How Holy Writ Lays Before Us These Two Sorts of Prayer

THE two sorts of prayer that we have spoken of are marvelously set before us by the Holy Ghost in the thirty-ninth chapter of Ecclesiasticus. He says there of the wise man, by whom the Church understands the just: He will set his heart to watch at break of day to the Lord who made him, and will pray in the sight of the Most High (Ecclus. xxxix.6). He puts first the ordinary prayer. The man must rise in the morning, which is the time suited for prayer and is often spoken of in Scripture. In the morning I will present myself before thee. Let me anticipate the dawn and cry out. Mine eyes have opened early in the morning unto thee, O Lord, to meditate thy words. To thee I watch from break of day (Psalm v. 5; exviii. 148; Ixii. 2). The text says to watch because he is going to be wide-awake, not to sleep and meditate on a pillow. What more? He will set his heart, hand it over to prayer. Heis not there in body only while his heart is on business. That is what the saints call “sleepiness of heart.” Faintness and sloth of heart are great obstacles to prayer because they hinder the reverence which one should observe in dealing with God. And what is it that causes this reverence in the just? The consideration that I am in the presence of God and that I am about to speak to a Majesty so high—that makes me stand in reverence and at attention. This is the preparation and disposition wherewith we should go to prayer.

But let us see what prayer it is that the just man makes. He will open his mouth in prayer, and begin by begging pardon for his sins (Ecclus. xxxix. 7), moving himself to shame and repentance for them. This is the prayer that we should make on our side, bewailing our sins and begging God’s mercy and pardon for them. We must not content ourselves with saying: “I made my general confession at the beginning of my conversion and after that I spent some days in bewailing and repenting of my sins.” It is not right that we should forget our sins upon confessing them, but we should endeavor to keep them ever before our eyes, according to the saying of the prophet: My sin is always before me, that is, before my eyes. On the words, Our bed is strewn with flowers (Cant. i. 15), St. Bernard says: “Your bed, that is, your heart, is still malodorous because you have not quite got rid of the vices and follies that you brought in from the world; and have you the audacity to invite the Bridegroom to come to it? Do you wish now to practise other exercises, high and exalted, of love and union with God, as if you were perfect?” Make it your first care to cleanse and wash your bed well with tears. Every night I will wash my bed, and moisten my couch with my tears (Psalm vi. 7). Then you have to adorn it with the flowers of virtues, and so invite the Bridegroom to come to you as he did to the bride. Busy yourself with the kiss of the feet, humbling yourself and grieving much for your sins; and with the kiss of the hands, which is offering your good works to God and seeking to receive at His hands true and solid virtues; and as for that third kiss of the mouth, that high and exalted union, leave that till such time as the Lord shall please to raise you to it.

It is told of a very ancient and spiritual father (Father Araoz) that he spent twenty years in these exercises of the purgative way. And are we to get tired of it at once and seek to ascend to the kiss of the mouth and the exercises of the love of God? We need a good foundation to raise so high a building. Besides many other good and profitable things that there are in this exercise, of which we shall speak hereafter, there is this about it, that it is a great remedy and efficient preservative against falling into sin. He who is continually abhorring sin and making acts of shame and sorrow for having offended God, is very far from committing sin anew. And, contrariwise, the saints observe that the reason why some have fallen who seemed to be very spiritual men and men of prayer, and possibly were so, is for want of this exercise; they gave themselves over in such manner to other exercises and considerations, sweet and to their taste, that they forgot the exercise of self-knowledge and consideration of their sins and so came to an unmeasured sense of security, not walking in such fear and reserve as they ought, and thereby they came to fall into what they ought not; they too quickly forgot their low estate and fell from the height they thought to have attained. It is fitting, then, that for a long time our prayers should consist in bewailing our sins, as the Wise Man says, until such time as the Lord takes us by the hand and says, Friend, go up higher (Luke xiv. 10).

Now let us see what this high and very special prayer is, which the Lord gives when He pleases. The text goes on: If the great God and Lord please, he will fill him with the spirit of understanding (Ecclus. xxxix. 8). If he please, because this is no hereditary right, but a grace and mere effect of His liberality. You are at prayer, and on a sudden there comes a light from heaven, like a flash of lightning, whereby you are set thinking and see the point and get an appreciation and high notion of what you never understood before. That is the gift of prayer. How many times you have traveled over the same ground, and your attention was never arrested on it as now! He calls that the spirit of understanding because nothing appears in it but a simple apprehension, upon which the man becomes tranquil and at rest, with that light shed upon him. It happens in this world sometimes that a man comes across a very perfect and highly finished picture, and he stands regarding it for a long time, with his eyes fixed, without moving about, wrapt in mighty admiration, so that he cannot have enough of looking at it; such is this prayer and high and exalted contemplation. Or, to speak better, this is the way in which the blessed in heaven see God. Heavenly bliss consists in the sight and contemplation of God. In it we shall be absorbed and penetrated through and through with the vision and love of God for ever and ever, with one simple vision of that Divine Majesty, rejoicing in His presence and in His glory, without any wandering of the mind and without ever being weary of looking at Him; or rather, as the text says, and they sang as it were a new song before the throne (Apoc. xiv. 3), that song and that divine manna will always be something new to us and we shall be ever in new admiration.

In this way, then, there is carried on here on earth this high and perfect prayer which is called contemplation when the Lord is pleased to give it, so that the person is never sated or cloyed with seeing and contemplating God, without play of the mind hither and thither, without fatigue, all by one simple look. The text says, He will fill him, because His grace is so copious and so abundant that it overflows and cannot be contained in so narrow a vessel. And so the text goes on at once with the following: And he will pour out the words of his wisdom like rain, and in prayer he will praise the Lord (Ecclus. xxxix. 9). Thence immediately follow colloquies; this is the proper time to converse with God, when the soul is moved, instructed, and lifted up by this heavenly light and wisdom.

And so our Father marks this time for making colloquies. “When a spiritual movement comes over us, we will make colloquies.”’ Be this saying well taken note of. After we have helped ourselves by the use of our reasoning powers, meditating and considering, when the meditation now has inflamed our heart and we feel moved thereby, then is the time for colloquies and treating familiarly with God by petitions and determinations, because this is the prayer that God hears, and that leads to a happy settlement with His Divine Majesty. As St. Augustine says, when God moves one to ask, it is a sign that He intends to give what is asked. This is the very special kind of prayer that God gives to whom He pleases. For if the great Lord willeth, he will fill him with the spirit of understanding (Ecclus. xxxix.). If He wills, we shall easily be able to reach this high and singularly excellent prayer.

But if the Lord is not pleased to raise us to such a high prayer as this, St. Bernard says we must not be afflicted nor discouraged, but be content with the practice of virtues and with the fact that the Lord keeps us in His friendship and grace and does not let us fall into sin. He says: “Oh, that the Lord may be pleased to give me peace, goodness, and joy in the Holy Ghost, mercy, simplicity and charity to my neighbor; with that I am content! As for those other high contemplations, in heaven’s name let them be kept for apostles and great saints”—Utinam detur mihi pax, bonitas, gaudium in Spiritu Sancto, misereri in hilaritate, tribuere in simplicitate, gaudere cum gaudentibus, flere cum flentibus, et his contentus ero. Cetera sanctis apostolis virisque apostolicis relinquo. High mountains for stags, the rock the refuge of urchins (Psalm ciii. 18). Those high mountains of contemplation are for such as run to perfection with the nimbleness of stags and deer; but I, who am an urchin, or hedgehog, full of thorns and faults and sins, betake myself to the holes of that rock, which is Christ (I Cor. x. 4), and wash away my faults and sins in the blood that flows from them, and that shall be my prayer.

But if the glorious Bernard was content with the practice of the virtues and grief and contrition for his sins, and left that other very special prayer to apostolic men and great saints to whom the Lord is pleased to impart it, it will be right for us also to be content therewith, and to make this our exercise in prayer—to conceive sorrow and shame for our sins and attend to the mortifying of our passions and the rooting up of our vices and the overcoming of all the repugnances and difficulties that may confront us in the way of virtue. As for that other very special and eminently high prayer, let us leave it till the time that the Lord shall be pleased to call and raise us thereto. And even then, when we think that we are called to it, there is need of great caution and of much sober deliberation, for there are apt to be in this matter many delusions. Sometimes a man thinks that God calls him to this prayer because of a certain sweetness and pleasantness and facility which he feels in the exercise of the love of God; and God does not call him, but it is he himself that mounts up and meddles with it, the devil deceiving and blinding him, that he may leave what is necessary and do nothing and profit nothing either way or the other.

A great master of spirit says very well that as it would show little sense of propriety for a man unceremoniously to seat himself at the king’s table without his command and licence when the king himself had commanded that man to assist and wait upon him; so he does very ill and very rudely who seeks to deliver himself up entirely to the sweet repose of contemplation not being evidently called thereto by God Himself. St. Bonaventure gives a good admonition here, that a man should exercise himself in the line that is safer and more profitable; that is, in the extirpation of vices and evil inclinations and in the acquisition of true virtues. That is a very plain and safe road, on which there can be no delusions. The more a man busies himself with mortification, humiliation, and resignation, the more he will please God and will merit more of Him than by those other exquisite and extraordinary ways, in which, St. Bonaventure goes on to say, there are apt to be many deceits and many illusions of the devil, the man taking that to be God which is not God and that to be something great which is nothing. For this reason extraordinary kinds of prayer must be examined in the light of the rules governing ordinary prayer, and not the latter by the former, which is the common doctrine of the saints, as we shall see presently.