Vocal 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.
We are told in the book of the Prophet Daniel, “All you works of the Lord, bless the Lord” (Dan. 3:57).
There are two distinct ways in which the soul presents itself before its Creator. There are two distinct types of prayer, namely vocal and mental.
Though a mental attention — either to the meaning of what we are saying, or to the person we are addressing — is required in order that the formulae we utter with our lips merit the name of prayer, there is nevertheless a fundamental difference in the nature and the purpose and the effects of these two modes of communicating with God.
The word prayer is derived from the most characteristic act of its exercise, which is petition. All our dealings with God must have a background of pleading in them. A note of entreaty must run through the various movements of the soul towards its God.
There is always one ultimate object which is aimed at in the converse of men with God, and to this object all the others are subordinated: that is, that God communicate himself to his creatures in this life as the preparation for union in the next.
We are indigent before God. We need everything. He alone can give us what we want.
If we had not fallen, our offerings would mainly consist of words of praise and adoration and worship. And though now, as has been said, there is an element of petition always present in our intercourse with God, yet praise, adoration, and thanksgiving are still the most characteristic functions of prayer when it is vocal.
For this reason, it has to be more formal than mental prayer. In the latter, the operation is more personal and intimate. In the former, God is the direct object of our acts. In mental prayer, we have our own soul and its states as the object on which our will or our understanding is exercised.
Though people pray vocally in private, yet it is characteristic of and usual for vocal prayer to be recited in common.
Vocal prayer is always to a certain degree a public act, and as such is something that is done to honor and reverence God. Prayers in common are often recited, as in times of calamity, to express repentance, to plead for mercy, to placate God’s justice, or to obtain his blessings. But the distinctive function of vocal prayer remains that of honoring, reverencing, and worshiping God.
The nature of public vocal prayer demands that we acquit ourselves of it with great reverence and respect. Our every gesture, tone, and attitude must be made to signify the honor we wish to pay to the great Being in whose presence we are. For the merit and perfection of our act, it is not demanded that we should necessarily advert to the meaning of the words we use.
If the whole action is directed towards God, if we realize that the formulae we use are in themselves eminently pleasing to him, and if from the beginning we form the intention of acquitting ourselves well of the duty we are undertaking, the whole function is meritorious and pleasing to God, whom we honor.
Any subsequent distraction or want of attention, as long as it is indeliberate, does not destroy the initial intention. This intention extends its influence over the whole multitude of acts which constitute the service.
The monastic choir is as a stage arranged before the King of heaven — the stage on which those who recite the breviary should endeavor to execute, with great expression and feeling, attention and perfection, those chants in honor of God composed by the divine Spirit. Those who recite the breviary should remember that their role in the divine drama is that of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, the Church, whose innermost thoughts and feelings, whose mystical life, whose states of soul, and whose love and devotion to God the Father, the divine hymns express in terms of wonderful variety and perfection.
The breviary differs from all other vocal prayers. It is the official utterance of the Spouse of Christ.
One writer says, the public prayer of the Church is in very truth the prayer of Christ. Sharing as we do in his life, forming but one body in him, we become his instruments by which he can praise God. If we place ourselves wholly at his disposal, it is he who prays in us, with us, and by us. Thus we become one, in a very full sense, with the eternal praise and glory of his Father.
What has been said of the breviary is true in its terms and measure of all vocal prayer. In every case, there is a recital of a formula, composed nearly always by a person different from the one who prays. It does not necessarily express the disposition of soul of the person employing the formula. If it be an approved prayer, it voices sentiments, thoughts, and emotions which are in themselves pleasing to God.
The more perfectly one identifies oneself with the thoughts expressed in these recited formulae, the higher the value of the prayer. But it is clear from what has been said that in this form of address one stands on a more formal and distant relationship with Almighty God than in the case of mental prayer.
One writer says, a recollected bearing, a reverential attitude, and a becoming posture are demanded for the due acquittal of vocal prayer.
When vocal prayers are recited in common, the exercise should be marked by something of the decorum and dignity that surrounds the choral recitation of the breviary. Such an exercise should always be begun with the express intention that God should receive thereby a due measure of honor and worship.
The effect of vocal prayer upon the soul varies with the stage of development that the soul has reached in the spiritual life.
For those who do not lead an interior life, the role of such prayer is restricted to exciting a sense of the supernatural and a sense of the duty of raising the mind to God. For those advanced in the spiritual life, the liturgical prayers are of sovereign efficacy for bringing their souls into union with the intellectual illuminations and affective impulses of the Holy Spirit.
The prayers and chants of Holy Church become for such souls the natural and spontaneous outlet in which the pent-up emotions of the heart, acquired in mental prayer, find due expression.
One writer says, the soul is turned into the fire of love, and therefore every word is like a spark rising from a fire, inflaming and enlightening the powers of the soul, that she listeth ever to pray and do nothing else. And the body is an instrument and a trumpet of the soul, in which the soul blows sweet notes of spiritual prayers to God.
To acquit ourselves perfectly of vocal prayer, it is necessary to raise to God our mind by attention, our heart by devotion, and our will by submission. These dispositions, deliberately stirred up in the soul at the beginning, will color the whole exercise in spite of distractions. Actual attention all the time is not vital. Our prayer is meritorious and obtains its effect, provided we begin with an attention that is not afterwards retracted by any voluntary distraction. Actual attention the whole way through should obviously be aimed at, but it gives additional force and efficacy to our words.
St. Thomas Aquinas says, now prayer has three effects. The first is common to all acts informed by charity, and this is merit. In order to realize this effect, it is not necessary that prayer should be attentive throughout, because the vigor of the original intention with which one begins to pray makes the whole prayer meritorious, as is the case with other meritorious acts.
The second effect of prayer is proper to it alone, and consists in impetration. And again, the original intention, to which God looks chiefly, suffices to obtain this effect. But if the original intention is absent, prayer lacks both merit and impetration, because, as Gregory the Great says, God hears not the prayer of those who have no intention of praying.
The third effect of prayer is one which it produces immediately. This is the spiritual refreshment of the mind, and for this, attention is a necessary condition.
Thus St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, “If I pray in a tongue, my understanding is without fruit” (1 Cor. 14:14).
It should be noted, however, that there are three kinds of attention that can be brought to vocal prayer. One which watches the words, lest we say them wrong; another which attends to the sense of the words; and a third which aims at the end of prayer, namely God, and the thing we are praying for. This last kind of attention is most necessary, and even the untutored are capable of it.
We should make it a point to begin well, by deliberately placing ourselves in the presence of God, and by withdrawing our powers from outward things, recollecting them in ourselves and fixing them on God. If distractions come, we must aim at having all our distractions turn on divine things. This we can do by learning to view all things in God’s light. The power to do so is the direct effect of the cultivation of the habit of mental prayer.
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 to 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 pertains to that must come from God.
Every gift in 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 to us on condition of our valuing them, desiring them, and petitioning him humbly for them. He has said 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 who 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.
But though it is true that prayer is supernatural — we are told in St. Paul, “No man can say, Lord Jesus, but by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3) —
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, of course — 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. 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 access 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 electing 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. Of course, 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 a 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 number of failures in the spiritual life. Of the many that embark on the interior life, comparatively few 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, allow themselves to drift into choosing other things as well as God. This inevitably tends 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, “Vocal Prayer,” by Edward Leen, C.S.Sp. (Sheed & Ward, 1935).