he going to do, die of sadness realizing his powerlessness? Oh No! the little bird is not even going to get upset. With an audacious abandon, he is going to continue staring at his Divine Sun, nothing will frighten him, neither the wind nor the rain and if dark clouds come and hide the Star of Love, the little bird will stay where he is, he knows that behind the clouds his Sun continues to shine, that his brightness couldn’t disappear for a minute. Sometimes, it’s true, the heart of the little bird is overwhelmed by the storm, it is hard to believe that there is anything else but the clouds that envelop him. It is always the moment of perfect joy for the poor little weak being. What happiness for him to stay there anyway, to stare at the invisible light which hides from his faith!...” 

Murky but Certain Faith  

So, I am going to be able to enter into contact with God by faith, by my grace, by this spiritual life, obviously without my psychological and emotional life feeling or understanding anything!
I insist because this is fundamentally for the life of interior prayer: It is almost necessary that there exist an enormous difference between the relationship, the contact that I establish with God, with Jesus, by faith and by awareness that I have this relationship. Clearly, I can get bored during 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 that can’t be measured with a psychological thermometer. (Man’s Part, Fr. G Garcia)
It is normal to not feel anything because we come into contact with Him by faith and not by our senses which aren’t adapted to sense His presence. Fr. Marie Eugene says the same thing in a creative and concrete way: “We can’t capture Hertzien waves with a shovel of a workman. If I tell a workman to go and gather hertizien waves in the street, am I going to say that they don’t exist because he can’t do it?  No I am going to use an appropriate instrument to capture the waves!

‘There is only one way to go to God and to unite with Him, it is by faith, murky and certain knowledge which drives man into the obscurity where God lives, beyond the domain of the senses and of intelligence.” Fr. Marie Eugene

The love of God is certain for us; contact with Him by faith is a real truth, but the supernatural penetration of God can happen without leaving us any awareness of an insight, a feeling, an experience of the richness that we have touched. this exchange of friendship with God by faith does benefit us. God is an ever-reaching Love. As we can’t put our hand in water without if getting wet or in a fire without getting burned, we can’t come into contact with God by faith without drawing upon his infinite richness; all contact with God by faith draws from God an increase of supernatural life and love. (I want to see God)

4/ The Fourth Difficulty: God’s light shows us our poverty.

Catechism: The humble person isn’t surprised by his misery, it brings him to have more trust in God, to hold strong in perseverance.

The light of God shows us our faults.

God acts to put us in truth. He can’t let anyone come near Him who is in illusions about himself. The Truth acts by bringing all into the light. Under His action, we see ourselves as helpless, poor people. Through Prayer we come closer to God and in a way, we allow Him to act in us. He cleans house by taking away any type of illusion in us. He shows us exactly who we are—poor, without strength or patience, without love nor capacity to truly forgive etc. This is not to make us guilty, as God shows us the truth while at the same time we are also His beloved children. This doesn’t prevent that the discovery of one’s own poverty which is real, is often disconcerting and painful. God wants to see us use our trust. The child isn’t surprised to be a child. Having the same attitude and letting God transform us in His image and resemblance. (L’oraison une ecole d’amour)

It isn’t my poverty that prevents God from coming near, it is because I hide it from Him. I am ashamed of my poverty as Adam was of his nudity. God is truth and I can only meet Him in the truth of my poverty.

Lord, I am not poor, and as I desire and dread at once to be so!  However I know that when I will have seen and accepted the depth of my poverty, your depth will fill it at once !

Conclusion: Pray with Mary

The difficulties should never be an obstacle to prayer. It is always possible to pray when you have understood the true nature of prayer.

In conclusion, I would like to bring up the role of Mary in prayer. As for me I often go to her in my difficulties to calm myself down.

“The caring concern of the Virgin Mary spreads to all aspects of our lives. She is maternally interested in the progress of our souls. And if we find that our sanctification is slow, she knows that we are too weak to receive the light and love that God will give us in time. Let’s give ourselves totally as gifts to Mary, give her all of our trust. We have to go to the Virgin to find the Word. That our prayer, our pleasures, our work be offered to her.
Ask God to put His mother in our souls. Ask for the grace to give her total trust all the time. Our spiritual life, if we put it in her hands will be much smoother more quickly.