Transformation Through Prayer
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.
In St. Paul we are told, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:5).
In the last analysis, mental prayer is an act of the soul seeking the society of Our Lord with a view to his direction and coming under the control of his sacred humanity. His life stands revealed in the Gospel. The soul enters into contact with it by a loving study of its mysteries.
The Mother of Jesus has given us the example. She herself passed her life doing what we are called to do. St. Luke assures us of this twice, saying, “But Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). And in another place he says, “His mother kept all these words in her heart” (Luke 2:51).
In Hebrew, a word means event or happening, usually of a striking or mysterious nature.
It should not be forgotten that the life and actions of Jesus were mysteries for Our Lady, as they are for us.
The meaning of the text, then, is that she reflected on and turned over in her mind the actions and the words of her own child, studying the events of which he was the center, with a view to probing further into their inexhaustible depths of meaning, in order to be penetrated with the sentiments, emotions, and dispositions of Jesus in all these.
Our Lady meditated on the life of Jesus as it unfolded itself before her, exactly as we are asked to do, and for the same purpose: to be steeped in and assimilated to the spirit of that life.
Her meditation on the mysteries of Jesus is not merely an idle speculation followed by a barren admiration of the truth revealed in the mystery. It must be undertaken with an object in view, namely to be good, avoid vice, and grow in virtue as a means to union with God.
We practice prayer in order to be assimilated to our head and Lord Jesus, to reproduce his life in ours.
When the soul, touched by grace, determines to abandon the routine practice of religion and to cultivate a real interior life, a beginning is ordinarily made by passing from the mechanical recitation of vocal prayers to the practice of meditation.
The first effect of meditation is to awaken the soul to the realization that it has a mentality, an outlook on life, an evaluation of things totally different from that of the person whose life it has begun to contemplate.
This unlikeness in view, in taste, in tendencies, between the soul and Jesus causes the influence of the Savior to be felt but slightly in the beginning.
We are powerfully moved and affected only by those towards whom we are attracted sympathetically. If we are out of sympathy with a person, it is unlikely that we should be carried away or elevated or inspired to a higher ideal by that person, no matter how gifted or virtuous he may be.
And it must be confessed that there are comparatively few that have not been at some time of their life out of sympathy with the principles of Jesus, on a very imperfect understanding with him.
Before their conversion, men are worldly-minded, and this worldly-mindedness manifests itself in that uneasy feeling they experience when they hear of the maxims of holy men and ascetical writers.
The words of the saints, their appreciation of things, their outlook on life — all is for worldly men very chilling and uninspiring. The appeal of humanism is felt to be much warmer.
But there are few of us in whom these words of a spiritual writer have not at some time or other found their verification, when he says there are many who, when they hear a word of the spiritual life or read of it or come across the ordinary maxims of Christian perfection, do not understand what is put before them. It is as if someone spoke to them in a foreign language. Either the words are without meaning, or the ideas are far-fetched and unreal.
They stand off from persons who profess to teach such doctrines or live by them, as if they had some contagious disease which they might catch themselves.
When a soul fresh from this condition starts to talk to Our Lord, it is obvious that it would be useless for the Lord to speak too much to that person.
He is not concerned about its earthly prospects, except insofar as they have their bearing on spiritual issues.
His inner communications to the soul, then, will always have reference to the process of sanctification. And the poor soul on its side has as yet but little comprehension of what sanctification means and of what its pursuit involves.
The soul is therefore not capable of understanding the Lord’s intentions, unless very imperfectly.
But anxious to advance, and multiplying its visits to and its moments of contact with the divine Master, it begins to enter more and more into the views of its heavenly director and falls more and more under his influence.
At first, the soul is in continual activity. The acts that make up the exercise of prayer are practically all its own.
It speaks to Our Lord with a dim perception of its wants and a certain realization of its shortcomings.
Acts of petition and contrition form the burden of its communications.
The growth of the soul in divine grace, that is, in divine life, is imperceptible.
Yet these pious acts produced by a good will have promoted its development and have imparted a certain amount of spiritual vigor.
What is taking place spiritually may be illustrated by the process of bodily nourishment. The sensible, evident part of this process is the introduction of the food into the mouth, its mastication and deglutition.
All these operations are capable of observation and control. But it is only when these observed operations are completed that assimilation begins, vitality is imparted, and growth promoted.
The process which is really life-giving is not an object of consciousness, nor does it fall under observation.
In a similar way, it is in the beginning of prayer.
One is conscious of one’s activities of imagination, intellect, and will, but there is no perception of the effects that, by the action of grace, follow for the soul on these activities of the faculties.
After the soul has elicited and multiplied its acts, the Lord illumines the intellect to truth and excites the will to good.
In the beginning, in an imperceptible way, and afterwards perhaps more plainly.
The touches of divine grace are very delicate and, normally speaking, escape our consciousness.
The soul is at the stage when its perception of material and natural things is keen, and its perception of spiritual things is extremely dull.
Still, the process of growth of the soul’s state which conditions the supernatural life goes on.
Those acts that have been spoken of develop the soul inasmuch as they posit the conditions of development.
The development in divine life is, of course, entirely due to God, the sole source of the supernatural.
According as the activity of God on the soul is being exercised in an increasing measure, the soul’s own activities diminish.
Those of the Lord increase in proportion.
The soul simply enters into the presence of its director and guide, who begins to operate powerfully by instructions, illuminations, and encouragements.
When this arrives at a point where the greater part, or almost all, of the conversation is carried on by Our Lord, the soul leaves the ordinary course and enters into the state of mental prayer which is called passive.
Hence we see that mental prayer is active or ordinary, and passive or mystical.
In the former kind, the action of the soul predominates; in the latter, the action of God.
When almost the whole activity is God’s, the soul has entered into the extraordinary states and has to undergo those fearful purgations which wipe away the last traces of the effects of the original revolt.
These purifications remove the final elements of that resistance to the divine which is found in our nature since the Fall, and thus God is free, so to speak, to evolve all of his own life in the soul.
And the soul becomes almost powerless to resist the divine influence.
We make mental prayer, therefore, to be converted from evil to good, from good to better, and from better to perfection.
Its object, as has often been said, is to create in us those conditions of human mind and heart which are the conditions of the inflow of the divine into us through the sacraments.
For “let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:5).
The end, the attainment of which for adults mental prayer is an almost indispensable means, is the end of our supernatural being, namely union with God.
Prayer aims at inaugurating that union on earth, in the conditions and limitations of our mortality.
Prayer is not, then, the mere asking of things, but a willing associating with Jesus in order to pass through him as man to God.
“I am the way,” he said. “No man comes to the Father but through me” (John 14:6).
The adoption of his principles of life and the application of them to our own life is the sole way by which we can arrive at that life of which he as man has the plenitude, the life divine.
A mere intellectual knowledge of the Gospel story does not bring us to this. It is only humble meditation on it, inspired by love, that will bring us to the determination to conform ourselves to the Lord Jesus.
Many give up prayer in disgust because they do not understand its meaning, its nature, and its end.
They believe prayer consists in asking for graces, spiritual and temporal, the acquisition of virtues, and the extirpation of vices. And they pray in the belief that God will bestow virtues just as we make presents of books, or take away our vicious habits as we remove dangerous instruments from the hands of children.
Virtue is a growth and follows the laws and conditions of growing things. The same is true of vice.
In the ordinary ways of Providence, the sole mode of its removal is by the growth of the contrary virtue.
God does not take away our vices as the surgeon severs a gangrenous limb from the body.
We do not get virtues or lose vices merely for the asking.
The desire prompting and inspiring our prayer should be the desire of growing in all respects like Jesus.
It is in that growth that vices vanish and virtues make their appearance.
We pray to God through Jesus, not so much to get something as to become something, namely to become conformable to the image of his Son.
The ultimate object of prayer is to glorify God, and we glorify God by being as we should be.
The real end of prayer, therefore, is to be good, to effect in ourselves the dispositions to sanctification — that is, to purify our souls and replace our natural views by the views of Jesus, and to substitute for our natural life his mode of life.
This is done by frequenting the presence of Our Lord, by conversing with him, whatever be the form this converse may take.
It may be a seeking for advice and instruction, a communing on common interests, an expression of feeling, a sympathy with his sufferings, an exposition of one’s own wants and interests, a tribute of praise, admiration, or love.
The familiar conversation with Jesus may vary very much according to its themes; the effect aimed at must be always a growing conformity to him.
In a word, prayer may be considered a going to Jesus for spiritual direction, a direction on the way that is to lead to God.
We pray not to dispose God to give, but to prepare ourselves to receive.
To receive that plenitude of divine life which is in Christ Jesus Our Lord.
We are told in the Psalms, “My heart has said to you, I have sought your face. Your face, O Lord, I will seek” (Ps. 26:8).
Without prayer, salvation is impossible.
To neglect it is to neglect the only means given us to remain in touch with Almighty God.
If we lose hold of him, we necessarily fall back upon ourselves.
And in ourselves we can find nothing that can advance us towards eternal life.
Everything that appertains to that must come to us through God.
Every gift of the supernatural order is an effect of his bounty.
For “every best gift,” says St. James, “and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17).
God has ordained that these gifts be given us on condition of our valuing them, desiring them, and petitioning him humbly for them.
He says to us, “Ask and you shall receive” (John 16:24).
This implies: if you do not ask, you shall not receive.
We do not beg except for what we prize highly and are desirous of possessing.
There is no true prayer where there is not a real longing for the things pertaining to the development of the spiritual life.
All that tends to impart, to strengthen, to develop and perfect that life are the gifts which God is prepared to give the soul,
if the soul nourishes in itself a holy desire for them, acknowledges its need of them, and confesses its dependence on God for them.
The most necessary resolution for one that wishes to draw near to God and to grow in intimacy with him — the resolution that embraces and involves all the others — is that of persevering in prayer in spite of all the difficulties and trials to be met with in it.
Although it is true that prayer is supernatural, for “no man,” says St. Paul, “can say the Lord Jesus, but by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3),
still the habit of prayer is fixed and strengthened and developed in much the same way as natural habits are formed and developed in us.
It depends, therefore, for its firmness and force on our own diligence, knowledge, and industry, aided — as it is always to be understood — by the grace of God.
It is an entirely mistaken notion to think that the gift of prayer is something which in no wise depends on us, but is altogether God-given.
Prayer, it is to be emphatically stated, does not happen to us.
We do not contract spirituality as people contract a disease by accident.
Such a view fosters spiritual sloth, by which the soul excuses itself for not entering into relations with God on the grounds that it feels no taste or inclination towards such intercourse, and waits until God imparts this devotional taste before beginning.
Again, it is certain that the power to pray is a grace, but this grace is infallibly given if we on our side fulfill the conditions required of us.
Our cooperation is necessary. We must not wait until influenced by pious sentiments or emotions, or driven by necessity, to address ourselves to God.
These pious feelings are not of the essence of prayer.
We must be so trained in the exercise of the divine converse that we can approach God with as much constancy when we feel a positive distaste for the supernatural as when carried away by an excess of sensible devotion.
We must learn to speak to God independently of our tastes and feelings.
The difficulty in prayer is not in prayer itself.
It all comes from our want of decision in choosing definitely to find our unique satisfaction of mind, will, and imagination in the supernatural, and in definitely renouncing the tendency to seek in the natural world any form of satisfaction that does not lead to God.
If we are strong enough and resolute enough to choose God as the term not of some but of all of our activity, if we are resolute enough not to be continually oscillating between him and creatures, prayer is easy.
As regards petition, there is no difficulty in asking for what we like.
The whole world is daily occupied in that. Most deputations are concerned with it. It is the characteristic action of childhood.
But there is a real difficulty in liking what we, as children of God, should ask for.
Naturally, we have no taste for the things of the spiritual life. It is intelligible that we should be very half-hearted in our petitions for what we do not strongly desire.
We are not prone to be very insistent in our demands for what we are not very eager to have.
Christians as a rule are not conscious of this distaste for the supernatural.
They sincerely believe that they are quite earnestly beseeching God for the things of eternal life.
There is a certain amount of unconscious self-deception in this matter.
The petition for the things of eternal life is accompanied very often — in fact most frequently — by a keen desire of and longing for things that are an impediment to that life.
One desire of necessity negatives, at least partially, the other, and renders it to some extent illusory.
If what is actually longed for is in contradiction with the life of grace or opposed to its development, the prayer for the things of the spirit is but an idle formula, a complete self-delusion.
The cherishing in the soul of desires incompatible with the longing for God is the secret of the vast numbers of failures in the spiritual life.
Of the many that embark on the interior life, few comparatively succeed.
The reason lies in this: that they have never resolutely chosen God to the rejection of all else besides, or that, having once made the choice, they afterwards allow themselves to develop likings that impede or conflict with the growth of God’s life in the soul.
They allow themselves to drift into choosing other things as well as God.
This inevitably leads to not choosing God at all.
Many will plead that they find the spiritual life a difficulty because they find prayer a difficulty.
The truth is that men begin to find prayer a difficulty when they have begun to find God a difficulty.
This comes when God has ceased to interest them because other things have begun to interest them more.
The essential condition of success in the spiritual life is to train oneself to want God, and to school oneself not to want what does not lead to him.
Hence it is that St. Catherine of Siena in her Dialogue stresses so much the necessity of stirring up and nourishing in the soul this holy desire.
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, St. 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
Based on Progress Through Mental Prayer, “The Transforming Effect of Mental Prayer,” by Edward Leen, C.S.Sp. (Sheed & Ward, 1935).