25. Prayer & Spiritual Life

Next to the Eucharist, this section is the most difficult to offer. Talking about prayer and actually praying are quite different things. Analogies bring this home. Would a young man like to see and hold a pretty girl, or just dream about it? Would we get the same joy from reading a cookbook as actually eating the meals described therein? Of course not. Similarly, anyone can talk about God and Jesus and yet such an intellectual exercise pales in comparison to knowing the Lord personally and dialoguing with him. Hence, I will offer only the barest outline. Prayer and spirituality may take any of a multitude of forms. However, even if one were to investigate all the various forms of prayer, still one could not penetrate the mystery of spirituality and real dialogue with God. Spirituality is not so much something which is taught as it is something which is lived. In the Christian milieu it is intimately tied up with our sacramental life and charity. Having said this, we might find some guidance in modeling our own prayer lives on the ways others have encountered the mystery of God in the past.

On the most basic level of spirituality might be the formal prayer which is already composed for us by others. This is literally the meat-and-potatoes of prayer for Catholic Christians Those words which are derived from the Scriptures would be of particular importance, like The Lord's Prayer, the first half of the Hail Mary, and the Magnificat. Throughout the history of the Church, the psalms have been very important and still form the staple for The Liturgy of the Hours which is prayed by religious, priests, and even many laypeople throughout the world community. Indeed, this prayer, combined with the Mass, is the most visible sign of the Church praying unceasingly. Other formal prayers would include The Hail Mary, The Hail Holy Queen, The Act of Contrition, and The Glory Be. Of course, the great prayer which contains so many of these lesser ones is The Rosary which would remind us to meditate upon the sacred mysteries. In addition, there are an assortment of devotions used in the Church. Some of them follow seasons of the year; i.e. the popularity of The Stations of the Cross during Lent.

It is always presupposed that these formal prayers become more than the empty repetitions of another's words. These words which are given to us by the Church need to become our words. We do this by reflecting upon the meanings of these prayers and then making them our own. They are guideposts to show us how to pray, as well as supports when we go through dark times of doubt and confusion.

The next level of prayer, if we may speak of it as such, would be in our own formulation of words to speak to God. We might bring to God our various fears, hurts, and even doubts. This last point is very crucial because when we have sometimes grown close to God in prayer, and find ourselves enjoying it, God might ironically withdraw the early satisfaction we received. Suddenly we find ourselves struggling to pray. This is not a sign that God is upset with us or that we have been abandoned; rather, it is a sign of God's love calling us to spiritual maturity. He does not want us to pray for the good feeling we get from it or even to get the things we want. No, God wants us to love him simply for being God. I suspect that an immaturity in our modes of loving often harms our relations with others and inhibits or prayer life. The small child has such a bargaining attitude. A child will tell his mother and father, "Give me what I want and I will love you forever!" The immediate inference is that if he does not get what he wants, then neither will he love them. Marriages fail because of this kind of selfishness. Translated to the spiritual life, it is a pathetic affair, with people angry with God or alienated from the Church-- all because they preferred "my will be done" to "thy will be done." God will give us many gifts; however, we run the risk of loving gifts more than him. For this reason, he might sometimes make himself seem absent to wean us away from the trappings of faith in order to possess the real thing. Even the greatest saints, like St. Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, experienced these "dark nights of the soul"; the challenge is to use them to grow in holiness and not to stumble backward.

There is a still deeper level to spirituality whereby one does not so much talk to God but rather communes with him in the quiet of the heart. It is not completely passive, but it does consist in being sensitive to God's presence and allowing him to speak to us. These days there are so many distractions and even just plain noise, that this wondrous level is often missed. Making retreats away from distractions might help; but, it must be asserted that this kind of prayer already presupposes a mastering of the lower levels.

The general types of prayer can be distinguished. There is adoration of God and Goad alone. We literally worship God's greatness and exalt his name. Often this adoration is considered synonymous with praise, although a distinction might be made. If adoration is lauding God for just being God, praise might be focused upon him as a Creator who has been generous and wondrous in his gift of creation. Outside of prayer, we might praise any person for some trait or action well done. Thanksgiving comes close to this latter definition, and it means making some return to God for his goodness and bounty to us. Just as we might thank our mother for a well-cooked meal, so too we can thank God for what he has done for us. One of the most elementary types of prayer is petition. We believe that God hears prayer and he wants us disposed to place our needs and our trust in him. Again, there are parallels in human relationships where we might trust a parent or a close friend with all that is dear to us. Supplication ultimately means acceptance of the will of God, especially if God does not answer our prayer in the way we would have liked. The initial prayer of the Good News was repentance and contrition. We feel remorse for what we have done-- our sins put Christ to death on the cross-- and we want to make amends. This condition of prayer, repentance, leads to a particularly Catholic form of oration, the prayer of satisfaction or reparation or propitiation. Join to our Lord, adding our crosses to his on Calvary, true reparation for sin can be made. The indignities against God caused by sin require restitution. We offer ourselves with Christ as the price to heal for sin.

In the history of the Church there is a treasury of spiritualities from which we might draw. Lately I have seen several new translations of St. Francis de Sales' Introduction to the Devout Life and new renditions of the Ignatian Exercises. There are strong Trinitarian spiritualities and Marian devotions; there is the prayer of the desert fathers regarding the four senses (sensing, thinking, feeling, and intuition); there is the Benedictine spirituality and lectio divina; the Augustinian prayer and its relevance to the present moment; the Franciscan way and poverty; the Dominican model and the intellect; the path of devotio moderna with St. Teresa of Lisieux and also Thomas a Kermpis' The Imitation of Christ; the exercises and Ignatian spirituality; and there is the spirituality of contemplation as the highest level of prayer, heralded by St. Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross.

Contemporary society is in search of a genuine spirituality to fit our various types of lives and temperaments. The wonderful mystery of it all is that there are so many ways to God-- from the charismatic renewal (stress on the Holy Spirit) to the traditional Marian devotions-- and that they can all exist under the same roof of the house Jesus built, the Catholic Church.

In conclusion, the greatest prayer of all is the one in which we partake as a community, the Mass. The Mass is where we beseech God for mercy and help; however, far more importantly, we adore and praise him. Adoration is the first and most important task of the prayer of the Christian; ours is a love which rejoices in who our Father is and then in what he does for us. At Mass, we ask God to transform us just as he changes the gifts, so that we might be new Christs.