Intimacy with God (after Edward Leen)
By Fr. Conor Donnelly
(Proofread)
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that You are here, that You see me, that You hear me. I adore You with profound reverence. I ask Your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.
Saint Paul, when writing to the Christian converts, addresses them as persons “called to be saints” (Rom. 1:7). It is clear from this mode of address that, in the eyes of the Apostle, the vocation of every Christian is that he be a saint. Nothing unsaintly can find a place in heaven. Light is not more incompatible with darkness than the sanctity of God with what is unholy. It is the infinite purity, the perfect sanctity of God, that makes heaven impossible for the unsaintly. And since eternal happiness depends on sanctity, it is important to have a clear notion of what it consists in, and of the way in which it can be attained.
The philosophers, aiming at making clear what a thing is, very often prepare the way by pointing out what it is not. Christian sanctity is a supernatural thing. To know what it is, recourse must be had to the eternal source of the supernatural, namely, to God Himself. God is the supreme saint. Holy is His name. He is sanctity itself, and therefore the exemplar and prototype of all sanctity. The holiness that is not modeled on His is not veritable holiness. Hence it was that Our Lord said to the multitudes, “Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).
It is as if He said: you must be saints. And if a man is to be a saint, he must be like God. To be a saint is to be effectively enamored of the beauty of God, to desire Him, and to desire nothing which would conflict with that desire of God. The spiritual life may be more clearly, simply, and correctly described as the cultivation of intimacy with God. To become intimate with God, the soul has only to become intimate with Jesus, who is like to the soul in His humanity, like to it in all things except sin. Man can grow in friendship with God by growing in friendship with the One who is a fellow man. The spiritual life is a process of growth in charity, that is, in love with Jesus, true man and yet true God.
This love not only binds the soul to Jesus, but has the intrinsic effect of assimilating it to Him, transforming it to His likeness. Saint Paul says, “But he who is joined to the Lord, is one spirit” (1 Cor. 6:17). And in Saint Matthew we read, “Learn of me, because I am meek, and humble of heart” (Matt. 11:29). One has to be humble after the model of Jesus, and all else will follow. How this is so is not immediately apparent, because the full implications of the virtue of humility are not readily seized. All that is required on the part of the Christian is to make perfect his calling. It is to efface himself before God. Hence it is that the whole burden of the Savior's teaching to men is the practice of self-abnegation.
Self-abnegation is something much larger than either suffering or mortification. The instructions on prayer that follow are an exposition of the mode by which this conquest of self is carried to a final and successful issue. Prayer properly carried out will have as its effect the gradual revelation to the soul of this disease of self-love, which so intimately penetrates the very fibers of its being as to pass unobserved by the person that does not lead an interior life.
In prayer, the soul is gradually drawn into the radiant purity and truth of the soul of Jesus. It becomes bathed in and penetrated through and through with that radiance, and in this splendor all in us that is our self and not of God, all that is in us unlike Jesus, stands clearly revealed to that soul's own gaze. When this unlikeness is purged away by the action of suffering and the sacrament of the Eucharist, then the close union of the soul with God takes place.
Prayer, mortification, and silence prepare the soul for the action of the Blessed Eucharist. Once the obstacles are cleared away from the soul, this great sacrament of union accomplishes in its perfection that which is its special effect, namely, the creation of a union of spirit between the soul and Jesus. Prayer prepares the way for this. A prayer that is good must have as its effect the gradual growth of self-abnegation. The presence of self-love in the soul is the great obstacle to the action of grace. Prayer reveals the presence of this self-love and secures the aid of God to its extermination. The grace of Jesus, flowing to the soul through prayer and the sacraments, carries out this process of extermination.
As the Christian soul empties of self, it fills up with God: not merely with some thought or aspect of God as visualized by self-centered spirituality, or even as revealed in created reflections, but with God as He is in Himself, and as He reveals Himself to little ones. To be filled with God is to be perfect with the very perfection of our heavenly Father. But this happy result is conditioned by the soul's practical application of the means explicitly stated by our divine guide and exemplar: “Learn of me, because I am meek, and humble of heart” (Matt. 11:29).
It is in no narrow or particular sense that God is said in Saint James to “resist the proud, and give grace to the humble” (James 4:6). Self-knowledge is needed for growth in the spiritual life. Saint Catherine of Siena stresses this point with great emphasis in her writings. It is Christ Himself who has diagnosed the focus of infection in every soul. It is self, in its varying forms and manifestations. Eliminate this, she says, and there ensues necessarily a healthy spiritual life. Hence it is that He preaches self-abnegation in the first place. He preaches it in the second place. He preaches it all the time. On it all depends.
Self-abnegation is but humility in act. It is the practical carrying out in action of the precepts of that fundamental virtue. Jesus is the perfect type of humility of soul. He is the perfect model of self-abnegation in act. And mental prayer is the means by which the soul grows into the spirit of Jesus, developing in itself the mind of Christ. If the soul that practices mental prayer does not grow in humility and self-abnegation, it is a sign that its prayer is badly made and is not fulfilling its purpose.
It is essential for spiritual progress that one should have a clear vision of the role that prayer has to play in this progress. That role is the development, through loving contemplation of the Man-God, of the fundamental dispositions of the sacred humanity. Little by little, the soul grows in that basic humility so characteristic of Christ: complete dependence on, and loving subjection to, God. It becomes, as it were, the leaven which, spreading by imperceptible degrees, pervades its every action. It is marked by a self-abnegation which aims at purging from it everything that is not of God, so that, conformed to the image of His Son, it may live its life in full accord with the designs of providence in its regard.
We are told in the book of Ecclesiasticus, “Let nothing hinder thee from praying always, and be not afraid to be justified even to death: for the reward of God continueth for ever. Before prayer prepare thy soul: and be not as a man that tempteth God” (Sir. 18:22–23).
The science of prayer is the science of the intercourse of man with God. Prayer itself is the unfolding of our mind before the Most High, and in His presence. It begins by a desire on the part of the soul to place itself in the presence of its Creator. In its development, it tends to become an interchange of thought and affection between the soul and God. This unfolding of our mind before the Almighty is not an idle and egotistical self-analysis. It is the exposition of one's sentiments, needs, and aspirations. It is prompted by a desire that God should supply the soul's needs. It is sustained by the firm confidence that God is disposed to give the soul all that the soul is created to obtain from God, the author of its being.
The ultimate end of the relationship established between the soul and God in prayer is that the soul should, by His help, abandon its own natural earthly way of thinking and willing, and enter into God's views and affections, judge things as God judges them, and therefore conform its thoughts and desires to the thoughts and desires of God. This conformity of thought and affection between God and the soul is effected by the soul's conformity in thoughts and affections with Jesus Christ, the God-Man. There is a significance in the statement of Saint Paul: “For let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:5).
The final end of prayer, considered as a potent means for the development of God's life in the soul, is to emancipate us from natural habits of thought and affection, and to elevate us to a supernatural manner of thinking and willing; to change our natural outlook on life and things, and to make it supernatural. The function of prayer, therefore, and especially of mental prayer, is to transform our minds, and, through the transformation of our minds, to effect a change in our dispositions and in our hearts.
This mental conversion is not as simple as it is usually taken to be. It does not take place in a day or in a year. It involves a process which demands a long time for its completion. To think Christianly is not an easy matter. God warns us of this through the prophet Isaiah, when He says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts: nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so are my ways exalted above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts” (Isa. 55:8–9).
Prayer aims at bridging over this infinite gulf. It aims at enabling us to enter into the mind of God, and from that vantage point to contemplate all created things and the mysteries of faith. To arrive at this view of reality, it is necessary that it be not the spirit of human wisdom or prudence that should shed light upon the objects of our thought, or should reveal what are to be the worthy objects of affection. It is needful that the light of merely human understanding be replaced by the illumination of the Spirit of God.
As Saint Paul says, “the things also that are of God no man knoweth, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit that is of God; that we may know the things that are given us from God. Which things also we speak, not in the learned words of human wisdom; but in the doctrine of the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the sensual man perceiveth not these things that are of the Spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand, because it is spiritually examined. But the spiritual man judgeth all things… For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:11–16).
To the extent that we remain insensible to the promptings of the Spirit of God within us, to the degree in which we have failed to come under the influence of the divine communication by God of Himself to us, to that extent we are what the Apostle calls sensual. At the beginning of our conversion, we are almost entirely sensual in our ways of judging and understanding. We are unable to probe the inner meaning and penetrate to the spirit of the mysteries of our faith. The habit of prayer, and that alone, can correct all this, because it makes us cease to judge sensually, and enables us to acquire the art of judging all things spiritually.
Saint John says, “the servant knoweth not what his lord doth” (John 15:15). And Saint Paul says, “But our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ, who will reform the body of our lowness, made like to the body of his glory, according to the operation whereby also he is able to subdue all things unto himself” (Phil. 3:20–21).
“In my opinion,” says Saint Teresa of Avila, “prayer is only a friendly intercourse, in which the soul converses alone with Him by whom she knows she is loved.” According to Saint Thomas, prayer is an act of the reason; that is to say, it must have a basis in the intelligence. Growth in prayer is merely a growth in familiarity with God. His Holy Spirit influences the intellect, awakens pious thoughts in the memory, arouses the imagination to develop and preserve these thoughts, draws the reason to examine religious truths, and excites holy desires conformable to the thoughts He has inspired. Desiring more intensely to communicate Himself to the soul than it could desire union with Him, He directs every effort it makes in its intercourse with Him.
God's action does not exclude that of the soul. Diligent cooperation on its part is vitally necessary. The soul must petition God for the grace of prayer, and at the same time spare no pains to conform its thoughts and ways to those of God. A very touching and intensely human incident in the Gospel illustrates all this, and carries us rapidly through the various stages of the intercourse of the soul with God, from its initial want of comprehension to the final illumination by which its ignorance of the divine is swept away.
We are told in Saint Luke that, as the evening of the first Easter day was drawing to its close, two of the followers of Jesus of Nazareth left Jerusalem and directed their steps towards a small town about eight miles distant, called Emmaus. As was natural, their thoughts revolved around the tragic happenings of the previous days. Seeing nothing in these sad events but the frustration of all their hopes and the end of their ambitious dreams, they were plunged in gloom. Their state of mind is well portrayed in their own words: “But we hoped, that it was he that should have redeemed Israel: and now besides all this, to day is the third day since these things were done” (Luke 24:21).
Being unable to tear their thoughts away from what they had witnessed, they could speak of nothing else. As they walked and talked, a stranger drew near; and being anxious to interchange their thoughts with another, they were glad when he came to share their company. We are told that “it came to pass, that while they talked and reasoned with themselves, Jesus himself also drawing near, went with them” (Luke 24:15).
The disciples, being asked by their new companion what it was that was the subject of their conversation, expressed surprise at anyone being ignorant of the terrible scenes which Jerusalem had just witnessed. “And he said to them: What are these discourses that you hold one with another as you walk, and are sad? And one of them, whose name was Cleophas, answering, said to him: Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things that have been done there in these days?” (Luke 24:17–18).
The stranger asked them to explain what they referred to, and straightway both proceeded to sketch the life of Him whose followers they had been. He was a great prophet, mighty in word and work. They had expected great things of Him. Around His remarkable power they had based their hopes of the restoration and freedom of Israel. And now all had ended in disillusionment and tragedy. The mighty worker of wonders was seized without difficulty by the priests and princes, and put to death without opposition. All was over.
They said, we are told in Saint Luke, “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet, mighty in work and word before God and all the people; And how our chief priests and princes delivered him to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we hoped, that it was he that should have redeemed Israel” (Luke 24:19–21).
It was true that some women asserted that He had risen again from the dead. But that was a tale that had its origin in the overwrought imaginations of women, distracted by the cruel sufferings and death of the Jesus whom they loved. Saint Luke says, “Yea and certain women also of our company affrighted us, who before it was light, were at the sepulchre, And not finding his body, came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, who say that he is alive” (Luke 24:22–23).
The story of the resurrection the disciples were not prepared to admit. It conflicted with their sense of what should be the normal development of the events of the three years that had just ended. They had reason to know death; death they expected. But a death and a resurrection did not fit into their habits of thought. Regarding Jesus, His life, His work, and His life's purpose from a viewpoint that was to a large extent natural, and interpreting it from that viewpoint, they completely misjudged the life and misunderstood the man. Their appreciation of the events of the last days of Holy Week showed that they had never properly understood Him whom they called their Lord and Master.
The stranger, after having allowed them to express themselves fully on the subject that filled their thoughts, and having listened to them in silence to the end, began to speak in his turn. “Then he said to them: O foolish, and slow of heart to believe in all things, which the prophets have spoken. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and so to enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:25–26).
Taking their minds back over the Scriptures, He set before them contemplation after contemplation on the life, the character, the disposition, and the sufferings of the Messiah. As feature after feature was drawn for them from the words of Moses and the prophets, especially the great Isaiah, they began to see in the career of Him whom they had followed the fulfillment of each detail of the prophecies. At the same time, they began to understand Jesus of Nazareth, and to grasp the inner meaning, the lesson, the purpose of His life on earth. It became clear to them that this was not a life of purely human limitations. The divine element in it began to show through for them. Saint Luke says that, “beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures, the things that were concerning him” (Luke 24:27).
And as it began to dawn upon them that the redemption they looked for was to be sought not without but within, not in the emancipation of their persons from a political yoke, but in the subjection of their souls to the deifying influence of the Redeemer; as the true portrait of the Messiah developed for them under the skillful hand of the Master Himself, their minds grew in understanding of, and their hearts began to glow with love of, Him whom they had so little understood. “Was not our heart burning within us, whilst he spoke in the way, and opened to us the scriptures?” (Luke 24:32), they said afterwards to one another.
This walk and conversation with Jesus was mental prayer in its ordinary form. It sets before us vividly, if only in outline, the ordinary process through which the soul passes as it grows in knowledge of Jesus. In considering this scriptural illustration, we should notice that Jesus Himself drew near and went with them. He led them to expose their thoughts and sentiments. He was ingenious in facilitating intercourse and intimacy. He took the initiative. In a word, He was the quiet, powerful master of the whole situation, just as He is in prayer, if only the soul responds to His advances.
In the beginning, the soul, attracted to Jesus by some impulse of grace, comes to Him filled with natural thoughts and aspirations, and very ignorant of the supernatural. It understands neither God nor itself. It has few intimate relations with the divinity outside of itself and within itself. But it begins to converse with Jesus. If it persists in the frequentation of His company, the Lord gradually takes an ever-increasing share in the conversation, and begins to enlighten the soul.
In its contemplation of the mysteries of faith, He aids it to penetrate beneath the words and facts and symbols hitherto known but superficially, and to grasp the inner sense of the supernatural truths contained in these facts or words or symbols. The Scriptures are gradually opened to the soul. The well-known texts begin to acquire a new and deeper meaning. Familiar expressions convey a knowledge which the soul wonders never to have discovered in them before. All this new light is directed towards giving a fuller and more perfect comprehension of the mysteries of our faith, which are the mysteries of the life of Jesus.
From this comprehension springs a love and sympathy with our divine Lord. There is a growing desire for identification with Him, a union of thought and feeling that begets intimacy and constant intercourse. The soul has a constant desire of conversing with Jesus about His interests and its own, which love has made identical. Saint John Chrysostom says, “Consider how great the happiness given to you, how wonderful the glory bestowed on you, in this: that you can discourse with God in conversation with Christ, aspire after what you are inclined to, and ask for what is wanting to you.”
The soul cannot consort with Jesus without ardently desiring to be like Him, and to liberate itself from whatever can place an obstacle to the freedom of their mutual relations. It conceives a distaste for all that tends to create in itself an unlikeness to Jesus. The constant and habitual aspiration of the soul, running as an undercurrent through all its communications with the Lord, is to be freed from the shackles of all deliberate faults, even the very least, and to be filled with grace. “All our prayers,” says Saint Thomas, “ought to be directed to the obtaining of grace and glory.”
The soul, striving after this conformity with Him who has become its friend, necessarily seeks to enter into and to develop in itself the fundamental and guiding disposition of that friend's soul. That disposition is the disposition of sacrifice, or rather a profound adoration of God finding its expression in sacrifice. The fundamental disposition of Christ's soul was one of absolute and loving subjection to God. Jesus Himself expressed this, saying in Saint John, “for I do always the things that please him” (John 8:29).
Prayer is the means to the acquisition and cultivation of the spirit of sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Now, when God finds this disposition in the soul, He hastens to communicate to it a participation, more and more abundant, of that divine life of which the soul of Jesus is the limitless ocean. Thus is realized the purpose of Christ's Incarnation: “I am come that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). Through the reception of the Sacred Host comes an inflow of divine grace into their souls, and with that comes their final illumination.
I thank You, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that You have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask Your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
EW